NBC’s broadcast was sounding a bit apocalyptic during Thursday’s Game 1.
The Oklahoma City Thunder and the San Antonio Spurs tipped off their highly-anticipated Western Conference Finals series on Thursday at Paycom Center in Oklahoma City, Okla. NBC had the honors of broadcasting the game … but unfortunately dropped the ball in the first quarter.
As Thunder guard Alex Caruso got up a corner three-pointer with just under five minutes left in the first, the audio from the NBC broadcast feed abruptly went crazy. Loud static and distortion could be heard by the viewers at home with play-by-play announcer Mike Tirico suddenly starting to sound like an extraterrestrial being sending a cryptic message to Planet Earth.
Many angry users on social media commented about the audio disruption on NBC (which lasted over a minute in real time) during one of the biggest games of the year.
NBC audio sounds like a WW2 Broadcast
— Alex (@Dubs408) May 19, 2026
NBC's audio during their biggest game of the year pic.twitter.com/IzPbFImJiE
— Fanatics Sportsbook (@FanaticsBook) May 19, 2026
NBC broadcast crew trying to fix the audio pic.twitter.com/OXb1SOAQFB
— G (@samsin420) May 19, 2026
NBC audio tryna summon devils on my TV??
—(@BronGotGame) May 19, 2026
You can see the video of the audio disaster at the link here.
The NBA’s media rights got a shake-up this season with Amazon Prime and NBC replacing TNT as official broadcast partners of the league. For NBC in particular, this year marks their first time broadcasting NBA games again since 2002.
But the media giant has disappointed many fans with the viewing experience this season, especially during the playoffs. Customers were already complaining earlier in the postseason about the broadcast schedule for certain games on NBC. While Monday’s Thunder-Spurs matchup was the only NBA playoff game of the day, viewers this time were disrupted by a bad audio glitch right in the middle of it instead.
