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If this were a normal NBA summer, last night’s Summer League finale before a sparse dispassionate crowd at Las Vegas’ Thomas and Mack Center would have been the last gasp of daily news and action we’d expect for roughly two months, when training camps tend to open. The game last night was surprisingly exciting, as BLEACHER REPORT’s Andrew Peters reported this morning:
NBA Summer League in Las Vegas has come to an end and the Miami Heat are champions.
The Heat Summer League squad went a perfect 6-0 over the past few weeks, besting the Golden State Warriors in the semifinal and the Memphis Grizzlies in the championship on Monday, 120-118.
The final game of Summer League gave fans plenty of action, going down to the wire with Grizzlies guard GG Jackson draining a game-tying shot in the final seconds to send the matchup to overtime. In overtime, the two teams traded baskets before Pelle Larsson hit the shot to give Miami the win.
But this is no normal NBA summer. For one thing, the best of the NBA are descending upon Paris for the Olympic tournament that gets under way on Saturday. The U.S. contingent is already making fans sweat, with Lebron James needing to put the team on his back with late-game heroics to salvage tuneup wins with South Sudan and Germany by a sum total of five points. The relief from the nervous American contingent has rewarded him with being one of the country’s two flag bearers for the opening ceremnonies, the first basketball player given such an honor. As if he needed the publicity.
And as for the league itseff, well, here we are, at yet another crossroads, with the league unable to completely announce with absolute certainty who their media partners will be. While NBC is indeed returning for the first time since the Jordan era and ESPN has secured the primary package which includes the NBA Finals through the mid-2030s, the remaining games are still under contention. As the ever-aware Andrew Marchand of THE ATHLETIC reported yesterday:
TNT Sports has informed the NBA it plans to use its matching rights to continue broadcasting the league games. The network is targeting the 11-year package signed by Amazon Prime Video, sources briefed on the move said.
While TNT has the contractual right to match an offer, per its current contract, the NBA is expected to decline the network’s right to take the agreed-upon Amazon package, sources briefed on the NBA’s plans said. The league’s preference is to honor the $1.8 billion per year contract it agreed to with Amazon.
The schism is expected to lead to more discussions with the cloud of a legal fight hanging over the future of the broadcast and streaming deals.
And given the relatively desperate situation David Zaslav finds himself in as he slowly but surely burns Warner Brothers Discovery to the ground, the fsct that the NBA, starting with commissioner Adam Silver, who has apparently never forgiven him for his offhand “we don’t need the NBA” comment when negotations commenced. seems to want no part of them, certainly in contrast with what Amazon brings to the table, it’s been almost an ievitability we’re at this impasse.
The spin from Zaslav’s minions, as Marchand reported, was pure legalese and drenched with the same attitude that started this animosity:
“We’re proud of how we have delivered for basketball fans by providing best-in-class coverage throughout our four-decade partnership with the NBA,” TNT said in a statement. “In an effort to continue our long-standing partnership, during both exclusive and non-exclusive negotiation periods, we acted in good faith to present strong bids that were fair to both parties. Regrettably, the league notified us of its intention to accept other offers for the games in our current rights package, leaving us to proceed under the matching rights provision, which is an integral part of our current agreement and the rights we have paid for under it.
“We have reviewed the offers and matched one of them. This will allow fans to keep enjoying our unparalleled coverage, including the best live game productions in the industry and our iconic studio shows and talent, while building on our proven 40-year commitment for many more years. Our matching paperwork was submitted to the league today. We look forward to the NBA executing our new contract.”
But while TNT believes it presents a compelling argument to fight, the details that Marchand and others revealed is that they may not be fighting for exactly what they lost:
While the exact matching language of the deals is not fully known, the package that Amazon has won is not exactly the same as TNT Sports’ current arrangement. For example, TNT’s present contract calls for the conference finals every year as compared to every other. The NBA and Amazon may have agreed to other rights that TNT cannot deliver.
And while structurally MAX could offer the theoretical global streaming reach upside that Amazon has the NBA all hot and bothered about, Prime Video has a much larger subscriber base and, even more significantly, exponentially more ad-capable ones, a fact that resonates strongly with the league’s other sponsors and favored nationas advertisers.
Which is why the likes of PUCK’s Matthew Belloni are even more dismissive of this being little more thn a grandstanding play than they typically tend to be when backroom negotiations are in play. As he wrote in his newsletter last night:
I still think this is ultimately resolved by NBA commissioner Adam Silver slipping David Zaslav some cash from his $76 billion overall haul to go away—and to politely pass next time Jim Dolan invites him to a Knicks game. Then Zaz can claim at least a small financial victory while pointing to the amazing tennis and Mountain West college football games still left on Turner nets. Litigation would be a horrible look here, and costly, and a signal to other leagues—like, say, the UFC, whose rights are up next—that Warner Discovery has entered its desperate “final throes” stage.
And given how cavalier and transactional Zaslav has been in almost every phase of his reign as our beloved Yosemite Zas, for as skeptical as I often about Belloni’s purview in this case I net out thinking he’s spot on. And thanks to NBC and ESPN Silver and the NBA have more than enough cache to throw money at this problem.
But I don’t think there’s a snowball’s chance in H-E-double toothpicks that Dana White will even take a WBD offer seriously for a nanosecond. If you think Silver is a stern negotiator with a long memory, you should check out some of White’s history in those endeavors. Corporate cousin WWE is already ensconched with Netflix, and for as much as MAX pales in comparison to Amazon, it stacks up far weaker compared to Netflix. So I won’t give Belloni any leeway to even speculate about his filling any void with something of that magnitude.
But after how South Sudan performed last week, those NBA Africa rights might be something that can be extracted as part of a settlement.
Stick that in your holster, Yosemite.