As more news comes out about what will happen with NBA and its media rights after next season, many hosts around the country have given their thoughts and opinions about the 11-year, $77 billion deals from Disney, NBC and Amazon. Others have also talked about the company that lost out on being a part of the party, Warner Bros. Discovery and TNT Sports. 670 The Score hosts Dan Bernstein and Laurence Holmes talked about both on Bernstein & Holmes.
The conversation started with ‘Roundball Rock’ making its return to NBC and the nostalgia part of it and Holmes saying, “It makes sense for NBC to bring it back, but I don’t know if it means as much as maybe people might make it out to mean.”
Bernstein countered with, “I think it means more that we may be in the last season of Inside the NBA.”
“I’m not sure how much that means either,” Holmes replied.
“Well, I would lament its demise,” Bernstein said. “Primarily because it blows past my very lax standard for sports broadcasting, which is just don’t make people dumber. And I think too often other networks’ NBA coverage decides to allow people to get dumber. And I don’t know if they do it on purpose, but it’s a low common denominator. And the one thing that Inside the NBA always did was they always worked at the highest level of their intelligence.”
While Holmes disagreed a bit and pushed back, Bernstein recognized that the show could have fun and go a bit off the rails. However, he said, “Even their comedy, even that stuff, they worked at it. And there were graphics involved. There’s a whole bunch of silly stuff. But those guys all, they’re proud NBA vets…who love the NBA.
“And who have unpredictable, strong opinions about the league. And I would miss it so much.”
“Let me ask you this,” Holmes said. “Does the league want that?”
“Well, I think [Charles] Barkley thinks they don’t,” Bernstein said. “To hear some of the stuff that Barkley’s saying about how eagerly, how Adam Silver loved the fact that David Zaslav said, ‘We don’t need the NBA.’ And then he used that as a cudgel and exacerbated it, used that as a dividing point. To say, ‘oh, you don’t need the NBA.’ Well, maybe the NBA doesn’t need you. And just maybe, just maybe, that this can’t miss crew who players, coaches, GMs, everybody understood that their conversations often set the tone about how the league is discussed and how people feel. Maybe the NBA wants to control their message a little more.”
