Free agency is winding up, and most of the action remains in the Association’s ivory towers.
The upcoming NBA regular season launches in October, and weeks ago I noted the Association’s television deal – taking effect in the 2025-2026 regular season - would likely triple the previous contract.
It did.
The package revealed in national press releases totals $76 billion dollars among eleven seasons. In the meantime, the final year of the existing deal will likely be a swan song for TNT’s Inside the NBA, some of the best late-night entertainment even when facing the late-night talk shows among other networks.
Inside the NBA brings pregame, halftime, and postgame coverage of the featured games televised as well as highlights and other entertaining segments with the panel of Ernie Johnson, the University of Georgia journalism school alum and moderator, and analysts Shaquille O’Neal, Kenny Smith, active NBA forward Draymond Green on occasion, and the inimitable Charles Barkley.
TNT is visibly absent from the most recent new contract awards to networks/streaming channels. ESPN.com bulletized the following highlights of each agreement to summarize who the TV rights bid winners when the 2025-2026 season begins:
Disney (ABC/ESPN)
• 80 regular-season games
• Continue broadcasting NBA Finals
• Continue broadcasting all 5 Christmas Day games
• Exclusive national coverage of final day of regular season
• Conference finals series 10 times in agreement's 11 years
• Keeps NBA draft and NBA draft lottery
NBCU, the U stands for Universal (NBC/Peacock)
• Up to 100 regular-season games each season
• Opening night doubleheader
• Conference finals in 6 of 11 years of agreement
• All-Star Weekend starting in 2026
• All USA Basketball senior men's and women's games
Amazon
• All 6 NBA play-in tournament games
• One-third of games played in first two rounds of playoffs
• Conference finals in 6 of 11 years of agreement
• A new game on Black Friday (day after Thanksgiving)
• Knockout rounds of NBA Cup
Disney remains the owner of the biggest piece of NBA action, and NBCU seems to take most of the chunks previously held by TNT.
It will be interesting to see how the realignment of the upcoming season’s broadcasting pool will land when deals are made and signed between the two NBA seasons.
It’s a shame TNT will probably lose the Inside the NBA show. Writers and other behind-the-scenes folks at NBC’s Saturday Night Live remarked during and following a tour of the show and the facility that the panel show’s cast and crew were a well-run operation.
Enjoy the show this coming season while you can.
Additionally, the aforementioned Barkley told NBATV during last year’s NBA championship broadcast he was not leaving TNT while the show heads into its final season, nor will he work anywhere else.
Barkley punctuated the remark telling the NBATV panel the upcoming season as his 25th and final season on the air, and the message he was delivering in that moment was his final word; no press conferences, no interviews would follow.
Barkley is arguably the funniest former athlete on television compared to NFL Hall-of-Famer and 18-year NFL quarterback Peyton Manning. Most of the other current and former athletes on TV are a distant number 3, and so on….
I’ll miss the Inside the NBA panel because they possessed great basketball knowledge, but continued their discussion with enough great chemistry you’d get lost in the feeling these guys were arguing in a living room, and not working on a panel show.
The leashes given among them had enough slack where they could halt the flow to another set of highlights when they saw something remarkable enough to delay the transition.
An excellent example was when the Denver Nuggets about two seasons ago had the numbers in a 3-on-1 fast break and all three athletes stopped outside the 3-point arc. The guy who took the shot beyond the arc missed it.
An excellent discussion of how this was a sample of how the game has changed ensured among Shaq, Kenny, and Chuck with Shaq leaning toward the opposite of the other two form NBA stars’ positions on the matter.
I’m quite sure nearly four minutes of airtime was used in this debate. It was simultaneously funny and intense. It will be interesting to see if any of the new deal’s winners can produce a panel show with these types of personalities and the various segments that made this show often times more interesting than the televised games wrapped around it.