Inside the NBA is one of the most beloved shows on television.
The sports studio show — featuring Ernie Johnson, Charles Barkley, Shaquille O’Neal, and Kenny Smith — has won nineteen Sports Emmy Awards and become the gold standard to which all other shows aspire to.
The TNT behemoth, which debuted in 1989 as a simple analysis program, has evolved down the years to become an entertainment extravaganza.
It’s a mix of highlights, skits, interviews and hijinks, notable for its verbal sparring sessions between Shaq and Sir Charles.
The analysts, who regularly weigh in on topical — and often controversial — issues, are also unafraid to roast active players, from Shaqtin’ a Fool Hall of Famer JaVale McGee to Anthony ‘Street Clothes’ Davis.
For FS1’s Jason McIntyre, the crew often go too far in their ribbing of stars, which he says has a damaging effect on the league and contributes to declining viewership figures.
“I’m a big NBA guy. This take probably won’t be very popular, but I would argue that Inside the NBA, the show that everybody loves, has done more damage to the NBA in the last decade than anything,” McIntyre said on ‘The Herd’ ahead of the NBA Cup Final.
“Forget about this ‘woke’ and left and right, but Inside the NBA goes on every week and just trashes players, trashes the style of play.
“You look at any other show, MLB Network, NFL Network, these shows, our network, we’re positive, we talk about the game. Inside the NBA, they just hammer the players.
“Charles Barkley’s on TV, the Rockets are in the Final Four for the NBA Cup, [it’s] ‘oh the Rockets don’t know how to play basketball, they stink, they don’t know what they’re doing.’
“What are you doing? You’re damaging your product on a nightly basis, hammering it.”
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McIntyre’s comments did the rounds on NBA Twitter social media, and were widely panned by fans who remarked that Inside the NBA is one of the few good things left about the league.
“Most of the time Inside the NBA is better than the games,” one fan responded.
“Dead wrong… they make it entertaining by speaking the truth even if it’s right or wrong. Better than watching the games sometimes.” said another.
“Jason McIntyre just did damage to his own career with that take,” joked a third.
“The NBA has done more damage to the NBA than anything else,” a fourth wrote.
“If it wasn’t for Inside The NBA, the NBA would be a pick up league by now, what is this nerd talking about?” a fifth added.
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Viewership for the entire NBA is down around 48% since 2012 while NBA games on ESPN are down 28% from last season.
Virtually ever other pro American sports league, including the NFL, MLB, and WNBA, are setting ratings records while the NBA struggles for eyeballs.
Few people, other than McIntyre, it seems, think Inside the NBA is responsible for that downwards spiral.
There are all sorts of reasons for the slide, including an overall lack of defense, slew of meaningless regular season games, and a tendency for superstars to ‘load manage’.
The prevalence of the 3-point shot (which seems to alienate basketball purists), has also contributed to a league-wide apathy, with the ‘you shoot, we shoot’ philosophy wearing thin amongst fans.
Just this week, the Dallas Mavericks and Golden State Warriors set an NBA record by combining for 48 made 3-pointers, evidence, some fans suggested, that the league was becoming ‘unwatchable’.
Even Shaq recently said he thinks 3-pointers have made the NBA boring.
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The Inside the NBA crew may be critical of the league’s product, but they’re only mirroring what the majority of fans think, providing a refreshingly honest — and accurate — assessment on the current state of The Association.
Fans respect their honesty and the numbers prove it.
In a world where TV viewership is waning, Inside the NBA’s popularity has never been stronger.
The TNT YouTube channel has 2 million subscribers, with recent clips featuring the crew’s reaction to NBA Cup games regularly eclipsing 300,000 views.
When the future of the show was cast into major doubt amid the NBA’s 11-year, $77 billion agreements with ESPN, NBC and Amazon Prime Video that left TNT Sports on the outside looking in, fans vehemently campaigned for the show to remain in tact.
Their protestations didn’t go unnoticed, with Warner Bros. Discovery — TNT’s parent company — and Disney eventually reaching an agreement to license the basketball show to Disney for broadcast on ESPN and ABC.
The deal means the popular quartet will all remain on our screens, much to the joy of fans, with Inside The NBA airing on ESPN and ABC from next season and beyond — news McIntyre presumably isn’t over the moon about.