Monica McNutt married Justin Jackson on August 17, 2024, in Washington D.C. Jackson is a basketball operations executive who spent nine years at the NBA Players Association before joining the Chicago Bulls organization in 2025. The two met in 2019 and got engaged on a beach in Grenada in September 2023.
You have probably seen McNutt on television. She is a former Georgetown guard who became one of ESPN’s most visible basketball analysts, and she turns up on First Take and SportsCenter most weeks. Her husband works the other side of the sport, in rooms no broadcast ever shows.
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Who is Justin Jackson
Jackson has never played in the NBA or coached in it. His work is the operational and union side of professional basketball, the part that keeps the league running while nobody in the stands thinks about it.
He joined the NBA Players Association in August 2016 and stayed nine years. He started in facility management and basketball operations and worked his way up to Director of Basketball Operations and Facilities at the union that represents every active NBA player. From 2021 through 2025, he also ran basketball operations for the Next Gen Basketball Players Union, the players’ organization on the NBA G League side.
In September 2025, the Chicago Bulls hired him as assistant general manager of the Windy City Bulls, their G League affiliate. The team’s announcement noted he was arriving after nine years with the NBPA.
Before the union, his career ran through several corners of the game:
- Selection committee member for the Portsmouth Invitational Tournament Foundation, the long-running pre-draft camp, since 2009
- Assistant strength and conditioning coach with the Houston Rockets, 2014 to 2016
- Head strength and conditioning coach for the RGV Vipers, the Rockets’ G League affiliate
- Basketball operations assistant with the Bakersfield Jam, 2013 to 2014
He has a bachelor’s degree in sport management and a master’s in sport psychology, both from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville.
How they met
A mutual friend introduced them in 2019. McNutt was building her career at ESPN’s ACC Network. Jackson was a few years into his run at the NBPA. They knew each other through work, and for a while that is all it was.
The pandemic changed the pace. Living in different cities meant the two talked more than they might have if they had been able to see each other casually. “Living in different cities during Covid forced us to really talk and get to know each other at a more methodical pace than you normally would otherwise,” Jackson told Essence in 2024. “I got a chance to listen and learn so much about her.”
The friendship turned into something else on one afternoon in New York. McNutt was in the city for work. Jackson asked her to come watch a Washington Commanders game at a bar, and the day became a long walk through the city. “That was also the day of our first kiss,” McNutt said.
She had done some homework on herself long before any of this. Years earlier, her therapist had given her an exercise: list what you have settled for, what you keep being drawn to, and what you refuse to compromise on next time. “Justin checked all of my non-negotiables,” she said.
Jackson summed up his side plainly. “You meet thousands of people in your life, but you only meet so many that really ‘get’ you.”
The proposal in Grenada
Jackson proposed in St. George’s, Grenada, on September 1, 2023, while the two were there on a yearly trip with close friends.
He knew his fiancรฉe likes to keep a record of the moments that count, so he set up photos for the minutes around the question. “I am typically not a big picture taker, but I know that she is someone who loves to document special moments and events,” he said. “So the photos were taken within minutes of the actual proposal.”
McNutt’s reaction came faster than her words. When Jackson dropped to one knee, she knocked his phone into the ocean. Then she said yes.
They sat on the news for nearly eight months. In May 2024, they shared it for the first time in an Essence feature, shot at the New York hotel where they had their first dinner together. “We wanted to document where it all started in a sense,” Jackson said.
The wedding details
McNutt and Jackson married on August 17, 2024, at the Conrad hotel in Washington D.C. Warren Mackey of the Transformation Church officiated, in front of 140 guests.
Essence covered the day. The couple went with a mauve, gold, and white palette and filled the space with greenery. McNutt wore Ama Nwoke to the welcome party and Theia Couture for the ceremony and reception, with bridesmaids in Jenny Yoo. Melissa Williams of B Astonished Events planned the wedding, Terri Baskin shot it, and Sydnee Paige styled it. The couple booked Black and woman-owned businesses for the entire event.
The New York Times ran a wedding feature on the pair on August 23, 2024. McNutt described watching Jackson read his vows. “He’s a big behind-the-scenes guy,” she said, “and he let it all go in that moment.”
What McNutt is doing now
McNutt signed a new multi-year ESPN deal in October 2024. She remains a core part of the network’s NBA and WNBA coverage, shows up regularly on First Take and SportsCenter, has reported from the NBA Finals and the NBA Draft since 2022, and still works as a studio analyst for the New York Knicks on MSG Networks. In 2022, Sports Illustrated and Empower Onyx named her to their Elle-evate: 100 Influential Black Women in Sports series.
Seven months after the wedding, in March 2025, she sat down with Front Office Sports and talked about how the work fits into the rest of her life now.
“My marriage is important; my family is important. The WNBA plays in the summer, the NBA plays in the fall, so it has been a puzzle to figure out when I can deliberately carve out time to spend it with my loved ones.”
Monica McNutt, Front Office Sports, March 2025
In the same interview she said she was building a life and not just a career. As of June 2026, the couple has not announced any children.
It is a telling place for her to land. McNutt spent a decade making herself impossible to overlook, on camera, on the radio, in the middle of the loudest arguments in sports television. The man she married built a serious career inside the same sport and never needed a camera to do it. By her own account, the version of success she is chasing now looks a little more like his.
