Rumors began to circulate on Wednesday that the NBA and TNT Sports have opened settlement talks in an attempt to resolve the lawsuit Warner Bros. Discovery filed against the NBA earlier this year, according to Michael McCarthy and A.J. Perez of Front Office Sports.
“I know [both sides] want to solve this,” one source told Front Office Sports.
“It has to be soon,” another source said. “They don’t want to let it drag on.”
Warner Bros. Discovery, TNT’s parent company, sued the NBA after the league refused to recognize its matching rights and argued that TNT’s offer didn’t match the specific terms of the league’s deal with Amazon Prime. A settlement has always been considered the most likely outcome, since neither the NBA nor TNT is believed to be seeking a lengthy trial process that results in confidential details becoming public.
As McCarthy and Perez note, settlements are typically financial, but it’s not out of the question that the league could award TNT a smaller broadcast rights package after leaving the network out of its latest round of media rights deals with Disney, NBC, and Amazon.
We have more odds and ends from around the basketball world:
- Diamond Sports Group, the parent company of the FanDuel Sports Network (formerly Bally Sports), will emerge from bankruptcy following a federal judge’s ruling on Thursday, according to Evan Drellich of The Athletic. Viewers will have the option of subscribing on a season-long, monthly, or per-game basis to their local Diamond Sports network to watch NBA broadcasts, per The Associated Press. Diamond, which broadcasts games for 13 NBA teams, will also offer subscriptions through Amazon Prime Video, though the exact details of that arrangement have yet to be announced, Drellich adds.
- Phil Handy, a veteran NBA assistant coach who won titles with the Lakers, Raptors, and Cavaliers, will be the head coach of a team in Unrivaled, the new 3-on-3 professional women’s basketball league debuting in January, says Marc J. Spears of Andscape. Handy became a coaching free agent in the spring when the Lakers fired all of their assistants after letting go of head coach Darvin Ham. Handy is one of six Unrivaled head coaches announced on Friday by the league (Twitter link).
- In the wake of rumors that Anadolu Efes wing Stanley Johnson is exploring other professional options, the former NBA lottery pick stated on Twitter that he’s “very happy” with Efes and doesn’t plan on leaving the Istanbul-based club anytime soon. Johnson has had a very modest role in EuroLeague competition so far, averaging just 2.4 points and 1.9 rebounds in 10.3 minutes per game across seven outings.
- John Hollinger of The Athletic takes a closer look at 10 relatively unheralded role players who have gotten off to strong starts this season, including Hawks guard Dyson Daniels, Grizzlies big man Jay Huff, and Cavaliers guard Ty Jerome, among others.
Why talking of settlement from the nba if you’ve done nothing wrong? I still feel this is about muting those you can’t control. If someone on ESPN talks about fouls, free throw discrepancy etc they just disappear. Chuck, kenny, Earnie and shaq can say whatever they want and Silver couldn’t do squat about it, until now. I hope Turner stick to their guns. Sounds like a very expensive cancel culture experiment to me.
I agree with everything you’re saying except for the last sentence. Literally nothing to do with “cancel culture” and I have no idea why you shoehorned that in at the end.
Oh please, the TNT guys never said anything damaging about the NBA and they were in as much control as espn and others. But if you want to fool yourself go ahead.
You seem really confused. The lawsuit is about broadcast rights. What does that have to with anything the TNT broadcasters said, or didn’t say? Obviously, TNT does not believe that the NBA negotiated in good faith. Settlement talks are about avoiding a trial which costs a lot more. Where does cancel culture come into this? You are really confused.
So the league will pay a settlement or create a fourth television package? Seems like it’s a good value to keep TNT around especially if it gives the league more audience and brings in revenue instead of having to pay to end the relationship.
This dispute is over whether the NBA complied with the RFR rights provisions in its contract with TNT. It has absolutely nothing to do with the content or quality of TNT’s broadcasts. The timeline here suggests TNT never really wanted to continue broadcasting the NBA on the 2024 economics, but is looking to leverage the contract provision for a monetary settlement, which they’ll like get.