The start of the 2025-26 NBA season is closer than you think, with the preseason tipping off in just a few weeks and regular season basketball back in a little more than a month.
The new season will be a fresh start for all 30 teams across the league, but it will also mark a fresh start for the next era of Inside the NBA, which is jumping from TNT to ESPN this year in the wake of the former’s loss of NBA broadcast rights for the coming season.
Plenty of ink has been spilled regarding concerns about the show shifting to a new home. Much of the charm of Inside the NBA comes from the banter between its hosts and a willingness to let things go off the rails. If a riff is going well, the show is fine to run late. That might be a bit different given ESPN's natural desire to steer viewers into SportsCenter at the end of a big game.
But ESPN president of content Burke Magnus is assuring fans that the network is working hard to preserve the delightfully chaotic integrity of the beloved show.
“That is our goal. It will be as close to that as we can possibly get,” Magnus told The Athletic when asked about the show’s ability to run late on ESPN airwaves. “I understand that standard operating procedure for us for many years has been to get to SportsCenter. There’s going to be 200 or 300 (other) nights or so that we’re still going to do that.”
He continued:
“(Fans are) going to get the show they love in a way that’s very similar to the way it’s always been. It’s still produced in Atlanta by the very same people that produced it for Turner. It’s in their building. Other than a logo on the set, it’s going to appear the same, and that’s exactly what we want.”
It’s a reassuring message to fans of the show, but we won’t know for sure how the new era of Inside the NBA looks until we see it. ESPN is set to give viewers an early taste of the new look of the show on the opening day of the season, before a short hiatus take the show into Christmas break.
Whatever the next era of Inside the NBA looks like, we will be watching.
More NBA on Sports Illustrated
This article was originally published on www.si.com as ESPN Exec Makes Plans for 'Inside The NBA' Very Clear Amid Concerns About Runtime.
