SB Nation • 6 min read

Ian Eagle ‘scales back’ YES duties in light of national role with Amazon

After 30 years behind the mic at Nets games from East Rutherford to Newark to Brooklyn, Ian Eagle is scaling back his role with the YES Network as he transitions into his new job as the lead voice of Amazon

Prime’s NBA coverage. Ryan Ruocco will now play a larger role in Nets coverage.

Eagle revealed the news in a podcast with Sports Media Watch…

Eagle said that his Nets assignments “will go down considerably from what they were at one point” thanks to his new “sizable” role as the lead NBA voice for Amazon Prime Video. Eagle said he will probably call in the range of 10-15 games, down from about 40 in recent years, while Ryan Ruocco will “assume the majority of the responsibility.”

As for Prime Video, Eagle said he will work “in the neighborhood of 50 games” across the regular season, NBA Cup, NBA Play-in Tournament and NBA Playoffs. As the lead voice for Amazon, he is set to call conference final games on television for what would be the first time in his career. Prime Video has a conference final every-other-year starting in 2027.

Eagle, 56, and his son, Noah, 28, both called YES Network games last season and both have since taken on larger national roles, Ian with Amazon and Noah with NBC Sports. Ruocco, 38, is a familiar voice for New York sports fans. He’s been with YES since 2007 when he was hired by the network as the New York Yankees statistician. He joined the YES broadcast team in 2011, handling both Yankees and Nets games. He also has national NBA duties with ESPN which he joined in 2023 and voices WNBA games as well.

Eagle has called Nets games on television since 1995 and before that on radio for a year, following the teams from the IZOD Center to the Prudential Center to the Barclays Center and covering everything from the Jason Kidd years to the 12-70 season in New Jersey, then the Big Three and now the Nets latest rebuild in Brooklyn. As Sports Media Watch reported, this coming season marks the first time during that tenure that he has held a No. 1 position on any national NBA game package. although he has called national games.

Eagle described how his duties with YES have dropped over the last several years, once being “as high as 82 [games] because the Nets did not appear on national TV,” before dropping to 70, 60, 52 and eventually 40 last season. “This year, it’s really a sliding scale, depending upon availability and then how often they need me,” he said, indicating the 10-to-15 number is not firm. YES recently lost Frank DiGraci, Eagle’s longtime coordinating producer to NBC’s NBA coverage where he’ll play the same role.

The Forest Hills native is beloved among Nets fans for his skills as a broadcaster, his institutional knowledge of the franchise and perhaps more than anything his signature calls like “that’s a man’s jam” (which with the Nets addition of Terance Mann will become personal.) He has been notably paired over the years with Bill Raftery, Jim Spanarkel, Mark Jackson and Mike Fratello and most recently Sarah Kustok and Richard Jefferson, both of whom have credited him with mentoring them.

Just last month, Eagle won his 10th straight New York Emmy for Nets play-by-play in September 2025, marking his 11th award in the last 13 years.

YES has yet to announce its lineup for the coming season.