The Best TV Show in Sports Is Switching Networks. Can ESPN Avoid Messing It Up?

Wall Street Journal

2 days ago

On Thursday night, the Oklahoma City Thunder will host the Indiana Pacers in Game 1 in one of the more unexpected NBA Finals showdowns in memory.
Like a lot of basketball viewers, I'm asking one question:
What's going to happen with Chuck, Kenny, Shaq and Ernie?
All right, so that's not the drama of these heartland finals. The outcome of OKC vs. Indy depends on stars Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Tyrese Haliburton, among others.
But the move involving Charles Barkley, Kenny Smith, Shaquille O'Neal and Ernie Johnson's chatty hoops salon, 'Inside the NBA,' is a comparable intrigue.
Next season, 'Inside' slides over to ESPN after a legendary, decadeslong run on Turner.
It's happening because Turner parent Warner Bros. Discovery didn't come to terms on a new deal with the league. Starting with the 2025-26 season, the NBA will have three homes, two of them new: NBC, a 90's-era partner which is yanking its John Tesh 'Roundball Rock' theme out of fancy-vested mothballs, and Amazon, which hopes you will buy bath bombs and a meat thermometer as you're watching the Timberwolves.
ESPN/ABC, owned by Disney, remains the Finals-airing anchor of what is (among the three outlets) a combined $77 billion, 11-year rights package. Yowza.
The sports network's acquisition of 'Inside' is an acknowledgment of what everyone knows: ESPN has never made a basketball studio show that comes close to capturing the Zeitgeist…and that's about as nicely as I can put it.
Let me try this. You know the old joke about asking your parents for McDonald's in the car, how they would say 'No—we have McDonald's at home' and yet, despite their earnest, best efforts, there was no way they could replicate McDonald's at home? (It was an Eddie Murphy bit; later, an entire internet meme.)
That's what most of ESPN's in-game basketball shows have felt like. Competent but bland, acceptable but irrefutably not 'it,' they're McDonald's at home.
Now ESPN has sprung for a brand name. 'Inside' is one of the few studio shows in sports history that doesn't make you want to throw a Chuck Taylor at the screen. (Disclosure: more than a decade ago I worked on a Fox Sports TV sports show, which didn't last long enough for you to find a Chuck Taylor to throw.)
'Inside' stands alone. Loose and fearless, it's a basement poker night with a group of grumpy basketball legends. What its hosts lack in current knowledge or even factual consistency—a running bit is Barkley not being able to name what teams certain NBA players play for—they make up for with TV's most desired quality: chemistry.
If you can't beat 'Inside,' you…license them, apparently. The reported deal is that ESPN will license 'Inside,' which will be made by TNT Sports in its current home in Atlanta, with much of its longtime crew, but air on ESPN.
How the sui generis alchemy of 'Inside' translates into ESPN is unknown. Saturday night, after the Pacers vanquished the Knicks, and the gang signed off from TNT, O'Neal and Smith pledged live on the air that they were not coming 'to [expletive] around.'
Sure, of course. But who knows how it all fits until it happens?
On Turner, 'Inside' was the centerpiece, around which even the game was sometimes a side dish. In Barkley, it has one of the most beloved TV personalities ever, more recognizable and charismatic than 99 percent of the players in the league he covers. O'Neal isn't far behind, and neither is Smith or Johnson.
Giving the panel room to breathe and banter is critical. Former ESPN studio host Bill Simmons underlined this on his Monday podcast: TNT resisted slicing up 'Inside the NBA' with repeated commercials, which allowed the on-air conversation to flow and digress, often in memorable ways. A late night segment of 'Inside' was always a little louche and rambling—the sports equivalent of Dean Martin at a midnight show, tie unbuttoned, cigarette in hand.
The TV business is in the ad business, of course, and the mammoth NBA deal isn't paying for itself. ESPN's current programming is heavily larded with commercial interruptions. But the network surely knows it has to ration the ad load to let 'Inside' be 'Inside.'
Likewise, 'Inside' must be kept weird. That means a certain looseness with the clock, the hosts, the subject matter and even the factual record. It means cutting the same sort of slack ESPN has given to another licensee, Pat McAfee. It means giggling along, as guest host Draymond Green recently did, when Barkley mangled yet another player name (In this case, turning 'OG Anunoby' into a mononym, like Cher.)
It also means riding with the show when it does what few studio shows ever do: criticize the product. Even trash it, if necessary.
'Inside''s most significant contribution may be its eagerness to bite the hand that feeds it, repeatedly, especially if that hand is shooting yet another 3-pointer in what has become a league-changing deluge. Barkley, O'Neal and Smith have proven themselves willing to take on not just individual players, but the entire sport, serving as a three-man, luxury-suite Statler & Waldorf, savaging the decline of post-up moves and defense.
Naturally, this is also the chief complaint about 'Inside'—that it's a cranky, out-of-touch panel, trapped in the era they played and biased against the current game. (Not always wrong!)
The counter? Sometimes you just want to watch someone make fun of the Clippers.
What no one disputes: 'Inside the NBA' is the most watchable basketball show on TV. That's what fans like; that's what they offer; that's why they get the big bucks. I hope ESPN can make it work. I want it to work. It has to work.
Otherwise, it's McDonald's at home.
Write to Jason Gay at [e-mail]