The NBA In-Season Tournament has featured strange new courts and, as of next week, a crossover event between TNT and ESPN.
ESPN and TNT will combine talent for coverage of the NBA In-Season Tournament semifinals next Thursday, it was announced Tuesday. With both networks carrying a semifinal hours apart, the TNT NBA studio team of Ernie Johnson, Kenny Smith, Shaquille O’Neal and Charles Barkley will appear in a segment on ESPN “NBA Countdown” and ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith and Michael Wilbon will return the favor on TNT’s “Inside the NBA.” Both shows will be on-site in Las Vegas.
In addition, TNT NBA game analyst Reggie Miller will join Mike Breen and Doris Burke on ESPN’s semifinal, while ESPN analyst Doc Rivers works alongside Kevin Harlan and Candace Parker for the TNT semifinal. It will mark a homecoming for sorts for Rivers, who worked with Harlan on TNT and TBS in the 1990s.
The co-mingling of ESPN and TNT talent is a new wrinkle in the longtime NBA broadcasters’ relationship. When NBC and Turner served as the NBA’s partners in the 1990s, it was not at all infrequent to see NBC talent on TNT games and vice versa. Johnson, Smith and Barkley even appeared on NBC’s halftime show alongside Bob Costas and Tom Tolbert during Game 1 of the 2002 NBA Finals, the last year NBC carried the event. That has largely not been the case in the two decades since ESPN replaced NBC.
The TNT crew is nonetheless used to working with talent from other networks as Johnson, Smith and Barkley have joined the CBS college basketball team on NCAA Tournament coverage for more than a decade.
(News from ESPN, WBD PR)
