Caitlin Clark will appear on NBC’s Basketball Night in America when Sunday Night Basketball debuts Feb. 1 at Madison Square Garden, the network announced on Tuesday.
Clark joins Maria Taylor, Carmelo Anthony, Vince Carter, and Tracy McGrady on the studio show before the Lakers-Knicks game. She returns March 29 when the Thunder host the Knicks in Oklahoma City.
“I’m really excited to be part of the Basketball Night in America crew this season,” Clark said in a statement. “Carmelo, Vince, and Tracy are legends of the game, and Maria is a true professional. It will be really fun to join them a few times this season.”
The arrangement gives Clark two high-profile appearances without weekly commitments during the WNBA offseason. NBC gets to attach the biggest name in women’s basketball to its marquee basketball relaunch after not airing NBA games since 2002.
Clark appeared on Saturday Night Live back in April 2024, roasting Michael Che over his women’s basketball jokes before thanking WNBA pioneers. That showed she could handle live television and wasn’t afraid to lean into the attention on her own terms. But studio analysis is different. It requires knowing when to say something worth saying and when to let the veterans carry the segment. It requires reading the room.
Whether Clark’s actually good at this remains unclear. Two appearances won’t prove much. But they give her a low-stakes opportunity to figure out if she likes the work
For NBC, this is about associating their basketball relaunch with the biggest name in women’s basketball. The network hasn’t aired NBA games since 2002. They need Sunday Night Basketball to work. Clark gives them another angle beyond just Lakers-Knicks, which would draw viewers on its own.
But the real value here is for Clark. She gets to be something other than the phenomenon for a few hours. She gets to sit next to three Hall of Famers and just talk basketball. We’ll see what that’s worth to her
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.