“It was the missing piece for us.”
With that one sentence, ESPN president of content Burke Magnus summed up why the most famous four letters in sports media wanted Inside the NBA for decades—and how the iconic studio show has pushed ESPN’s 2026 NBA Finals coverage to a whole new level.
For more than 20 years, ESPN’s NBA Countdown tried and failed to compete against TNT Sports’s irreverent program. ESPN experimented with a revolving-door cast that included everyone from Bill Simmons to Magic Johnson. But nothing worked.
If you can’t beat them, join them.
When Warner Bros. Discovery’s TNT Sports lost its NBA media rights in 2024, Inside the NBA’s future was uncertain. Then, ESPN swooped in with an offer for TNT: What if we trade a package of Big 12 college football and basketball games for licensing rights to the legendary show? TNT agreed. Just like that, the competing networks pulled off the biggest media trade since Disney sent announcer Al Michaels to NBC for the intellectual property rights to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit in 2006.
