Along with the Knicks, TNT Sports got another chance to savor the NBA TV apple after New York’s victory over the Pacers on Thursday night.

With Indiana leading New York 3–1, Thursday’s Game 5 of the Eastern Conference finals could have been TNT’s swan song after 36 years of televising NBA games in the U.S. 

Yes, the iconic Inside the NBA will survive via a licensing deal with ESPN. But whether TNT gets one more playoff telecast or two in this best-of-seven series, it’s over after this season. NBA games will shift to NBC Sports, Amazon Prime Video, and incumbent ESPN starting with the 2025–26 season. However, TNT will remain in business with the NBA for overseas games and NBA Digital.

Given the make-or-break nature of last night’s telecast, TNT admirably played it straight. Play-by-play announcer Kevin Harlan was the usual pro’s pro. He also took pains to praise TNT’s live-game camera operators and producers who may be out of a job next season. As columnist David Aldridge wrote on X/Twitter: “Love when Harlan names as many people on the @NBAonTNT production staff for game broadcasts as he can before signing off. No one knows how hard those folks work, 48-50 weeks a year, whether on hoops, baseball or football, to make the people in front of the camera look good.”

Before and after the game, the Inside the NBA cast of Charles Barkley, Shaquille O’Neal, Kenny Smith, and Ernie Johnson brought their usual mix of humor, basketball bona fides, and bombast. 

Knicks big man Karl-Anthony Towns was one of the stars of the game. But that didn’t stop Barkley from asking, “Why do you be getting them dumb fouls?” Answered KAT: “God only knows. … I’ve got to do a much better job.”

Barkley also declared that Game 6 is a “must-win” for the Pacers in Indiana. “If they come back here, they’re going to get another ass-kicking like they did tonight,” he said from the hardwood floor of Madison Square Garden in New York.

Barring any changes, ESPN boss Jimmy Pitaro told me he expects to keep the Inside the NBA “band” together next season. While the show will air on ESPN, TNT will retain 100% editorial control, and the cast will remain TNT employees. The last block fell into place when Front Office Sports broke the news that O’Neal was signing a contract extension worth more than $15 million a year.

The Diesel went on a pregame screed to remind loyal viewers—and ESPN—what to expect when the wild and woolly Inside the NBA moves to Disney’s airwaves this fall. 

Said O’Neal: “Whatever network we go to, we’re bringing the pain. Just letting you know, right now. I know everybody’s sad. Aw, it’s not going to be the show. The show is still here, baby. You can never kill the four horsemen. We coming. We coming to take spots. We coming to kick ass. We coming to take names. And we’re doing it our way.”

“Sliding Doors Moments” are seemingly small moments that irrevocably change a life—or a relationship—forever. 

Inspired by the eponymous 1998 film, the Gottman Institute defines them as “words or gestures communicated to others that—despite seeming inconsequential—deeply affect the most important relationships in our lives.”

In sports media, a Sliding Doors Moment could be a public comment that landed like a lead balloon, a strategic decision that backfired, or a key phone call not made. One of those came three and a half years ago.

Since the Knicks beat the Pacers on Thursday night in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference finals, TNT Sports will get at least one more NBA telecast before its 36-year run with the league ends.

It’s hard to imagine the NBA without TNT, and vice versa. In honor of the network’s extraordinary hoops coverage, we’ll begin with Part 1 of our series on Sliding Doors Moments in sports media. Namely, Warner Bros. Discovery boss David Zaslav’s November 2022 declaration that WBD didn’t “have to have the NBA.”

That moment during a New York investor conference quickly took on a life of its own. Maybe Zaslav was trying to play hardball with NBA commissioner Adam Silver as the league engaged TNT and ESPN in high-stakes negotiations for its billion-dollar media rights. Maybe the tough-talking CEO was just trying to impress Wall Street. It didn’t matter. 

Whatever his motive, Zaslav’s comment went viral. Right or wrong, he put TNT management behind the proverbial eight ball as they fought to retain NBA media rights against deep-pocketed bidders ESPN, NBC Sports, and Amazon Prime Video. Internally, his comments infuriated the cast of TNT’s iconic Inside the NBA. 

Superstar Charles Barkley said the comments only served to “piss off” Silver—and that the corporate “clowns” he worked for had “screwed up” NBA negotiations.

“The first thing is they came out and said, ‘We didn’t need the NBA.’ So, I think that probably pissed Adam [Silver] off,” Barkley told Dan Patrick. “I don’t know that. But when we merged, that’s the first thing our boss said, ‘We don’t need the NBA.’ Well, he don’t need it. But me, Kenny, Shaq, Ernie, and the rest of the people who work there, we need it. It just sucks right now.”

At the same time, WBD’s measured approach contrasted with that of fellow incumbent ESPN, which hotly pursued them as “existential rights.” During the two media companies’ exclusive negotiating period with the league, ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro all but wrapped up an extension. WBD failed to do the same, meaning NBC and Prime could get their noses under the tent. “It was a top priority for us, and for our business, to get this done, and get it done quickly, assuming again we could acquire the items that were most important to us,” said Pitaro.

Zaslav tried to backtrack. By May 2024, he took a much different tone at another investor conference, declaring: “We love the NBA.” 

To their credit, WBD and TNT fought to keep their NBA relationship alive, with the parent company taking the almost-unheard-of step of suing the league. In the end, the two sides settled an acrimonious suit after four months. 

WBD/TNT kept the rights to Inside the NBA, and wound up licensing the show to ESPN for a package of Big 12 football and basketball games. WBD also ended up with an 11-year agreement for an all-international package of more than 100 NBA regular-season game telecasts in Northern Europe and Latin America, as well as a reimagined NBA Digital partnership among the league, TNT, and its Bleacher Report and House of Highlights brands. So WBD remains in business with the NBA. The league will move forward this fall with its 11-year, $77 billion media-rights deals that splits U.S. game rights between ESPN, NBC, and Prime. 

Meanwhile, the ripples from the NBA’s new rights deals continue to spread across the industry. Both NBC and Prime have gone on multimillion-dollar hiring sprees for hoops TV talent, ranging from Michael Jordan and Carmelo Anthony at NBC to Taylor Rooks, Blake Griffin, and Dirk Nowitzki at Prime. In the latest development, ESPN’s rising star sideline reporter Ashley ShahAhmadi could draw offers from The Association’s new media partners.

The Inside the NBA crew members are saying goodbye to their longtime TV home at TNT. As they gird themselves for an uncertain future, all the cast can think about is what might have been. As host Ernie Johnson said, “We have never taken for granted what we get to do here. It’s special.”

Coming up: ESPN and MLB break up after 30 years. If you have your own Sliding Door Moments, message senior media reporter Mike McCarthy at michael@frontofficesports.com.

The CW president Brad Schwartz describes the network’s strategy of adding increasing blocks of live sports rights as “compounded interest.” 

The Nexstar-owned broadcast network had never aired live sports nationally prior to early 2023, when it added LIV Golf (which has since migrated to Fox Sports). Now it’s accumulated rights for ACC football and basketball, the remnants of Pac-12 football with Oregon State and Washington State, WWE’s NXT, NASCAR, Michael Johnson’s Grand Slam Track, and AVP Beach Volleyball. The CW and the PBA recently reached an agreement for live bowling, and the network also aired the Arizona Bowl the past two years. 

Mike Perman, who joined the network as SVP of sports earlier this year, told Front Office Sports that they are eyeing additional bowl games. “Based on the success of the bowl season last year and the Arizona Bowl, we’re taking a look to add to those to potentially add to our college landscape,” Perman said. 

The CW still being in territorial expansion mode says something about how the strategy has been working in the past two-plus years.  

“There’s excitement that it’s all working the way that we thought it would,” Schwartz told FOS. “We assumed when we started doing it that our local stations would absolutely love getting live sports, which you don’t DVR. We assumed that adding sports would bring new people to the network, and lead into whatever comes after it—shows that maybe you’d [otherwise] DVR.” 

Some statistics include:

• 40 million people have watched sports on The CW, up from zero. 
• 14 straight NASCAR Xfinity Series races have averaged more than 1 million viewers. 
• Q1 of NXT this year was the highest-rated quarter for the program in five years.
• The network has had five consecutive quarters of year-over-year growth.

Schwartz attributed this “compounded interest” as a means for creating a “flywheel” as the various properties would feed off one another. “That’s kind of what sports does,” he said. “Our affiliates and local stations are thrilled—especially when they get events that are in their local markets. Nobody has mass reach better than broadcast networks. Nobody has mass reach better than sports. You put the two together, and it’s the best combo.” 

The CW has been savvy in adding programming like NASCAR and WWE that have portable audiences, who will find it wherever it airs. On NXT, Schwartz recently went viral for calling WWE’s developmental show a “game changer” for the network. Asked by FOS about how much pickup that quote got, Schwartz said, “The CW doesn’t have a consistent track record of beating other broadcast networks, but here we are on Tuesdays competing with these guys in the 18–49 and 25–54 demos. It elevates the entire network.”