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    Warner Bros. Discovery Sues N.B.A. Over TV Rights Deal

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    The company is trying to make the league accept its match of Amazon’s bid to broadcast games starting with the 2025-26 season.Warner Bros. Discovery sued the National Basketball Association on Friday in an attempt to force the league to accept its offer to match Amazon’s bid to broadcast games.On Wednesday, the N.B.A. announced that it had reached media rights agreements with Disney, Comcast and Amazon. The deals are scheduled to take effect in the 2025-26 season and will collectively pay the N.B.A. about $77 billion over the next 11 years. That left Warner Bros. Discovery, a current rights holder, set to lose the league at the end of next season.“Given the N.B.A.’s unjustified rejection of our matching of a third-party offer, we have taken legal action to enforce our rights,” Warner Bros. Discovery said in a statement after the lawsuit was filed in New York State Supreme Court. “We strongly believe this is not just our contractual right, but also in the best interest of fans who want to keep watching our industry-leading N.B.A. content.”Mike Bass, a spokesman for the league, said, “Warner Bros. Discovery’s claims are without merit, and our lawyers will address them.”Amazon entered the negotiations during Warner Bros. Discovery’s exclusive negotiating window at Warner Bros. Discovery’s request, according to two people familiar with the talks. During that period, Warner Bros. Discovery balked at the N.B.A.’s request for last-minute changes to the company’s package, and the exclusive window closed without a deal.Although conversations between the two sides continued, Warner Bros. Discovery, whose TNT network has broadcast N.B.A. games since the 1980s, found itself on the outside as the N.B.A. quickly moved on to other partners. The company’s executives insisted privately that they planned to exercise their matching rights under the current nine-year agreement.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      As N.B.A. TV Deal Nears, Warner Bros. Discovery Is on the Outside

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      The company’s TNT channel and the N.B.A. have long been inextricably linked, but that may end after next season. Plus, Charles Barkley is retiring.Warner Bros. Discovery executives thought they had given the National Basketball Association a proposal it would accept.In April, after months of negotiations, the company made an offer to pay billions of dollars to the league for the rights to continue showing its games on TNT, as well as its Max streaming service. TNT has shown N.B.A. games since the 1980s, and its “Inside the NBA” is widely considered one of the best-ever sports studio shows.But with the end of Warner Bros. Discovery’s exclusive negotiating window looming, the N.B.A. insisted on changing the package of games the company would receive, according to two people familiar with the negotiations, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private dealings. Warner Bros. Discovery balked, and while the two sides have continued negotiating, the company now finds itself on the verge of losing the rights to televise the sport with which it has become inextricably linked. And on Friday night, the beating heart of “Inside the NBA,” the Hall of Famer Charles Barkley, said he would be retiring from TV after next season.“The first thing anybody thinks about when you say TNT is the N.B.A.,” said John Skipper, the former president of ESPN.Media companies, including Warner Bros. Discovery, were prepared for bruising negotiations with the N.B.A. Sports rights remain an extremely valuable commodity for traditional TV networks, and companies increasingly also see them as a way to attract more subscribers to their streaming services.The league made clear it wanted a sizable increase on the roughly $2.66 billion in total it receives annually, on average, from Warner Bros. Discovery and ESPN under its current rights agreements, which went into effect in 2016. Executives at those companies knew if they wanted to retain N.B.A. rights they would have to pay more for fewer games so that the N.B.A. could create a third package of games to sell.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Charles Barkley Has Thoughts on the Future of ‘Inside the NBA’

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      Next season could be the last for TNT’s influential and beloved studio show, and Charles Barkley, for one, will not be going quietly.The future of “Inside the NBA” was already a sensitive topic when Charles Barkley stepped into an elevator in Minneapolis after Game 3 of the Western Conference finals late Friday night. Barkley’s on-air candor as an analyst is a key reason that the studio show has become so influential and beloved among basketball fans and around the league.But these are tense times for the show and those who work on it. Warner Bros. Discovery has not secured the rights to continue broadcasting N.B.A. games on TNT beyond next season. Without those, the long-term future of “Inside the NBA” is uncertain. So when Barkley, who had already batted away several attempts by security and public relations officials to prevent him from doing an interview, ushered me into an elevator filled with his co-workers, not everyone was happy.Kenny Smith, Barkley’s on-screen foil, voiced his irritation. But Barkley, as he has done throughout his decades in the public eye, made clear that he wouldn’t be muzzled.“Hey, man, I can talk to who I want to,” Barkley said to Smith, using an expletive. Others in the elevator shifted uncomfortably.“You should do that out there,” Smith said, suggesting the interview be done outside the elevator.Barkley turned to me: “Don’t worry about him.”“She should clear it through Turner,” Smith said. “She should do it the right way.”Why was it so important for him to talk, I asked Barkley, even if others around him didn’t want him to? He nodded to the impact the uncertainty has on staff members who work on the show. And not just the well-known, on-air personalities: Barkley, Smith, Shaquille O’Neal and the host, Ernie Johnson.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A Quick Remark Becomes a Region’s Rallying Cry

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      Minnesota Timberwolves fans have picked up on a phrase uttered by their star, and are hardly put off by its mild vulgarity.Dearest Times readers:The following article contains a three-letter word beginning with an A that is considered vulgar. We would avoid the term, but it doesn’t seem possible. Profoundest apologies in advance.OK, deep breath:“Bring ya ass.”In the last day or so, basketball fans and the people of the Minneapolis-St. Paul area in general have been saying it. That includes the city’s basketball star, who launched it, the local tourism council, and many fans gleeful about a great victory.It started with the win: In a do-or-die Game 7, the Minnesota Timberwolves rallied from 20 points down to defeat the defending champion Denver Nuggets, 98-90.Afterward, the winning team’s star, Anthony Edwards, was interviewed by the TV commentator and former N.B.A. great Charles Barkley.“I have not been to Minnesota in maybe 20 years,” Barkley said. Edwards interrupted him: “Bring your —” and so on.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      LeBron James and Deni Avdija React to Kyrie Irving Posts

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      “If you are promoting or soliciting or saying harmful things to any community that harm people, then I don’t respect it,” LeBron James said. “I don’t condone it.”The Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James and Deni Avdija, a Washington Wizards forward from Israel, said Friday that they hoped Nets guard Kyrie Irving understood that he had hurt people when he promoted an antisemitic film on social media.Calling Irving a role model and great player who had made a mistake, Avdija said: “I don’t think it’s right to go out in public and publish it and let little kids that follow you see it and the generations to come after to think like that because it’s not true. And I don’t think it’s fair.”On Thursday, the Nets suspended Irving for at least five games, after he would not say that he did not have antisemitic beliefs. It had been a week since he tweeted a link to an antisemitic film and posted a screenshot of its online rental page to Instagram. He apologized late Thursday night, after he was suspended.James, who won an N.B.A. championship with Irving in Cleveland in 2016, said that he loved Irving but that what he had done was “unfortunate.”“I believe what Kyrie did caused some harm to a lot of people,” James said Friday in Los Angeles after the Lakers lost to the Utah Jazz. He added: “If you are promoting or soliciting or saying harmful things to any community that harm people, then I don’t respect it. I don’t condone it.”In 2018, James apologized for posting music lyrics on Instagram that included the phrase “getting that Jewish money.”“I actually thought it was a compliment, and obviously it wasn’t through the lens of a lot of people,” James said at the time.Few current N.B.A. players have spoken about Irving amid the public backlash to his social media posts. The N.B.A. said it had 120 international players at the start of the season last month, but Avdija was the only one from Israel. His comments about Irving came after the Nets beat the Wizards in Washington in the Nets’ first game since Irving’s suspension.“I think there need to be consequences for the actions that players do,” Avdija said. “I don’t know the amount, the punishment that the league gives, but I think it needs to be known that there’s no room for words like that.”Irving did not add captions or comments to his social media posts about the antisemitic 2018 film, “Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America.” But over the past week, he has been vague when asked what he did and did not agree with in the film. He has distanced himself from its claim that the Holocaust did not happen. On Wednesday, he announced with the Anti-Defamation League that he would donate $500,000 to anti-hate causes. The Nets said they would do the same.But Irving did not apologize at that time, drawing criticism from Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the N.B.A. Hall of Famer who is known for his social justice work.“There was no explicit apology — which tells us everything about what he really believes,” Abdul-Jabbar said in a post on Substack. “Honestly, there’s little hope that he will change because he’s insulated by fame and money and surrounded by yes-people. There is no motivation to learn how to distinguish propaganda from facts. All that’s left is for the world to decide how it should respond to him.”Abdul-Jabbar also praised three former players who criticized Irving during a TNT broadcast of the Nets’ game against the Chicago Bulls on Tuesday: Charles Barkley, Shaquille O’Neal and Reggie Miller.Avdija said he hoped Irving was sorry. “He needs to understand that he gives example to people, and people look up to him,” he said. More

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      Hey, LIV Golf. Charles Barkley Is Waiting for Your Call.

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      The TNT basketball analyst has been a loud supporter of the Saudi-backed golf series. On Thursday, he gave Greg Norman, LIV’s chief executive, 24 hours to offer him a job.BEDMINSTER, N.J. — Charles Barkley has a question for people wondering why anyone would associate with the Saudi-backed LIV Golf tour: Why aren’t they outraged by all the other American companies doing business with the same controversial wealth management fund, which is overseen by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia?“You can’t pick and choose who you want to be mad at,” Barkley said Thursday, noting some of the companies the fund has invested in. “They should be mad at Berkshire Hathaway, Tesla, Bank of America, Disney. But they’re not. They are just mad at these golfers.”At least, that is Barkley’s view and the view pushed by many people working with the new breakaway tour that is causing so much upheaval in golf, sports and U.S.-Saudi relations. For some, the tour is a livelier cash cow offering huge guaranteed sums to entice golfers away from the established PGA Tour. For others, it is a cynical attempt by the Saudi prince to use sports as a way to sanitize his government’s poor global record on human-rights abuses.Barkley, never one to hide from controversy, was right in the middle of it all on Thursday, along with the former President and tournament host, Donald J. Trump.On a steamy day at the Trump National Golf Club Bedminster, which is hosting the third LIV Golf event starting Friday, Barkley sweated through questions about his potential involvement with the tour and then sweated through 18 holes in the pro-am tournament.For now, Barkley, a former basketball star and widely popular hoops commentator on the TNT sports network, is only a guest of the tournament. He has had informal talks with Greg Norman, the chief executive of the LIV series, about joining as a commentator. But he said no official offer has been made, and he imposed a Friday deadline on the tour to do so.“When I wake up in the morning, if they haven’t said anything, I’m going to say, ‘Guys, I’ll play in your pro-am whenever you want me to, if I’m available. But I’m going to go back to my job.’ I love my job and I don’t think it’s fair for them to keep holding on.”The tour has already lured David Feherty, the former NBC golf analyst, to join its livestream. It does not even have a television contract yet. But Barkley, who has earned broad appeal with his rollicking, unedited, comedic approach to basketball analysis but has also been criticized for sexist jokes about women, would be an enormous boon for the fledgling golf tour.He has three years remaining on his contract with TNT, he said, and it would take an enormous amount of money for him to defect.“I’m probably going to lose all my sponsors and everything, so they would have to make it worth my while,” he said. “But if they don’t, I’m still going to support these guys.”A Quick Guide to the LIV Golf SeriesCard 1 of 6A new series. More