Stephen A. Smith believes TNT “dropped the ball” in its try to maintain the NBA on its airwaves after its present rights deal expires after this upcoming season.
The NBA introduced on Wednesday that TNT “didn’t match the phrases” of a bid by Amazon to stream the NBA starting with the 2025-26 season and that the Prime Video streaming platform can be one of many league’s new broadcast companions.
Smith took to his eponymous podcast to criticize TNT’s brass for its dealing with of the scenario, which the speaking head defined had been a difficulty courting years again once they expressed that the NBA rights have been “unimportant.”
The ESPN “First Take” persona mentioned he had heard from sources that NBA commissioner Adam Silver had met with the execs from Warner Bros. Discovery — TNT’s mum or dad firm — to precise that they wanted to match one other supply.
“There was a bunch of hemming and hawing,” Smith defined in regards to the response from executives on the community. “See that’s why [Charles] Barkley has been going off, as a result of he knew and nonetheless is aware of it by no means needed to come to this.”
Smith heaped reward on TNT’s studio present “Contained in the NBA,” which has garnered near-universal reward through the years due to its lovable solid of Charles Barkley, Kenny Smith, Shaquille O’Neal and Ernie Johnson.
The sports activities speaking head hoped that one other community would choose up the 4 and produce them over to cowl the NBA, regardless of Barkley asserting his plan to retire after this coming season.
Smith additionally solid some doubt of the way forward for TNT as a complete.
“All I can say is I don’t the place [TNT] goes from right here. I imply what number of episodes off ‘Legislation & Order’ are you able to air?” Smith mentioned. “I’m simply attempting to determine it out, together with a few of your different programming. You want one thing dwell, you want one thing recent. What number of previous films are you able to air? So it’s going to be actual fascinating to see what they do past subsequent season.”
He added: “The final days of TNT, the NBA on TNT, is arriving subsequent season.”
TNT isn’t prone to go down and not using a authorized battle, and a fiery assertion launched Wednesday mentioned the community believed the NBA “grossly misinterpreted our contractual rights with respect to the 2025-26 season and past, and we’ll take applicable motion.”
