Ahmad Rashad Discusses 1990s NBA Finals Games, ‘NBA Rewind’ Now Available NBA App for NBA Member Week
It’s undoubtedly one of the most fiercely debated questions in all of sports: Is today’s brand of NBA basketball better or worse than during the Michael Jordan-led heyday of the 1990s? While discerning sports fans can disagree, there is perhaps no one better equipped to dive into the particulars of that question than longtime NBA journalist (and former NFL All-Pro wide receiver) Ahmad Rashad.
“The thing is about Michael, if you ever ask him, ‘Who’s better you or LeBron?’, you know what his answer is?” Rashad asked The Streamable this week. “‘You can’t compare; we never played against each other, so we’ll never know.’ That’s his answer. It’s one of those things that is a good ‘have a beer’ at a bar argument. Enjoy yourself with the argument and nobody’s wrong. You’re both right!”
Having been the eyes and ears of many NBA fans dating back to the 1990 premiere of NBC’s iconic weekend basketball magazine show “NBA Inside Stuff” and continuing to today with his new show “NBA Rewind” exclusively on the NBA App, Rashad has been a part of it all. And now, some of the biggest games in NBA history and Rashad’s career are available on the league’s app.
The NBA App has added every single NBA Finals game from the entire decade of the 1990s and members can stream them now on-demand. For hoops fans of a certain age, those series are iconic moments in the formative years of their sports-loving development, but even as they were happening, Rashad knew how special they were.
He said that while he was working the games for NBC and Quinn Buckner was doing the same for radio, the two would marvel after pretty much every game that what they had just witnessed was the greatest game they’d ever seen, only to be surprised again the next time out.
“[We’d say] there’s no way they’re gonna play better than this,’” he said. “Then, three days later, we say the same thing again. It was just so incredible that the drama was so great and [the play] was at the top of the world, the top of the business.”
The addition of those iconic finals matchups — featuring such all-time greats as Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Isaiah Thomas, Charles Barkley, Hakeem Olajuwon, and more — came just in time for the NBA Member Week. Each day of this week has introduced a different promotion or opportunity for fans to take advantage of, from discounts on Fanatics gear to a chance to attend an NBA Finals game, the NBA App has something for everybody this week. But, specifically for streaming basketball fans, tonight, Friday, March 31, the app will make all 13 games on the schedule available to watch for all NBA ID members.
In addition to the night’s games, fans can tune into “NBA CrunchTime,” the league’s whip-around show that spotlights the biggest plays and moments from each game with real-time updates and analysis. Last fall, The Streamable got a behind-the-curtain peek at how the edge-of-your-seat broadcast comes together.
The fact that fans can watch all 13 games in a single night is one of the main differences that Rashad sees between today’s era of the NBA and that of the ’90s.
“We had a game of the week and — as long as Michael Jordan was in Chicago — our game of the week was Chicago and somebody else,” he said. “It wasn’t eight games [per day] or Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday; it was only one game of the week, and that was Sundays.”
But for Rashad, the availability of so many matchups — from national cable games to regional sports networks to streaming — is a good thing for fans, because they just can’t get enough.
“[As for] the fan experience, they always want more because it’s such a great sport and there’s so many great athletes that play it,” he said. “The fans are getting a bigger look, and they’re insatiable. They can take more, they wanna know more.”
The abundance of basketball content — and the fans’ ravenous appetite for more — has also changed the way that journalists cover the sport. When Rashad began hosting “NBA Inside Stuff” 33 years ago, that was one of the few opportunities that fans had to get to know players beyond highlights and box scores, but today — thanks to social media — players have the chance to connect with fans on a much more consistent and direct basis.
“They don’t need ‘Inside Stuff,’” he said, “they can take a phone and go out and film whatever they’re doing in the backyard. The world’s a little more wide open. When we were doing ‘Inside Stuff,’ that’s the only place you could find that stuff that we did that really got a chance to sit down and know who the person is. Well, that’s not the case anymore.”
Despite all of the opportunities that fans have to learn about their favorite players today, Rashad is still finding new ways to get to know some of the biggest names in basketball both from the game’s past and present. Last month, the broadcasting icon launched a new show “NBA Rewind with Ahmad Rashad” exclusively in the NBA App. On the show, Rashad sits down with NBA icons like Stephen Curry, Shaquille O’Neal, Damian Lillard, Dominique Wilkins, and more.
Rashad said that the show is designed to have deeper, more compelling conversations with NBA icons in order to get an insight into what’s happening in today’s game, but also to talk about previous basketball generations, whether it is the ones his guests played in or the ones that inspired them.
“If you talk about Shaq, he can talk about when he played, [and] he can also talk about now because he does it on television. Dominique Wilkins calls [games] for Atlanta, he sees everybody in the league,” Rashad said. “[So I ask], ‘Who do they remind you of? Is there anybody that played like that when you played?’ Now if I ever get that guy, I wanna know who inspired him. ‘Who inspired you to be who you are?’”
Stephen Curry Gives Ahmad Rashad the Inside Scoop on His Viral Full-Court Streak:
Following nearly that exact line of questioning, Rashad got to the bottom of how one of the league’s most unlikely superstars became the incredible shooter that he is. Despite growing up in Cameroonian and not playing basketball until he was 15 years old, the 7-foot reigning NBA scoring champion Joel Embiid shared how he learned to shoot for an upcoming episode of “NBA Rewind.”
“Joel told me that he learned how to shoot three-pointers from watching YouTube,” Rashad said. “There was some guy on YouTube that was shooting all these shots and he just mimicked the guy, and that’s why he’s such a great shooter. It’s just unbelievable stuff that doesn’t come out in an interview, but it does come out in a conversation.”
There are few people in the world of sports journalism who have had a better seat to the evolution and popular explosion of the NBA than Ahmad Rasahd, and fortunately for hoops fans, he is still getting the inside stuff from the game’s best and brightest.