Blake Griffin wasn’t sure he wanted NBA broadcasting to be part of his post-NBA career work life. But he started watching Amazon’s Prime Video Thursday Night Football studio show and played golf with Jared Stacy, Amazon’s global head of production.
Then, he began to see the possibilities and envisioned himself dispensing his thoughts about NBA games, players, coaches and executives to a viewing audience.
On Tuesday, Prime Video announced Griffin and Dirk Nowitzki will serve as studio analysts and Taylor Rooks will host the show when Prime Video begins streaming NBA games in the 2025-26 season.
‘To put a fresh desk together and have a new show with new insight with new voices was super exciting to me,’ Griffin told USA TODAY Sports. ‘And it gives me a chance to talk about the one thing that I truly love and the thing that I know, and that’s basketball.’
Prime Video will stream 66 regular-season NBA games: doubleheaders on Thursdays and Fridays, occasional Saturday afternoon games, plus coverage of the NBA Cup’s knockout round, including the Cup championship game; it will also stream all six play-in games, first- and second-round playoff games and will stream one of the two conference finals every other year.
It is a considerable distribution package, part of the NBA’s 11-year, $76 billion TV deal with ESPN/ABC and NBC and Amazon that begins next season.
The Prime Video NBA studio show will be based on the Amazon MGM Studios lot in Culver City, California, and it unites Griffin, the No. 1 pick in the 2009 draft and six-time All-Star, and Nowitzki, a Naismith Basketball Hall of Famer with Rooks, who also covers the NFL for Prime Video.
‘I’ve taken time to sit with coaches who I played for or coaches and GMs that I have a good relationship with to make sure that I’m continuing this basketball education and making sure I’m up to date on what’s going on inside of locker rooms and what’s going on inside of coaches meetings,’ Griffin said.
‘It’s just giving insight to fans on what was going through this guy’s mind or what this coach was thinking, just because I feel like there’s maybe a little bit of a disconnect between fans and teams and players.’
Griffin has filled his time post-playing with a production company co-founded by former NFL All-Pro Ryan Kalil called Mortal Media that produces scripted and unscripted programming for film and TV. He likes to golf and dabbles in investing with his brother Taylor.
He looks forward to this endeavor with Rooks and Nowitzki.
‘I’ve known (Rooks) for a while now and I remember the first basketball conversation we had. I was very impressed with her insight and how much she knew,’ Griffin said. ‘Also, it’s not easy to be the anchor, the person who keeps the show running, and she does a phenomenal job at all of those things. So that’s exciting for me.
‘And then obviously Dirk has been a guy that I watched, it felt like all my life and one of the best players and one of the best power forwards of all-time, and a guy who I had the unfortunate task of trying to guard. He thinks the game at an incredibly high level, so I’m just looking forward to spending time with him and learning from them and hopefully putting a product out there that people enjoy.’