ESPN’s Burke Magnus wants more ‘Inside the NBA’ episodes early in the season

For the first time ever, Inside the NBA will be the studio programming surrounding the NBA Finals. The beloved show made the transition from TNT to ESPN this season as part of a licensing deal struck between the two networks following TNT’s failure to renew NBA rights during the league’s latest set of broadcast agreements.

So far, the arrangement has gone swimmingly. There might be the odd complaint about the show occasionally running a bit shorter than it used to on TNT, or needing to sometimes switch channels from ABC to ESPN after a game. But the show itself is largely unchanged. It’s still produced by TNT. Ernie Johnson, Charles Barkley, Shaquille O’Neal, and Kenny Smith are still the stars. And it’s just as unfiltered as ever before.

That’s exactly what ESPN content president Burke Magnus envisioned when the deal was struck in late 2024. Appearing on a recent episode of The Varsity podcast with Puck’s John Ourand, Magnus expressed his pleasure with how the Inside the NBA deal has gone so far.

“It has worked wonderfully. The production crew at Turner and the talent have all been fantastic to work with. All we did was put the ESPN logo on the desk and let those guys do their thing,” Magnus said.

His only complaint? The schedule.

Inside the NBA intentionally back-loaded its schedule to ramp up heavily post-Christmas, but was rather thin in the first couple months of the NBA season. Magnus would like to see a more even spread going forward.

“If I could change something, it’s really unrelated to how the show appears onscreen. I would like to spread the shows over more of the regular season,” Magnus offered. “It’s quite back-loaded at this point—we didn’t really get going until Christmas Day.”

Inside aired just four episodes prior to Christmas this season. But with the licensing deal between ESPN and TNT only accounting for 20 shows during the regular season, it’s difficult to choose where and when to place them. Most would agree, it is better to have the Inside guys available late in the year, when the games take on greater importance. But it did feel like the show’s ESPN era got off to a slow start this season given the limited appearances.

Expect that to change come next season, with the show spreading itself out more evenly throughout ESPN’s regular-season coverage.