TNT remains interested in extending its broadcast contract with the NBA. The current deal expires after the 24-25 season with Warner Bros Discovery paying $1.2 billion per season.

“We have been able to strike profitable [sports rights] deals and we’re always going to be disciplined,” said WBD chief financial officer Gunnar Wiedenfels. “It’s very easy to lose control over sports rights investments. That’s not what we do. We’re going — we know exactly what value we assign and we stay disciplined during our discussions.

“On the NBA specifically, we’ve had a very, very strong partnership for 40 years, and I certainly hope that we’re going to be able to continue that in the most positive way.”

TNT and ESPN will soon enter an exclusive 45-day negotiating window with the NBA.

There are concerns from sports leagues that a joint streaming service announced this week by ESPN, Warner Bros. Discovery and Fox Corp. could eventually bid for live-game rights as a combined entity and therefore reduce the total media rights fees paid out.

Leagues typically are able to negotiate a higher fee when there are multiple partners. The NFL currently has deals with ESPN, Fox, CBS, NBC and Amazon Prime Video as well as YouTube for Sunday Ticket.

Sources tell FrontOfficeSports that the NBA is likely to double its partners from two to four by extending with ESPN and TNT while adding Amazon and NBC.

“Anything that potentially cuts down on the number of competitors bidding on sports rights is going to be, by definition, a significant concern to sports rights holders. It has to be,” Kosner tells Front Office Sports.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the leagues were "blindsided" by this week's announcement of the joint venture. 

“An effort to notify the leagues wasn’t made until Tuesday, before a planned announcement. Many learned of it when The Wall Street Journal broke the news,” the Journal reported. “The reason for the cone of silence was to keep the plans from leaking prematurely during the months the companies were settling the details, people involved in the partnership said.”

“While we look forward to learning more about this new venture,” an NBA spokeswoman tells FOS, “we’re encouraged by the opportunity to make premier sports content more accessible to fans who are not subscribers to the traditional cable or satellite bundle.”

The NBA instituted a 65-game minimum rule for regular season awards in hopes of incentivizing participation of players in more games, but it is already leading to issues as potentially deserving players such as Joel Embiid and Tyrese Haliburton become ineligible. 

“You’re always gonna have unintended consequences, that’s the first thing,” NBA executive vice president Joe Dumars told Yahoo Sports on Wednesday afternoon. “The second thing, you kind of knew that the first couple of guys that were going to get close to that mark, it will become an issue. So it probably was going to become a talking point at some point.

“It could’ve been a month from now. The number is what the number is. I’m not surprised, [though].”

While the 65-game rule has received criticism, Dumars reiterated that it was collective bargained as part of the NBA's new CBA.

“Lest we forget, this was collectively bargained, players' association, signed off by the owners, signed off by the competition committee,” Dumars said. “And we've updated the numbers. We throw a lot of numbers around, and at the end of the day, everybody landed on 65 and said, 'You know what, that's 20 percent, 20 percent of the season basically. That's fair.' Everybody in the ecosystem signed off on this.”

With the NBA tying awards to player contracts in some instances, some players will become eligible or ineligible for those strictly due to the existence of this rule. A player who would have otherwise been voted onto an All-NBA team will have their spot taken by a player with a lesser season.