Five months ago, Tracy McGrady wasn’t sure NBC wanted him back for a second season, and now the network is effectively going into business with him.
In an exclusive interview with The Athletic’s Jerry Brewer published Tuesday, McGrady unveiled a two-year strategic partnership with NBC Sports that puts his Ones Basketball League games on Peacock, brings NBC in on live tapings of the Cousins podcast, and opens the door to content around the ABCD Basketball Camp, the storied high school showcase founded by sneaker impresario Sonny Vaccaro.
The agreement arrives a little more than a year after NBC added McGrady to its studio roster in July 2025, slotting him alongside Carter and Anthony on NBA Showtime as the league returned to the network for the first time in 23 years. McGrady and Carter, second cousins and former Toronto Raptors teammates, followed that by launching Cousins in January through Sinclair’s AMP Sports podcast network.
“Tracy has performed at the highest level both on and off the court and has already demonstrated his ability to deliver his unique perspective on air,” NBC Sports executive producer Sam Flood said when the network hired McGrady.
McGrady shook off a clumsy introduction during his debut on and became the show’s quiet force, rediscovering the unfiltered perspective and on-air comfort that made him a fixture in the early days of ESPN’s The Jump. McGrady regularly lobbed out provocative takes that, at the very least, gave Anthony and Carter something to push back against, and he proved willing to play the modern media game by stirring the pot in May with his suggestion that Jaylen Brown was frustrated in Boston and could be eyeing an exit.
McGrady’s colleagues struggled to match that energy, and by the conference finals, Awful Announcing’s Brendon Kleen argued that NBA Showtime needed a sweeping overhaul, contending that a desk of three Hall of Famers of roughly the same age, all of whom built their careers as scoring forwards, still hadn’t produced any meaningful chemistry, even as Victor Wembanyama’s Spurs and the Thunder gifted NBC an instant-classic Western Conference Finals in its first postseason back with the NBA.
That same month, McGrady told Front Office Sports that his NBC contract covered only a single season, and although he gave NBA Showtime a generous B+ and said he was eager to return, his future with the network hung in the balance. NBC ultimately rebuffed the mounting calls for an overhaul and retained its studio quartet, as McGrady will reunite with Taylor, Anthony, and Carter when the network inaugurates its second NBA season Tuesday night.
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