As the NBA on TNT prepares for its finale, an appreciation for its legacy and contribution

New York Times

2 days ago

Nostalgia is a mug's game, especially when it comes to the sports media. Sure, we celebrate beloved broadcasters retiring (shoutout, Hubie Brown) and the famed players they highlighted, but those festivities are short. It's onto the next soon enough in our fast-twitch Max — sorry, HBO Max — times. Focus on the past too long, and you'll be working at a Blockbuster.
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But I'm going to miss TNT's coverage of the NBA — and my time to show gratitude has grown short. The last NBA broadcast on TNT could come at any time, including tonight.
My appreciation for TNT's NBA coverage mostly revolves around its signature show, 'Inside The NBA,' and I'll get to that show in a bit. First, I want to note TNT's NBA game coverage, which has consistently been excellent over its 36-year run. TNT made Thursday nights feel big, from how it treated audio to graphics to camera angles.
Its legacy includes four lead voices — Marv Albert, Ian Eagle, Kevin Harlan and Dick Stockton — who all have legitimate credentials to be tagged as the greatest NBA game caller of all time. Among those who worked as analysts: Hubie Brown, Steve Kerr, Mike Fratello. Each of those broadcasters educated you about the game as opposed to screaming it at you. (Think of how good viewers had it with Kerr for the five years he worked at TNT.)
There were the transcendent sideline reporters — Cheryl Miller and the late Craig Sager, to name just two —who elevated broadcasts with observations and reporting. You can't detail TNT's basketball story without mentioning the sartorially famous Sager, who was diagnosed with leukemia in 2014 and returned to the NBA sidelines in 2015 after an 82-day hospital stay. He died at 65 in December 2016.
In all my years writing about sports media, Sager was the only person who regularly fielded questions from me on wardrobe. Even when we spoke during his cancer treatment, I'd ask what he planned on coming up with for couture. The answers ranged from orange-and-white-striped linen coats to ostrich shoes. Sager's sideline interviews, especially with the intentionally grumpy Gregg Popovich, helped make TNT's NBA programming unique.
The needle that TNT's game coverage threaded was that the crew respected the needs of the traditional NBA fan but also made broadcasts comfortable for a casual fan. The later years of the coverage on the game analyst side were more entertainment-based than informative, but the bar remained high overall.
Since this column is offering nostalgia, maybe it's worth providing a short history of how the NBA ended up on TNT:
In 1984, the league signed a two-year, $20 million deal (that is not a misprint) with Turner Broadcasting System for an exclusive national cable television package. The deal consisted of 55 regular season and 20 playoff games on Ted Turner's Atlanta television station WTBS, which at the time was available in 37 percent of homes in the United States and growing quickly.
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The parties signed a two-year contract extension in 1987, granting TBS exclusive national cable rights to NBA games through the 1989-90 season. At the time, TBS held the rights to televise 50 regular-season games, 25 playoff games, various parts of the All-Star Game weekend (the Slam Dunk contest, a Legends game and the 3-point long-distance shootout), as well as the NBA Draft and the NBA awards show.
In July 1989, Ted Turner announced that NBA games would move to his latest cable television venture, Turner Network Television (TNT), which had just topped a subscriber base of 30 million. TNT's programming then was mostly movies from the film library Turner acquired from MGM Studios in 1986. The future for cable television, to paraphrase Tom Petty, was wide open.
'We in cable have the high ground,' Turner told The New York Times on cable's potential for growth. 'You know they're hurting when they start squealing like pigs.'
Of course, in the future, when basketball fans reminisce about the NBA on TNT, what will come first and foremost is the iconic studio show, 'Inside The NBA.' I have written it often but maybe one last time for the road: It is the best studio show in sports television history.
The show has impacted multiple generations of basketball fans and players — and I'd argue that during its run, it has been as significant to the growth of the NBA as much as any member of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
Inside's genius was that it could go anywhere, because it was unrehearsed, unscripted and impactful. They once held a nine-minute discussion (think about that length for a sports studio show) on the nexus of China and the NBA's business interests that was unlike any other sports show that dared address the topic. During that same week, Charles Barkley delivered what made the show a riot. Of then-Hawks rookie small forward Cam Reddish, Barkley said, 'Cam Reddish only had one point. He had one point more than a dead man.'
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One of its most iconic moments came on Jan. 27, 2020, when the show honored the life of Kobe Bryant. But it could be goofy as well, with Kenny Smith's endless racing to the video board and all the Gone Fishin' segments. Yes, it had its 'old men screaming at clouds' segments and Barkley went too far in some instances. But it was so much better than what competitor ESPN had to offer that Disney finally figured out the only way to beat it was to trade for it. 'Inside The NBA' will continue next season, produced for ESPN.
Next up for the NBA is NBC (returning from its heyday of the 1990s with brand-new on-air talent) and Amazon Prime Video. (TNT's parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, did acquire the rights for NBA games outside the U.S., including in Nordic countries and parts of Latin America, so congrats to Finland.)
NBA viewers will adjust quickly. Few under 40 probably know that Fox didn't always air the NFL. Change is constant. Everything ends at some point. So thanks for the memories, TNT. You treated NBA viewers like adults. That's a great epitaph.