Appearing at Front Office Sports’ Tuned In summit this week, both ESPN president of content Burke Magnus and NBCUniversal chairman Mark Lazarus indicated they’d love to have the opportunity to lure TNT analyst Charles Barkley to their respective networks, according to Dennis Young of Front Office Sports.
Magnus said that in “a perfect world,” he’d hire Barkley to anchor ESPN’s NBA studio coverage, while Lazarus said if Barkley were available, “certainly we’d be talking to him.” Disney (ESPN/ABC) and NBCUniversal are two of the three broadcasters – along with Amazon – who reached 11-year rights agreements with the NBA earlier this year.
TNT Sports announced last month that Barkley, who signed a 10-year contract in 2022, will remain at the network, which appears likely to lose its NBA broadcast rights beginning in 2025/26. TNT attempted to exercise its matching rights on Amazon’s bid, but was rejected by the league, which has argued that TNT’s offer didn’t match the terms of Amazon’s. The matter is the subject of an ongoing legal battle.
Here are more odds and ends from around the basketball world:
- Which of the future first-round picks that have been traded are the most and least valuable? Sam Quinn of CBS Sports tries his hand at ranking those assets, listing 68 first-round picks and swaps from the least valuable (the Jazz‘s right to swap 2026 first-round picks with the Timberwolves) to the most valuable (the Bucks’ unprotected 2029 first-round pick, controlled by the Trail Blazers).
- The rise of veteran contract extensions in recent years means NBA teams can no longer bet on free agency as a reliable path to significantly upgrade their rosters, says Bryan Toporek of Forbes. That may change in future years, Toporek writes, but for now this year’s Sixers (who signed Paul George, Caleb Martin, and Andre Drummond using cap room) look like an outlier rather than a blueprint to follow.
- In an article for DraftKings.com, Grant Afseth takes a look at the stars who have the best odds to win the NBA’s Most Valuable Player award in 2025, including the favorites (Nikola Jokic and Luka Doncic), the second tier of top contenders (Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Joel Embiid, and Giannis Antetokounmpo), and longer shots like Anthony Edwards, Jayson Tatum, Jalen Brunson, and Victor Wembanyama.
With the new more restrictive tax aprons, you’re going to see teams re-signing their guys early more and more, while Superstar FA or S&T will drop off. It’s too bad, as FA opening day was a lot of fun for years.
Makes drafting the right players even more important. Of course, there’s always trades.
Just seems teams are more stingy with 1st round draft picks so it’s harder to complete trades without them.
That’s why we’re seeing all these loads of second round picks added and trades with no picks at all.
Tell that to the Knicks
With the number one pick of the 2025 draft, the trailblazer select Cooper Flagg!