TNT have officially lost the broadcast rights to the NBA, after the league announced it would be taking up a media rights deal with Amazon instead and Stephen A. Smith says the network completely and utterly dropped the ball.
He also backed Charles Barkley in saying that Warner Bros. Discovery’s CEO David Zaslav and other execs are largely to blame for the loss of the NBA on TNT.
“TNT dropped the ball here,” Smith said on his latest podcast episode. “I’m talking about the brass at TNT. It started years ago when they alluded to how unimportant the NBA was to the brand itself and the resistance that they gave in reaching a new deal.
“As a matter of fact, according to my sources, Adam Silver, the commissioner, talked to the honchos at Warner Bros. Discovery before a deal was agreed upon weeks ago. Basically letting them know, ‘Hey, you need to match, here’s where we are.’ And there was a bunch of hemming and hawing.”
Zaslav suggested how unimportant the NBA was to the TNT brand less than two years ago, “We don’t have to have the NBA,” he said.
Many NBA fans are now up in arms about the loss of iconic show Inside the NBA and Zaslav will quickly learn how important the segment really was.
“I don’t know where that network goes from here,” Smith said. “I mean, how many episodes of Law & Order can you air…How many old movies can you air? It’s going to be really interesting to see what they’re going to do beyond next season because there’s no way they’re winning this lawsuit. I can’t see it. I can see a settlement happening…I can’t see them winning this and forcing the NBA to make them a part of this package…The last days of the NBA on TNT is arriving next season.”
TNT aren’t going to go down without a fight though, and have threatened legal action against the NBA as the network claim they did match Amazon’s rights.