Peyton Watson is out,
The Nuggets’ very newsy Wednesday began with news from the broadcast booth. The franchise announced its new team for Altitude Sports broadcasts, with Noah Reed joining the lineup as the play-by-play announcer and NBA veteran Jason Richardson joining the studio team to provide analysis.
Reed, a native of Indiana, had spent the previous five seasons calling football and college basketball for ESPN, FOX Sports and NBC/Peacock. He’ll be joined by Katy Winge, a longtime Kroenke Sports & Entertainment fixture who will take the role of lead analyst, becoming just the third full-time female analyst on an NBA regional network.
“This is a dream come true for me and something I’ve spent so much time and effort striving toward,” Reed said via a Nuggets news release. “I am thrilled to make Denver home and begin connecting and interacting with Nuggets fans everywhere.”
The duo of Reed and Winge replaces Chris Marlowe (play-by-play) and Scott Hastings (analyst), who were let go earlier this summer, along with reporter and studio analyst Chris Dempsey, a former sports reporter for The Denver Post.
Gardner, a Front Range favorite, is returning to Altitude, the company announced. The Denver native and CU/Northglenn alum will serve as a host/reporter on Nuggets broadcasts, as well as fulfill “other roles for the network,” per the KSE release. Gardner spent the last seven years based in New York City as a host with the MLB Network, NHL Network and DAZN, following roughly three years with Altitude prior to that.
Richardson, 45, will serve as studio analyst and as a second game analyst for “select” home games, per KSE. He played 14 seasons in the NBA (2001-15), primarily with Golden State, with whom he won NBA Slam Dunk Contest titles in 2002 and 2003. Richardson will be joined in the studio by another KSE fixture, Vic Lombardi. Altitude veteran and former Nuggets coach Bill Hanzlik will also serve as a studio analyst for “select” games, per KSE.
The new team’s regular-season debut will be the Nuggets’ home opener on Oct. 24 vs. the New Orleans Pelicans. Altitude will carry 67 Nuggets regular-season basketball games this season on both Altitude TV and Altitude+.
