The NBA has been in negotiations with Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery, Amazon and NBC on the next media rights deal, which will begin after the 2024-25 season. NBA commissioner Adam Silver said this month that talks were still ongoing, but multiple reports indicated that Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent company of TNT, may lose its NBA rights for the first time since 1988.

“There has been a lot of hype around our network in the last few months,” Barclay said. “I just want to say: I’ve talked to all the other networks, but I’m not going anywhere other than TNT. But I made the decision for myself: No matter what happens, next year will be my last year on television. I just want to say thank you to my family.” In the NBA, you guys have been great to me. My heart is full of happiness and gratitude but I will be handing over the baton at the end of next year. I hope the NBA will stay with TNT. But for me personally, I wanted you to hear from me.

Barkley, who has hinted at the possibility of retiring for years, made the announcement on an NBA post-game television show following the Dallas Mavericks’ 122-84 victory over the Boston Celtics in Game 4 of the NBA Finals.

“I won’t be doing any more interviews,” he said. “Don’t call me y’all. I’m not talking about this again. I wanted to tell the TNT family and NBA TV that I’m not going to another network. I’m going to pass the baton to Jamal Crawford or Vince Carter or Steve [Smith]”.

TNT Sports He said in a statement Saturday that Barkley “is and always will be a beloved member of the TNT Sports family,” and that the network “looks forward to another great season of NBA on TNT and further discussion of our future plans with him.”

Barkley signed a contract extension with TNT in 2022 that reportedly gave him the opportunity to leave the network if it could not renew its media rights agreement with the NBA. As negotiations over media rights dragged on for months, Barclay repeatedly criticized TNT’s leadership and expressed support for the network’s employees, who remain in limbo.

“I want to say this because you are my family,” Barkley said. “I really love TNT, all the people who work here, and NBA TV. You guys have been great to me for 24 years. I just want to say thank you to my whole NBA family. I love you guys.”

Johnson, 67, who joined Turner Sports in 1989, said last month that he would not leave TNT even if the network lost its NBA rights.

Silver said on June 6 that media rights negotiations were “incredibly complex” and that league staff had “literally been working around the clock” to finalize the new agreements.

“It’s complicated for a number of reasons,” Silver said. “One is the emergence of new platforms, especially streaming, and the interest of streaming companies, and then traditional media companies that also carry our games on streaming platforms. It’s complicated with multiple partners looking for similar assets. In many cases, it’s just discovery The right way to balance those games as they move to different partners and finally, we tend to do long-term deals that we think is good for the stability of the league, but it also means that you are trying to predict the future, which is of course impossible.

The commissioner added that “Inside the NBA” played a “special” role in the league’s community and that he enjoyed a “close relationship with everyone involved in this show.”

“On the one hand, from a league standpoint, it’s great to be loved and wanted and to have many suitors,” Silver said. “At the same time, I feel uncomfortable that it’s zero, and that at the end of the day there’s only so many TV shows, and there’s only so few playoff games and playoff games and regular season games to distribute.

“I’ll say it straight from me, to the people who seem to be affected the most right now, the people at Turner Sports, I apologize that this has been a long process, because I know they’re committed to their jobs. I know people who work in this industry. It’s a big part of their identity and their family’s identity, and no one likes not to This certainty, I believe, is the responsibility of the association’s office to bring these negotiations to their peak and conclude them as quickly as possible.”