A Roundball Rock Return!

The NBA could be headed back to NBC

Thanks for reading The Dope. Your support makes us go. This post is free for anyone to read, and a version of it appeared this week at Barrett Sports Media.

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Is NBC getting played, or is the NBA actually considering a seismic shift?

As always, the money will answer.

As first reported by the Wall Street Journal, executives at NBC Sports have prepared a massive broadcasting rights offer to the NBA in hopes of shoving out longtime hoops home Turner Sports and regaining some of that pro hoops glory. (Yes, TNT is the home of the most popular and successful studio show in the known sports universe, Inside the NBA. We’ll get back to that.)

NBC’s reported bid of $2.5 billion per year more than doubles what TNT is paying the league under its current deal. That isn’t an offer, it’s a shark attack. And it shifts the attention to Turner’s parent company Warner Bros. Discovery, to see how close it’ll come to matching.

Prediction: Not that close, since Warner CEO David Zaslav was quoted in 2022 as saying, “We don’t need the NBA,” and has been on a cost-cutting jag across the company’s various entertainment divisions for years.

Okay. But where does that leave the rest of us?

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First: It doesn’t really matter. We talk all the time about game productions and play-by-play kings and top analysts, but the reality is that every major player in the sports media world has a roster of talent capable of being adapted to fit a need – in this case, the NBA on NBC.

As it happens, as noted by Front Office Sports, NBC already has Mike Tirico and Noah Eagle under contract. Both have extensive hoops broadcasting experience, including the NBA, and Tirico is the voice of the network’s most significant sports ventures, period.

Beyond them, I wouldn’t waste a moment wondering whether NBC would commit two and a half billion dollars a year to the NBA and then fail to assemble a rock-solid game-day crew, from production through to talent. That isn’t going to happen.

If the Comcast-owned company wins the NBA bid, you will see a thoroughly finished NBA product. Maybe – over time – that product would include some of the voices you now associate with the Turner crew, people like Kevin Harlan, Brian Anderson and Ian Eagle. Top talent usually finds its proper home.

And you might even get tonal flashback. John Tesh, composer of the famed NBC intro song “Roundball Rock,” says if the network gives him and his lawyer a call and makes a nifty little offer, he’ll license the rights for NBC to once again use the iconic theme.

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It certainly matters less than it ever did where we happen to go to consume our sports content. We’re more nimble as viewers than we used to be – not necessarily by choice, but by adaptation.

If the league powers suddenly moved the NFL off of, say, FOX Sports, I’d be a little baffled as to why, but I’d have no trouble locating the games wherever they did land. I can use a remote. Same with the NBA and Turner/TNT, despite their long history together.

NBC has plenty of its own history with the NBA, having held broadcasting rights from 1990 to 2002. (The great John Tesh years.) The network also remembers how to sweeten the deal: In addition to wanting regular season and playoff games, its bid includes plans to broadcast in prime time twice a week. You can do that when you still own a network.

Warner Bros. Discovery has the contractual right to match any third-party bid, but that may not matter. The company also had an exclusive negotiating window in which to strike a new deal with the NBA, but that window closed last week without a contract.

And, really, what we’re talking about is simply a rich redistribution of the NBA’s assets – the same thing that is happening all across the sports media landscape. The NBC deal, if it happens, will include streaming rights through NBCUniversal’s Peacock app, which adds to the NBA’s exposure through ESPN/ABC and the league’s likely newest streaming partner, Amazon Prime.

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For all these reasons, it’s easy to take NBC’s interest in the NBA seriously, and to understand why the league would in turn negotiate in good faith. If Warner Bros. Discovery doesn’t have the stomach for such a huge uptick in its rights fees, NBC and its related apps make for a soft landing and a prime-time destination.

Again – back to us. The truth is, a move like this would leave most of us wondering only one thing: What happens to Inside the NBA.

Bad news there: The reality is, by contract, that show belongs to Turner, not anybody else. If Charles, Shaq, Ernie and Kenny wanted to take their show on the road, they’d have to have some serious lawyering done. And Turner has other sports properties, like the NCAA tournament, the NHL and NASCAR, to which I suppose it could more or less reasonably assign the fellas.

Chuck on NASCAR? It could work. First, though, we’ll have to see if the money talks – and what it says.