The beloved Inside the NBA finally signed off from TNT this weekend with the Indiana Pacers defeating the New York Knicks in the Eastern Conference Finals in six games. But even though the NBA on TNT as a franchise is saying goodbye, we have known for months that Inside the NBA will have a second life as a licensed show to ESPN. And that is what has Bill Simmons worried.
ESPN has consistently said that they won’t touch or change Inside the NBA and that it will be the exact same show that fans have loved for years. But beyond those declarations, there haven’t been many details at all about what Inside the NBA at ESPN will look like as part of ESPN’s NBA coverage.
We know it will appear for marquee games throughout the regular season and the playoffs. We know the entire cast will be there, even though there’s been some contract uncertainty that has played out (especially when it comes to Charles Barkley). And we know that the program will still originate from Atlanta and be produced by TNT. And we know that it will be unlikely that Stephen A. Smith and Kendrick Perkins join Shaq, Kenny, and Chuck for some weird Jetsons-Flintstones style crossover.
So what could be the problem with those guardrails in place?
The thing that has Bill Simmons concerned is how ESPN programs its NBA studio programming, namely the insane amount of commercials and how little airtime is actually given to the studio show. In his words, Simmons thinks that ESPN could “f*ck the show up.”
“I think ESPN’s gonna fuck the show up…Unless they completely change how they do commercials, the show is gonna be different, people are gonna be pissed and Barkley and those guys are gonna be pissed.”
Bill Simmons on ESPN getting Inside the NBA. pic.twitter.com/RdmNzM3xwa
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) June 1, 2025
“I think ESPN’s gonna f*ck the show up,” Simmons said. “Unless they completely change how they do commercials, the show is gonna be different, people are gonna be pissed and Barkley and those guys are gonna be pissed and I think it’s going to go badly. The only way it doesn’t go badly is if they do the commercials and they give them the lengthy segments that you need to have that show work. They’re going to have to change how they do it. They just paid so much for the NBA that if they don’t do that and they do the same short, terrible segments that you’re about to see in the Finals where it’s like a one and a half minute halftime and it’s like a 20 minute pregame, they do that they’re going to f*ck the show up and everybody’s going to be mad.”
Bill Simmons is 1000% correct. ESPN’s halftime NBA program is completely unwatchable solely due to how it is structured, nevermind who is on set. During Game 1 of last year’s NBA Finals, the five individuals on ESPN’s set got one minute and twenty seconds of airtime. There were so many commercials that the brief few seconds of analysis given was an interruption to the never-ending onslaught of ads. The ESPN studio crew could be conducting nuclear fusion and viewers would think it was a total waste of time.
“Whoever is running ESPN has not cared for this entire century about this. This is something they knew was a problem and they just didn’t care. They just cashed the checks from the commercials. They did not care about the quality of any show they have,” Simmons added.
And Bill Simmons can speak from experience on that front since he was just one of the rotating cast of thousands that have sat on the NBA Countdown set for ESPN before ultimately being replaced for the next thrown together panel. His most famous (or infamous) contribution during his entire run was his complaints about how little time he had to speak.
Whether ESPN has done this over the years because it helps pay the bills or they actually think that bite sized 30 second commentaries is the way to go for their NBA studio show really doesn’t matter at this point. What matters is that when the next contract kicks in for the 2025-2026 season and beyond that they let Inside the NBA be Inside the NBA. If the network tries to fit EJ, Chuck, Kenny, and Shaq into their commercial-driven formula, it won’t work and it will be the biggest waste of money since Ben Simmons’ max contract.
