Before I say anything else, I want to commend TNT for its pioneering as an NBA broadcast leader.

I consider Ernie Johnson, who has hosted Inside the NBA for over three decades, to be synonymous with NBA basketball. At this point, I’d say the same about Charles Barkley’s and Kenny Smith’s prominence, too. The league would not be where it is today without TNT’s tremendous commitment to its production.

But one thing was made clear watching the insulting disaster that was TNT’s final All-Star Game presentation on Sunday.

The NBA needs champions of its product who celebrate and take the modern game seriously. As influential and important as TNT was to league history, it has unequivocally outlived its usefulness and viability for today’s day and age.

Don’t believe me?

Just listen to Draymond Green, one of the more vocal faces of this era of NBA basketball. He’s the poster boy of the next generation of broadcasters who will supposedly inject much-needed thoughtfulness into their work. But every time TNT has given Green airtime, he hasn’t hesitated to trash the league’s ideas without a second thought:

Draymond on the new format: “Sucks. This ain’t basketball.”

Don’t disagree but imagine the league is super psyched that he’s on TNT halfway through the night actively trashing the product

— Jawn Gonzalez (@johngonzalez.bsky.social) February 16, 2025 at 7:15 PM

In fairness to Green, who remains an active player, he’s probably still learning the nuances of broadcasting. However, if we put two and two together, it’s evident to me that his rage-bait approach is partly taking cues from the Inside the NBA guys. This sentiment especially applies to Barkley and Shaquille O’Neal — two legends who have leaned more and more into making everything about themselves, mean-spirited jokes, and half-hearted analysis of the NBA’s current landscape in recent years than I can ever remember.

Watching Sunday’s All-Star Game — which doesn’t have to be a serious competition but should definitely act as a celebration of the NBA — had so many perfect examples that there were almost too many to count.

For one, the likely next face of the NBA, Victor Wembanyama, did something cool in the early proceedings. It would’ve behooved everyone involved in TNT’s broadcast to be in lockstep about how essential it was to sell how uniquely gifted Wembanyama was at just 21 years old any time he flashed on the court in his first-ever All-Star appearance. Instead, O’Neal leaned into a tired joke about how Bol Bol — a similarly super lanky big man and the current eighth person in the Phoenix Suns’ rotation — is comparable to Wembanyama, a truly generational talent.

O’Neal wouldn’t let it go. Man, c’mon. What?

The other huge portion of TNT’s last All-Star Game mess that stuck out to me was how nothing seemed to prioritize the basketball players on the floor. This, after all the incessant hand-wringing about the importance of competition.

The noted adult man who calls himself “Mr. Beast” dangled $100,000 in front of a young fan by asking him to beat Damian Lillard, one of the greatest 3-point shooters of all time, in a 3-point contest. Comedian Kevin Hart, who NBA leaders notably still think is relevant and funny in 2025 (this says a lot), obnoxiously inserted himself into every part of the evening while making tasteless jokes. O’Neal and some of the other TNT analysts were even given extra access to the PA microphone, which they used to troll the All-Stars in front of fans.

Don’t get me started on that egregious break in the middle of the final game in the All-Star Game mini-tournament used to honor the foundation of the TNT crew … which isn’t even going away! TNT is literally producing the SAME SHOW with the SAME PANEL for ESPN/ABC starting next season.

What are we doing here, dearest readers?!

This mindlessness demonstrates the core problem that TNT has created with its NBA broadcasts at the end of an era. It’s a similar issue ESPN has fostered for its own NBA telecasts. This All-Star Game was not an isolated incident with one meaningless exhibition. It was par for the course. As good as the in-game broadcasts can still be — for me, there is nothing like listening to an epic fourth-quarter call from Kevin Harlan or Mike Breen — the networks’ respective goals are focused on everything but promoting the current NBA.

For both TNT and ESPN, the networks have made a conscious decision to champion their analysts and in-house content more than the league they are inherently responsible for as stewards. It’s more about what people like O’Neal and Barkley say first and foremost. It doesn’t matter if their commentary is coherent or sensible so long as it’s controversial, memeable to fans on social media, and increases engagement with their platforms.

It’s not about the basketball for them. It hasn’t been for a while.

I won’t say this disconnect is why many sports fans have apparently turned on the current NBA. This is a complex problem with so many different root causes. It’s not black and white. I don’t want to be reductive.

But if we go by an old show business rule, people want a reason to like things first. They want to be entertained. They want to be told that what they’re spending their valuable time on is worth watching. They’re tuning in for a good time. Everything else is superfluous. Contrary to Kevin Durant’s assertion, people’s first instinct about something they choose to watch generally isn’t to complain at all.

So, is it that hard to believe that a lot of fans believe the NBA’s product is on a precipitous decline when they only hear constant negativity on the league’s most visible television platforms?

I know we can’t readily rid ourselves of ESPN’s NBA clutches (or, technically, TNT’s with Inside the NBA still around for the foreseeable future). Still, this is what makes me (perhaps delusionally) optimistic about what NBC and Amazon will bring to the table as newcomers in the coming years. No one’s asking for toxic positivity. Let’s make that clear. As much as folks want to be entertained, they don’t want smoke blown up their you-know-what, either.

But there’s a significant difference between objectively analyzing the greatest free-flowing sport ever while adding color instead of taking every opportunity to disparage it and talk about how uninteresting it is. Here’s hoping NBC and Amazon understand this dynamic and treat the modern NBA with the dignity and care it so desperately needs and deserves.

Because in one of its final major NBA gasps on Sunday, TNT gave the league and everyone who still loves it one instructive slap in the face.