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Ernie Johnson believes the NBA would benefit from shortening the regular season below 82 games.
Johnson is on his farewell tour as he announced last month that this would be his final season on the iconic Inside the NBA studio program after 37 years. He spoke with Front Office Sports’s Baker Machado last week on a variety of topics, including what he sees for the future of Inside the NBA without him, how ESPN/ABC have handled the program, and why he thinks the season could stand to shed a few games.
“If I were gonna do one thing, maybe I would reduce the schedule by a few games, so it’s not 82,” Johnson said when asked about the current state of the league and what changes he would make.
“Here we are a week into the season and there’s so many stars who are out right now. That’s the concern. It’s like, OK, so Anthony Edwards isn’t gonna play for a while. OK, so Kawhi Leonard’s out for a while. Look what happened in OKC.”
Edwards is reportedly expected to miss about two months after undergoing a knee scope, while Leonard is currently out with his own knee injury.
For Monday night’s game against the Cavaliers, the Thunder have already listed six players as being out: Alex Caruso, Chet Holmgren, Thomas Sorber, Nikola Topic, Cason Wallace, and Jalen Williams.
“Injuries are gonna happen, but part of it’s like, you know, the wear and tear on these guys—maybe you need to reduce that a little bit,” Johnson continued. “The talent you see in the league has never been higher. … Just in terms of watching the guys at the height of their powers, I love the product.”
Johnson reiterated a comment similar to the one that he made on Front Office Sports Tonight about hoping Inside the NBA endures without him and Charles Barkley, who has also alluded several times to the idea that this will be his last season on the show.
“Sure, there could always be Inside the NBA. It would be different,” Johnson told Machado. “What I would hope is that as the years go by, it doesn’t have to be the exact same show. It can just morph into something else. … I love those guys and wish nothing but the best for the show as it continues in whatever form that takes.”
Johnson also spoke of the “seamless” transition the show made to ESPN and ABC last year after TNT lost the NBA rights, and ESPN licensed the program in exchange for a package of Big 12 football and basketball games.
“That was our concern, in all honesty, when this change was gonna be made. I said, ‘Are we still gonna be able to be Inside the NBA?’ And this is total honesty: It was seamless,” Johnson said. “The folks at ESPN have been, [and] continue to be, great.”
He continued, “They’ve let our show continue the way we do it. We’ve got the same producer, we’ve got the same studio crew, we’ve got the same graphics folks, we got the same announcer. It’s us continuing to do the show in Atlanta’s Studio J. It’s just, the logo is different. It’s on ESPN, or it’s on ABC. They’ve been tremendous partners to be with. I’m just glad that we could continue the show. It would’ve been very strange to just cold turkey stop doing the NBA.”
