• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, April 22, 2025

TNT is saying good-bye to the NBA in about six weeks, but its centerpiece NBA show lives on.

That’s good news for fans of “Inside the NBA,” a staple of NBA games on TNT since the network first obtained the rights to NBA games in 1989 -- 36 years.

Ernie Johnson, 68, has been the host since 1990. His current lineup of NBA star analysts has been together since 2011, the year Shaquille O’Neal joined the show. 

The longest-running member of the show, other than Johnson, is Kenny Smith, who joined the show in 1998. Charles Barkley came on board in 2000.

Their banter and humor are what drives the show, which is seen before, during and after TNT telecasts of NBA games.

With only a relative handful of exceptions, true chemistry among participants on TV talk shows has long proven elusive. “Inside the NBA” is one of those exceptions.

It is hard to believe that after these NBA Playoffs, no NBA games -- either regular- or post-season -- will be seen again on TNT, a network brand known for little else. 

TNT has the post-season rights through the end of the Eastern Conference Finals. Its last NBA game could be June 2, but only if the series goes for seven games. As always, the NBA Finals air solely on ABC.

TNT parent Warner Bros. Discovery somehow failed to renew its rights deal with the NBA after this season.

Instead, a new round of 11-year rights agreements announced last July left WBD out in the cold as Disney, NBCUniversal and Amazon all won rights packages.

Out of that scrum came an unusual arrangement. While TNT is out of the NBA picture, “Inside the NBA” is not. TNT Sports will continue to produce the show, but it will air on ABC and ESPN.

How will the world of NBA television change when TNT is out of the picture? That is hard to say, but I have always felt that the TNT games have always been the best-produced.

More often than not, it comes down to the broadcast team. For years, NBA games on ESPN were watchable, but increasingly unlistenable.

This is because of a tendency that has crept into all coverage of live sports on TV, but especially on ESPN.

And that is the running-at-the-mouth of the broadcast teams -- both play-by-play and commentator -- in which the action on the court is virtually ignored as they discuss minutiae about the lives of the players and the strategies of the coaches that are meaningless and beside the point.

As a viewer, I want to engage with the game, and to the extent it is possible, feel like I am there in the arena. 

When the broadcasters pontificate, they show no excitement for the game at all, as if they too are watching from their homes and not from courtside.

I suspect that no matter who has the rights to the NBA, this situation is only going to get worse.