The “Inside the NBA” team of Ernie Johnson, Kenny Smith, Charles Barkley and Shaquille O’Neal is apparently sticking around in a surprise deal with ESPN.
Joe Flint of the Wall Street Journal reported Saturday that Warner Bros. Discovery has reached a deal with Disney to license “Inside the NBA” to ESPN and ABC starting next season in return for a package of sublicensed Big 12 college football and basketball games that will air on TNT and Max.
The deal will apparently ensure not only that the TNT crew continues working together past this season, but that it will for the first time handle the NBA Finals.
The agreement would resolve one of the biggest challenges ESPN has faced in its two-decade run carrying the NBA, that of assembling a quality studio team. Beyond the fact that ESPN’s NBA studio could never measure up to that of TNT — a problem NBC faced in the final years of its run as well — the network could never even establish a consistent studio line-up.
Former ESPN writer Bill Simmons was first Saturday to broach the possibility of TNT licensing “Inside” to ESPN.
“Inside the NBA” has aired for as long as TNT has carried the NBA, but it took on its current form in 2000, when Barkley joined the existing cast of Johnson and Smith. The trio quickly became one of the most acclaimed in all sports television, with O’Neal joining in 2011.
TNT’s loss of NBA rights after this season was widely expected to mark the end of “Inside,” though there were some reports earlier in the year that TNT could license the show to incoming NBA rights partner Amazon Prime Video.
News of the licensing agreement overshadowed the other major development on the NBA rights front, the resolution of WBD’s lawsuit against the NBA. Under an 11-year settlement — also reported by Simmons and Flint — WBD will retain rights to a “significant amount” of non-game NBA offerings in the United States and worldwide and create content for the NBA’s digital platforms, including NBA TV. It is not yet clear what said content would include, whether studio shows or documentaries.
The WSJ report initially indicated that WBD will continue operating the NBA’s digital platforms, but that was not correct.
