Amazon Prime Video’s sports strategy has been to shop at the top. Since 2018, when Prime Video devised its plan, it has picked up national NFL rights, local New York Yankees games and the most popular leagues in countries around the world, like the NHL in Canada.

On Friday night, Prime Video began its 11-year, nearly $20 billion global contract to stream NBA games. In a very short time, the service has made itself part of the sports-watching ecosystem.

While Friday was historic in the transition to streaming, it lacked a little drama because, just seven years in, Amazon is expected to bring excellence. It’s not by accident.

With the NFL, Prime Video aimed high and eventually landed the legendary Al Michaels, lending it instant credibility even as Michaels winds down his career.

With the NBA, Prime Video signed Ian Eagle as the voice of the platform. Eagle, the best basketball game-caller in the sport, gave Prime Video a sense of calm that made watching Friday’s NBA on Prime opener between the New York Knicks and Boston Celtics feel comfortable.

During a pretty boring game that ended in a 105-95 Knicks win, Eagle and his analyst, Stan Van Gundy, made some chicken salad.

When Van Gundy went on about Celtics rookie Hugo González, Eagle finally asked during the third quarter if he should leave so Van Gundy could just talk about González the rest of the night.

While Eagle and Van Gundy mentioned it was Prime Video’s first game, they didn’t overdo it. They didn’t act like the Knicks-Celtics story was just beginning. They laughed a lot.

Then, Game 2 of Prime Video’s doubleheader between the Los Angeles Lakers and Minnesota Timberwolves came on. The booming, familiar voice of Kevin Harlan welcomed everyone.

Amazon did not fool around with its strategy. The production value and look was top notch. They shopped at the top. You could hear it on its opening night.

Silver Bullet

The idea of league partners doing journalism is always a strange subject. They are in multi-billion dollar business together, so they are only going so far.

But on Day 1, give Amazon Prime Video and NBA commissioner Adam Silver credit. Silver did a live interview with Prime Video No. 1 sideline reporter (and ex-ESPNer) Cassidy Hubbarth at the beginning of the second quarter.

The loud corridor of Madison Square Garden isn’t an ideal place to talk to anyone, let alone about a sensitive subject. But there was Silver with Hubbarth, answering a couple of questions about the arrests of one of the league’s head coaches, a current player and a former player in the FBI’s ongoing probe into illegal gambling and a rigged poker game. Hubbarth handled it pretty well, asking a couple of questions on the issues and producing a little news.

The first two questions were about the investigations, and the third was about how great the games had been during the week. Ideally, you’d like the third one to be about the issue at hand as well, but they are league partners, after all.

Studio show is shiny, but needs some work

Good news! The pregame show has room to improve.

A 30-minute pregame on the fourth night of the NBA season with a huge sports gambling scandal making headlines, going up against Game 1 of the World Series, is not an ideal launching point.

And like NBC’s pregame offering, Amazon’s pregame wasn’t that inspiring.

Let’s go through it:

• Amazon’s pregame show featured Taylor Rooks hosting, joined by Blake Griffin, Steve Nash, Dirk Nowitzki and Udonis Haslem.

• Amazon staying in-studio worked out better than NBC on the court. NBC had Oklahoma City’s ring ceremony, so it made some sense for it to be on-site. But the inexperience of low-key Carmelo Anthony, paired with Tracy McGrady and Vince Carter and host Maria Taylor, was hurt by being on the court and the crowd. It was a bit awkward, though Taylor did keep the train on the tracks. Amazon being in the studio was better for its starting five, as it is an easy, more controlled environment. It will need to find its identity.

• Near the beginning of the opening segment, Rooks referenced a Red Panda performance, but there was no video of it. Red Panda, whose real name is Rong “Krystal” Niu, is a renowned acrobatic NBA halftime performer. She was injured in July during a WNBA performance, but made her comeback on the Thursday Night Football post-game show this week. If you didn’t know all of this, the reference to Red Panda would have a viewer lost early.

• The newly built Culver City-based studio is ridiculously pristine, with two levels, a court and two sets. The post-game shows are more valuable, which has always been the secret sauce for “Inside the NBA.” The laid-back chilling area for the post-game — with a leather couch and chairs — is where Prime will try to mimic its success of Thursday Night Football. Led by Ryan Fitzpatrick’s antics, it has built a reliable watch.

• The court has 2300 LED monitors that looked cool during one demonstration on defense. Hopefully, it isn’t totally reliant on AWS.

• The pregame show addressed the sports gambling scandal, with insider Chris Haynes giving some details around seven minutes in.

• The opening had to get any NBA fan pumped. It started with some old TVs, which was a nod toward the new delivery method. It was well done.

• Nowitzki sat down with Luka Dončić. A couple of former Mavericks.

You have to give the NBC and Amazon pregame some time. They have set out to be different from “Inside The NBA,” and they were.