Saturday night in San Antonio<\/a> with the Knicks one win away from their first NBA title since 1973. Johnson will present the Lawrence O\u2019Brien trophy at the end of the finals. If the Spurs stave off elimination, Johnson presenting the trophy to the Knicks at home after a Game 6 win on Tuesday could surpass the bedlam from the comeback.<\/p>\n\u201cThe transition has been seamless, and it\u2019s been a wonderful year together. Having Ernie, Chuck, Shaq and Kenny anchor our NBA Finals coverage, in tandem with our outstanding game broadcast team, has elevated our entire presentation,\u201d said Burke Magnus, ESPN\u2019s president of content.<\/p>\n
\u201cInside the NBA\u201d has a 90-minute pregame show, with the first hour on ESPN before shifting over to ABC. The postgame show begins on ESPN as soon as ABC’s coverage ends and goes at least an hour.<\/p>\n
Mike Breen, who is calling his record 21st finals, has enjoyed having \u201cInside the NBA\u201d serve as a lead-in to coverage.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re must-see TV even after all these years. They have so much fun, and because of their status in the league, what they say really matters,\u201d Breen said. \u201cAnd then you have somebody like Ernie Johnson who runs the whole thing. I don\u2019t know if there\u2019s another person in our industry I respect more.\u201d<\/p>\n
Same show, different network<\/p>\n
Because TNT didn\u2019t have the NBA Finals, \u201cInside the NBA\u201d\u2018s season would end at the conference finals. Johnson said it felt different when he arrived at the arena in San Antonio before Game 1 on June 3.<\/p>\n
\u201cI haven\u2019t felt like that on a game day in a long time. I was excited to be there and heading to the arena. I left earlier than planned because I didn\u2019t want to sit around anymore,\u201d he said. \u201cDoing that in San Antonio and then going to New York to be in the middle of that scene was so cool. I think we are trying to make our show match the energy in the building. And I think we did that.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody\u2019s swinging by and shaking hands and patting us on the back. It\u2019s surreal. We\u2019re honored to be part of this. And it\u2019s just been an amazing series.\u201d<\/p>\n
What also makes it special is that this is also the first NBA Finals for most of the show\u2019s production crew, many of whom have been with \u201cInside the NBA\u201d since the start.<\/p>\n
Even though \u201cInside the NBA\u201d airs on ESPN and ABC, TNT Sports still produces the show from Atlanta. It\u2019s still irreverent at times and isn\u2019t afraid to pull punches \u2014 as evidenced by Barkley\u2019s criticism of the Spurs after Game 4, where he called them \u201cthe dumbest basketball team in the history of civilization.\u201d<\/p>\n
Barkley added, \u201cWhen you blow a 29-point lead, the other team has to help you. The San Antonio Spurs helped the New York Knicks win this game by doing some of the stupid-ass stuff I\u2019ve seen on a basketball court.\u201d<\/p>\n
For those who worried that the show wouldn\u2019t be the same on ESPN, those fears have gone out the window throughout the season. ESPN even bought into some of the show\u2019s humor by doing an ad with Johnson singing a song by DMX.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was never a \u2018Hey, you guys can\u2019t do that anymore.\u2019 It was just \u2018No, do your thing.\u2019 And we\u2019ve had the freedom to do that,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cThe great thing is we have access to all these ESPN resources with pregame pieces and reporters. It’s been a great deal for everybody involved.\u201d<\/p>\n
Successful finals for ABC<\/p>\n
Wednesday night\u2019s comeback averaged 20.9 million viewers and peaked at 23.2 million for the conclusion. According to Nielsen, it was the most-viewed Game 4 since ABC started showing the finals in 2003.<\/p>\n
The series is averaging 19.6 million viewers, a 116% jump from last year\u2019s matchup between the Oklahoma City Thunder and Indiana Pacers. It is on pace to be the most-watched series since 1998, when the Chicago Bulls defeated the Utah Jazz in six games.<\/p>\n
The Game 3 pregame averaged 9.9 million viewers, a record <\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP NBA: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/nba<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ernie Johnson has seen many iconic moments in 34 years as host of \u201cInside the NBA.\u201d However, nothing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":733070,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,177701,134,31647,2656,1628,85],"class_list":["post-733069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-e","tag-entertainment","tag-nba-basketball","tag-nba-finals","tag-s","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=733069"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733069\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/733070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=733069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=733069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=733069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}