Commentators for the original NBA on ABC included play-by-play announcers Keith Jackson[5] and Chris Schenkel,[6] and analysts Jack Twyman,[7] Bob Cousy[8][9] and Bill Russell.

[10] On April 8, 1967, a strike by the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) forced ABC Sports producer Chuck Howard and director Chet Forte[11] to call Game 4 of the Eastern Conference Finals between Boston Celtics and Philadelphia 76ers,[12] as its regular announcing team were members of the union.

A major sticking point was attempting to force the prospective winning TV network to air games on Saturdays during the fall and winter, directly in competition with far more popular college football telecasts on ABC.

The game, called by Jim Lampley and Bill Russell, marked the first time Duke University's Blue Devils basketball team played on national television.

For ABC's final Summer Olympics to date, which were the 1984 games from Los Angeles, Keith Jackson[34] provided the play–by–play alongside Digger Phelps[35] (men) and Ann Meyers[36][37] (women).

From 2004 to 2006, the network also insisted on carrying a Christmas game between the Miami Heat and the Los Angeles Lakers, featuring their respective players Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant.

[93][94] The number of Sunday afternoon regular season games that ABC normally covers is significantly lower than what NBC broadcasts during its tenure with the league.

In a 2002 interview with Jim Rome, NBA commissioner David Stern commented about the number of league games broadcast on ABC: Cable and satellite (programming is) increasingly available to everybody who wants it.

[95]By contrast to Stern's assessment, media analysts and many fans found that the cable-heavy television deal made many games unavailable and, in addition, devalued the league.

Sports Business Daily quoted Houston Chronicle writer Jonathan Feigen regarding the structuring of the NBA's deal with ABC: [the NBA] seemed to marginalize the product, treating their sport as small and their playoffs as no more important than one of 162 Atlanta Braves games.On July 17, 2015, ESPN announced that ABC would add a series of eight Saturday night games to its slate of broadcasts in the 2015–16.

[80] On January 28, 2023, ABC aired its first non-Christmas NBA tripleheader, starting with the Denver Nuggets at Philadelphia 76ers, followed by the New York Knicks at Brooklyn Nets and the Los Angeles Lakers at Boston Celtics.

As mentioned previously, ABC aired a series of Wednesday night games in January during the 2023–24 season due to the 2023 Hollywood labor disputes.

From 2019 to 2023, Friday night first-round playoff games on ABC were considered non-exclusive and may co-exist with broadcasts of regional sports networks of the teams involved.

On February 5, 2006, ABC established another new graphics package, including a horizontal scoreboard (similar to that introduced the previous fall for its final season of Monday Night Football) for the network's NBA telecasts.

The graphics were later replaced in April 2009 with a more compact grey design, with panel-like lower thirds and a permanent "stats bar" located underneath the score and time.

[101] The network was also criticized for focusing its coverage on a select number of teams, particularly the decision to broadcast a Lakers-Heat game on its Christmas Day schedule for three consecutive years.

However, for 2007, ABC decided to break this tradition by instead having the Heat, for the fourth straight time, appear on Christmas Day facing the 2007 Eastern Conference Champions, the Cleveland Cavaliers.

However, the Heat-Lakers Christmas Day special would make its return in the 2010–11 NBA season, as a result of LeBron James' recent move from the Cleveland franchise to Miami.

After the 1990s (when the NBA arguably reached its highest point in terms of popularity) many hardcore and casual fans began to associate the league with NBC, and more accurately, the network's theme music, "Roundball Rock".

Tom Tolbert was relegated to pre-game show duties only, and Bill Walton was removed from the network's NBA coverage altogether (however, he would remain with ESPN).

Doc Rivers, a critically acclaimed analyst when he worked with Turner Sports for TNT's NBA broadcasts, became available after a 1–10 start by his Orlando Magic led to his firing as the team's coach.

Jim Durham and Dr. Jack Ramsay both worked several games during the regular season, while Brent Musburger, John Saunders, Len Elmore and Mark Jackson were involved with others.

Speculation arose that Michaels would leave ABC for NBC; however, he subsequently signed a deal to remain on Monday Night Football, when it moved to ESPN in 2006.

Lisa Salters also served as the lead sideline reporter for ABC's regular-season game coverage and the NBA Finals that season, filling in for Michele Tafoya while she was on maternity leave.

ABC's pre-game show, which Jackson was a part of, also began to be broadcast from the site of the main game each week (much as was the case during first season of the network's current NBA deal in 2003).

Doris Burke, who already served as an analyst for ESPN's NBA telecasts, replaced Tafoya as lead sideline reporter on the ABC broadcasts.

Magic Johnson, Jon Barry, Michael Wilbon, Bill Simmons, and Chris Broussard have previously served as analysts for NBA Countdown.

Also, Doug Collins left NBA Countdown and joined ESPN's roster of game analysts, returning to a position he previously held while working with NBC and TNT.

Beadle's role would end up being split between Maria Taylor, who also worked ABC's college football game of the week, and Rachel Nichols, host of the popular ESPN show The Jump.

The opening game of the 2020 Finals between the Los Angeles Lakers and Miami Heat brought in only 7.41 million viewers to ABC, according to The Hollywood Reporter.