(left),
Reggie Miller (middle) and
Marv Albert (right) calling an NBA game for
TNT Sports in 2008.
TNT aired NBA games from 1989 to 2025. As one of the major sports leagues in North America, the
National Basketball Association has a long history of partnership with
television networks in the
United States. The league signed a contract with
DuMont in its
8th season (1953–54), marking the first year the NBA had a national television broadcaster. Similar to
NFL, the lack of
television stations led to
NBC taking over the rights beginning the
very next season until April 7, 1962—NBC's first tenure with the NBA. After the deal expired,
Sports Network Incorporated (later known as the Hughes Television Network) signed up for two-year coverage in the
1962–63 and
1963–64 season.
ABC then gained the NBA in
1964, airing its first NBA game on January 3, 1965. Up until the
1970–71 season, ABC often aired NBA games as segments of its popular''
ABC's Wide World of Sports'' anthology series rather than standalone broadcasts.
CBS took over national rights from ABC in
1973. The late 1970s and early 1980s was notoriously known as the "tape delay playoff era". Ratings sagged in the late 1970s with a series of fairly undistinguished championship teams from relatively small markets, widespread public perceptions of drug usage among players, and a relative lack of marquee players. Even a merger with the
American Basketball Association in 1976, bringing several standout players including
Julius Erving into the league, did not reverse the ratings slide. CBS, not wishing to preempt higher-rated regular programming for the relatively low-rated pro basketball, elected to show several playoff games each season
tape-delayed into late-night time slots. This situation started to improve with the arrival of
Earvin "Magic" Johnson and
Larry Bird for the
1979-80 season, but both the 1980 and 1981 NBA Finals (which were won by teams led by first Magic, and then Bird) had games air late at night on tape delay, most infamous with the 1980 Finals' Game 6, where Magic (tasked to play center after an injury to
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) had 42 points in a title-clinching win that wasn't aired live outside of Philadelphia or Los Angeles. Beginning with the
1982 NBA Finals, the schedule was shifted to avoid the May
television sweeps period, and tape-delayed games were no longer an issue. The NBA entered the
cable territory in 1979 when
USA Network signed a three-year $1.5 million deal and extended for two years until the
1983–84 season,
ESPN also had a brief affair with the NBA from
1982 to
1984.
Turner Sports then replaced ESPN and USA Network as national cable partners under a four-year deal beginning with the
1984-85 season, in which
TBS shared the NBA television package along with CBS. In the summer of 1987, Turner signed a new joint broadcast contract between TBS and
TNT to split broadcast NBA games starting from the
1988-89 season. TNT held rights to broadcast the
NBA draft, most NBA regular season and
playoff games, while
TBS only aired single games or
doubleheaders once a week. In
1990, NBC took over the broadcast rights from CBS. During NBC's partnership with the NBA in the 1990s, the league rose to unprecedented popularity, with
ratings surpassing the days of Johnson and Bird in the mid-1980s. Upon expiration of the contracts in
2002, the NBA signed a six-year, $2.4 billion ($400 million/year) deal with
Disney-owned
ABC and
ESPN. ABC took over the package from NBC, and ESPN took over part of the cable rights from TBS. NBC had made a four-year $1.3 billion ($330 million/year) offer in the spring of 2002 to renew its rights, but the NBA passed and opted for ABC/ESPN's higher bid. Turner was able to keep a package for TNT. And while TBS would initially discontinue game coverage altogether, it would serve as TNT's overflow feed during the playoffs while also
simulcasting games like the
2015,
2016, and
2017 NBA All-Star Game. The combined total of ABC, ESPN, and TNT's 2002 agreements became $4.6 billion ($766 million/year). Partially due to the retirement of
Michael Jordan after the
2002–03 season, the league suffered a
ratings decline. The NBA extended its national television package on June 27, 2007, worth eight-year $7.4 billion ($930 million/year) through the
2015–16 season, - the second most expensive media rights in the world after
NFL and on a par with
Premier League in annual rights fee from
2016–17 to 2018–19 season. On July 24, 2024, the NBA announced new 11-year agreements with ABC/ESPN, NBC/
Peacock, and
Amazon Prime Video that will last from the 2025–26 to 2035–36 seasons. The new agreements ended a near 36-year domestic broadcast run with
TNT Sports; parent company
Warner Bros. Discovery and the NBA would later agree to a legal settlement, which included live game rights for select international territories and sublicensing its pregame, halftime, and postgame show
Inside the NBA to ESPN and ABC. ==Regular season==