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Among professional sports leagues, the NBA seems to have far and away the best PR apparatus. They tend to generate extremely positive headlines — and often those headlines don’t match the actual reality.

This extends beyond the league itself to the entire media world surrounding pro basketball, and yes, I am the one mostly casting doubt on the NBA’s cultural clout. I don’t think LeBron James’ production company, SpringHill, is worth more than $750 million (and if that valuation is propping up his billionaire status . . . well yeah). Not only have sports documentaries and scripted shows flopped but TV shows about basketball, in particular, have a bad track record!

Now we have the new NBA media rights deal and its designed-to-wow $76 billion headline number. Does it live up to the hype? Today I’ll explain why this deal — heralded as a masterstroke for both the league and its partners Disney, Comcast and Amazon — is merely “fine.” There are some huge potential pitfalls that largely have not been covered.

The Wakeup’s Sean McNulty put together a great summary of what the NBA sold. That leaves the fun part for us today: deciding the winners and losers of this new deal.

So let’s explore:

• Comcast and Disney’s deals look very similar, so why is one company a winner and the other a loser?

• How Peacock needs to be taken a lot more seriously with the NBA

• Just how did one of the world’s most valuable companies get the best bargain

• Why the gaudy $76 billion price tag for all rights is not as impressive as it appears

• How piracy could severely diminish the impact of whatever benefits accrue to Amazon, Comcast and Disney

• Why the WNBA and NFL are likely to extract much higher rights fees out of media companies as a result of this NBA deal

• A dealmaker’s defense of Warner Bros. Discovery and its CEO David Zaslav

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