Peacock expanding ‘On the Bench’ to every Monday night NBA game

Peacock is putting every Monday night NBA game “On the Bench.”

NBC Sports executive producer Sam Flood told Sports Media Watch’s Derek Futterman that “On the Bench,” the format that plants an analyst beside each team’s bench instead of at the broadcast table, will be deployed for every Monday night game on Peacock this season after being reserved for a single game each week last year.

“We think it’s a signature element for Monday nights, and the league was on board with us to help the access and get us on those benches,” Flood said, “so we’re all in with that.”

The format debuted last October during Cavaliers-Pistons, with Noah Eagle anchoring the call from his usual center-court perch, Austin Rivers stationed alongside Cleveland’s bench, and Robbie Hummel settled next to Detroit’s. Borrowing from the “Inside the Glass” position NBC pioneered on its NHL coverage, the setup tasked each analyst with chronicling the game through one team’s eyes, relaying whatever nuggets he could pry loose from huddles and timeouts.

Pulling that off required plenty of improvisation, as Hummel revealed on Sports Media with Richard Deitsch last November that he typically sat beside a team’s head athletic trainer, couldn’t see Rivers across the scorer’s table, and had to rely on whatever monitor setup each arena offered.

“A three-man booth, when you do them, there’s a lot of non-verbal communication of pointing, and you take this, but you’re not able to say it,” Hummel explained. “You’re just kind of giving him the look, or you’re giving the point. That’s really not possible because I can’t see Austin from over the scorer’s table and all the people that are actually sitting in an NBA game.”

Late in close games, that proximity left Hummel in a precarious position. Stationed beside the trainer’s chair, he could watch a head coach sketch out the decisive possession on a whiteboard from mere feet away, hearing every instruction and seeing every player’s assignment before the huddle broke. In a traditional booth, that’s when the play-by-play turns to his analyst and asks what the team should run, inviting an educated guess.

But Hummel wasn’t guessing. And since he was technically sitting on privileged information, the crew’s workaround was to keep the specifics under wraps until the ball was about to be inbounded. That discretion was central to how NBC sold the format to coaches. Before any of them would let an analyst sit that close, they needed to know the network wouldn’t broadcast what was said in their huddles the moment it heard it.

Rivers told Boardroom that the crew hoped to counter what he described as a “borderline toxic” culture of scapegoating coaches by showing how demanding their jobs really are. Lead producer Frank DiGraci, whom NBC lured away from his longtime post at YES Network, acknowledged that trust is hard to gain and easy to lose, but insisted the crew wasn’t out to get anyone, only to give viewers a deeper look behind the scenes than they could find anywhere else.

“Trust is hard to gain and easily lost,” DiGraci added to Boardroom. “And I look forward to other teams and coaches getting to see these first two games and understanding that we’re not out to get anybody. We’re only out to get in-depth and behind the scenes a little bit more, and a unique access for our viewers.”

Addressing this concern in a press release announcing the “On the Bench” format, Flood stated that production teams would work hard to thread the needle between gaining intel and bothering team personnel, saying in part that “we will respect the sanctity of the inside information our analysts are able to hear but will always strive to give the audience unique insights that only this type of access can provide.”

But that didn’t dissuade Richard Jefferson, and even Doc Rivers had his own reservations about the setup. The former head coach, who joined NBC this offseason as a game and studio analyst, confessed to Sports Media Watch that he harbored serious doubts about the format his son helped launch.

“I actually didn’t like the idea when I first heard about it,” the elder Rivers said. “I said, ‘I don’t know how this is going to work,’ and then when I watched it, I absolutely loved it. I thought Austin and Robbie in particular, they got things that you would have never got if they were at the table.”

And this season, Peacock viewers will get that kind of access every Monday night.

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