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Sports Illustrated
Sports Illustrated
Sport
Tyler Lauletta

Amazon Debuts Splashy LED Court to Great Effect in First Night of NBA Coverage

While the NBA’s return to NBC on Tuesday night to open the season stole the show for many viewers, Friday night also featured the debut of a new broadcast partner for the league.

Amazon’s Prime Video hosted a doubleheader of basketball on Friday night, and introduced its new studio show featuring host Taylor Rooks and analysts Steve Nash, Dirk Nowitzki, Blake Griffin and Udonis Haslem.

Beyond the studio show itself, Amazon also showed off the LED court that is featured in the crew’s studio, and quickly made it clear how the court could be used as a teaching tool to great effect.

Nash led the crew out to the floor, and positioned them to show how NBA teams run “Angle,” a pretty standard pick-and-roll set. Between Nash’s explanation and the spacing that was made clear by the court, it was an extremely effective lesson of Basketball 101.

Between the shared basketball knowledge of the Hall of Famers on set and the technology at their disposal, the Prime Video desk has the potential to give fans some really unique and valuable insight that other studio shows don’t provide.

The return of basketball to NBC brought back warm feelings for many basketball fans, and their broadcast was top tier. ESPN kept its promise to not mess with the winning formula of Inside the NBA. But don’t sleep on Prime Video’s jump into the basketball world, as the network seems pretty clearly ready to put on quite a show.


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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Amazon Debuts Splashy LED Court to Great Effect in First Night of NBA Coverage.

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