As TNT Sports presents broadcasts of the NBA Eastern Conference Finals between the New York Knicks and Indiana Pacers, it will mark the final time the NBA on TNT will take the air in the United States. The league is entering into new 11-year media rights deals with The Walt Disney Company, Comcast Corporation and Amazon reportedly worth a collective $77 billion that will place games on over-the-air, cable and streaming television platforms. Yet Inside the NBA, which features Ernie Johnson, Kenny “The Jet” Smith, Charles Barkley and Shaquille O’Neal, will be continuing its 36-year run under a sublicensing agreement with Disney that will result in the show airing surrounding select NBA events on ESPN and ABC.
Johnson recently joined an edition of The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz where he provided his thoughts on the Knicks-Pacers series and what it has been like to cover the proceedings from afar. Moreover, he surmised what the final broadcast may look like and whether or not he would become emotional after being asked by Le Batard. Johnson has been trying not to think about the topic, and there have been several instances this season where it hits him that the broadcast venture will be out of the rotation starting next season.
“We’re not going to be over the top, but we’re certainly going to have some folks to thank, and I haven’t really thought about what I’m going to say that last night, and so it’s not like you want to prepare something,” Johnson explained. “I think we’ll all have something to say, but I think we also realize that for the four of us, it would be really weird, Dan, if this were the end of us together, and it’s not going to be because the show’s going to continue, just on another network on an ABC/ESPN kind of combo.”
Johnson mentioned how the cast of the program will have the same people running the cameras and producing the show, accentuating that the key difference will be that it is running on a different network. If the end of the series also coincided with the conclusion of Inside the NBA in its current structure, Johnson articulated that he would want the Knicks-Pacers battle to extend 29 games.
Le Batard spoke about Barkley, who recently voiced that it is going to be an honor and privilege to be working with ESPN starting next season. Barkley recently affirmed a long-term commitment to TNT Sports and is going to remain a Warner Bros. Discovery employee despite taking part in the show airing on a different network. Yet he divulged that he took meetings with NBC Sports and Amazon but ultimately opted to remain with the company he has been with since the turn of the century. Le Batard believes that Barkley is in a position to be the most coveted and lucrative free agent in sports broadcasting history but that he chooses not to exert his power in this manner.
“Well, he was the biggest free agent when he signed with us the first time – that’s 20-something years ago – because when he was out there and available and it looked like he was going to go to NBC, it was like, ‘Wow, good for NBC. That’s really nice,’ and then he has this change of heart after dinner and drinks with the executives at TNT, and he’s like, ‘I’m going to go to them,’” Johnson recalled. “And so obviously, he was then and he would be now, but I think there’s a bond that we share – the four of us – that’s stronger than that, and I think that’s why we’re going to be together again next year.”
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