ernie johnson
TNT
One of the biggest NBA stories of the year had nothing to do with the sport of basketball itself, but the broadcast coverage of it: specifically, the future of Inside the NBA.
Last year, the NBA signed new broadcasting deals with three outlets, none of which were Warner Bros. Discovery, who own TNT. Beginning next season, the NBA will be aired on ESPN/ABC, NBC, and Prime Video, leaving TNT out in the cold.
As a result, the future of Inside the NBA was up in the air for a while until a deal was struck to broadcast the iconic NBA pre-and-post-game show — hosted by Ernie Johnson, Shaquille O’Neal, Kenny Smith, and Charles Barkley — on ESPN.
On Tuesday night, with TNT’s coverage of the NBA winding to a close as the Eastern Conference Finals will be the last series it broadcasts, Inside the NBA shared a heartwarming video of its patriarch Ernie Johnson letting the crew know that the beloved series had been saved.
“Hey one more thing, real quick before everybody bounces. There’s been a lot of questions, a lot of wondering by everybody in the building about what was going on, where this show was going to go,” Johnson told the crew.
“So, just to see that was announced the other day, that it’s going to be different because it’s here and it’s showing somewhere else (ESPN), but it’s here. And you all deserve that. And we’ve been through a bunch of nights and for a lot of us, no matter what you do, there’s been anxiety, and there’s been, ‘Hey, what’s going on with this uncertainty and this cloud?’ Let’s enjoy this, alright? They can’t get rid of us.”
"They can't get rid of us."
Our first moment together after we found out Inside the NBA will live on pic.twitter.com/nmn1iS3x59
— NBA on TNT (@NBAonTNT) May 28, 2025