Charles Barkley Gives Honest Reaction To Reports Of ‘Inside The NBA’ Coming To End

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It appears that ‘Inside The NBA’ as we know it is coming to an end.

On Wednesday afternoon the Sports Business Journal reported that NBC and the NBA were finalizing a contract that would leave Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent company of TNT, out from hosting NBA games.

According to SBJ, things could get ugly if Warner Bros. Discovery sues the NBA in an attempt to match the NBC deal with their “matching rights.”

Via Sports Business Journal

The NBA is formalizing written contracts with Disney, NBC and Amazon this week, with sources calling it the final stage of media rights negotiations that may inevitably lead incumbent Warner Bros. Discovery to take legal action.

Considering WBD is $40B in debt and does not have the over-the-air infrastructure of NBC, sources believe WBD would need to pay more than $2.6B to match the deal and that NBC’s overall bid could be structured in a way (for example, multiple weekly over-the-air games) that makes it virtually impossible for WBD to equal. Sources said Zaslav would then essentially have three choices: pass on the NBA, drastically overpay for the “B” package or take the NBA to court over the definition of a match.

Charles Barkley appeared on Sirius XM to talk about the news and he believes that ‘Inside The NBA’ will likely end if Warner Bros. loses the NBA rights deal to NBC.

“It sucks right now for the people I work with…I’m worried about the people I work with…I love doing nothing but I feel really bad, we’re probably going to lose 200 people at Turner if we lose the NBA rights”

“I know Ernie (Johnson) will not go anywhere, Ernie is almost 70 years old. I think he’s going to retire sooner than later, I don’t think he would go to another network, and I don’t know what’s going to happen with Amazon, ESPN or if we lose it to NBC…I just don’t know.”

Things don’t sound too promising for ‘Inside The NBA’ right now.