Starting on Christmas Day 2005, ABC's NBA pregame show underwent yet another transformation. It adopted the former name of the ESPN2 Tuesday night NBA studio show, and became known as "NBA Nation". For most of the season, Mike Tirico hosted the program. He was joined by Scottie Pippen, as Steve Jones and Bill Walton both returned to the broadcast booth. In the first edition of "NBA Nation", Pippen was only seen in the final segment of the show. The first three segments involved special-interest stories and a panel of celebrities and sportswriters discussing issues concerning the NBA. This panel of guests was the first of only two. Though it was originally planned for Tirico to be joined by an in-studio panel of guests each week, the plan was evidently scrapped after January 22. Following that, a panel of guests, all of which directly connected to the NBA or basketball in general, joined Tirico via satellite occasionally (with the exception of March 5, when both Mike Krzyzewski and Jerry Colangelo joined Tirico in-studio). Until January 29, the program also featured an NBA-related segment from ESPN's "Pardon the Interruption".