ESPN on Thursday officially announced its schedule for the TNT-produced “NBA Tip-Off” and “Inside the NBA,” which will air adjacent to ESPN NBA game coverage on 20 regular season dates.
The TNT-produced studio show will air in three of the first four weeks of the regular season — Opening Week (October 22 and 23), October 29 and November 12 — and then return on Christmas Day before beginning a full, regular schedule of shows starting with ABC’s January 24 tripleheader.
After that point, “Tip-Off” and “Inside” will appear on nearly all ABC dates for the rest of the season — the exceptions being Super Bowl Sunday and NCAA Tournament Selection Sunday — and on select ESPN dates (January 28, February 20, February 27, March 6 and April 12).
Pregame coverage will air for an hour on ESPN and a half-hour on ABC. For ABC’s Saturday night games, “Inside the NBA” will begin on ABC but move at some point to the ESPN app, presumably to accommodate late local news.
As ESPN president of content Burke Magnus told Richard Deitsch of The Athletic last month, the TNT-produced studio is set to air on every ESPN/ABC playoff date.
One of the most acclaimed sports shows in television, “Inside the NBA” was synonymous with the “NBA on TNT” package that ended in May. From the moment it became clear that TNT was likely to lose its NBA package last year, there has been considerable attention paid to the ultimate fate of the popular studio program. As part of a settlement between TNT parent company Warner Bros. Discovery and the NBA last year — WBD had sued the NBA to exercise “matching rights” in its expiring contract — ESPN acquired the right to license “Inside” for its NBA coverage.
As one might expect, the ESPN/ABC “Inside” schedule features quite a few new wrinkles. For years, the studio show would begin the season on Opening Night and then settle into a rhythm of Tuesdays and/or Thursdays throughout the season. Now, the show will appear on just four dates in the first three months of the season before ramping up in late January. Magnus told Deitsch that the backloaded schedule was at the request of TNT Sports.
Barkley, who has repeatedly said he does not want to work more than two days a week, will have three-straight weekends where he works Friday, Saturday and Sunday, all leading into the busiest stretch of his season covering NCAA men’s basketball tournament games for CBS and TNT Sports.
