Posted in: Max, NBA, Opinion, Sports, TNT, TV, TV | Tagged: David Zaslav, nbc, opinion, tnt, warner bros discovery

NBA, WBD Still In Talks: Will Barkley Like What Zaslav Had to Say?

Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav offered an update on the NBA talks and WBD's sports. Will Charles Barkley like what he's hearing?

Speaking with Dan Patrick on Patrick's show last week, NBC Legend & TNT's Inside The NBA co-host Charles Barkley didn't hold back when it came to sharing his thoughts on how things are going with Warner Bros. Discovery (TNT's boss) and the NBA. Reports are that WBD is inching ever so closer to losing its NBA broadcasting rights for the 2025-2026 season – with NBC, ESPN, and Amazon seen to be the major players now. But WBD CEO David Zaslav won't just be losing the NBA games – he will also be saying goodbye to one of the best coverage shows in all of professional sports – TNT's Inside The NBA with Barkley, Ernie Johnson, Shaquille O'Neal, and Kenny Smith.

Referring to the company's top leaders as "fools" and the "clowns we work for," Barkley shared that things aren't going well behind the scenes with the folks who put the show together. "Morale sucks — plain and simple. I just feel so bad for the people I work with, Dan. These people have families, and I just really feel bad for them right now," he revealed. Adding fuel to Barkley's ire was the report that TNT Sports is licensing some College Football Playoff games from Disney's ESPN. Wondering why that money wasn't used toward securing a new NBA deal, Barkley added that he believed WBD was already preparing to lose the NBA and was looking to shore up its other sports programming. "I don't feel good, I'm not going to lie, especially when they came out yesterday and said we bought college football. I was like, 'Well damn, they could've used that money to buy the NBA,'" he explained.

With that in mind, we're curious to see what Barkley will have to say after the latest update from Zaslav from earlier today during Bernstein's Strategic Decisions Conference. "I was just down in Atlanta. We've got a great team down there, and we love our experience with the NBA," Zaslav shared, noting that the company is continuing talks with the professional basketball league. But Zaslav also wanted to make it clear that WBD's "robust" sports offerings extend beyond the NBA.

"In general, we're a leader in sports around the world. We have the Olympics in Europe … a full buffet of content around the world. We have football in a number of markets in Europe and Latin America. This is what we do for a living. We're in the business of sport, and in sport, deals come up, and you look at those deals, and you make a decision about the overall quality of the full menu of content you have for each of your platforms," Zaslav added – and for TNT, that means looking at NHL, NASCAR, and college football rights.

"When you put that together with March Madness and baseball playoffs and the U.S. soccer that we have, it's a very robust offering for consumers that they can watch on TNT in the U.S. all year round. That is our job, to continue to look at how do we continue to nourish an audience that loves sports on TNT," the WBD CEO continued. That's what we've been doing. We've been very strategic about adding sport to TNT over the last several years, and we feel very good about where we are."

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