A love letter to 'Inside the NBA', Hip-Hop's favorite sports show

We may be nearing the end of basketball's most legendary studio show, Inside the NBA — and what a ride it was.

The 2024-2025 NBA season will likely be the last for hosts Ernie Johnson, Charles Barkley, Kenny Smith and Shaquille O'Neal together on TNT, with all signs pointing to NBC replacing Turner Sports as the primary broadcaster league partner starting in the 2025-26 season. Barkley was open The Dan Patrick Show and revealed that “the morale is crap, plain and simple,” when asked what the atmosphere was like on set.

And after the Dallas Mavericks' win last night, knocking off the Minnesota Timberwolves and punching Dallas' ticket to the NBA Finals, Mavs guard Luka Dončić played up the drama — telling the kids to figure something out, which was confirmed by Ernie. they don't know their fate next season.

The winner of 19 Emmys, Inside the NBA They are like family in most basketball-obsessed households. especially for those who came of age in the late 90s and early 00s. This was a time when rap, basketball and sneakers were exploding. We watched and played whenever we could. We read HIT magazine, tried to buy the latest basketball sneakers, listened to rap music and stayed up late on Thursday nights during the NBA season to watch Inside the NBA.

To keep it money, for us basketball is as much a part of hip-hop as rap and graffiti. So when we got a show starring a New York basketball great like Smith and the NBA and a sneaker legend like Barkley, we had to tune in. a generation that grew up buying his rap albums and Reeboks, watching his movies and playing Shak Fu on the Sega Genesis. Inside the NBA it's so hip-hop, its hosts have been known to drop a few flows. Kenny Smith did a freestyle on BET's Rap City back in 2001.

And Shaq recently appeared on a Rick Ross and Meek Mill song with Damian Lillard and had arguably the best verse in the entire song.

I also have to acknowledge the music selection of the show. They always seemed to be using rap music, new and old. I remember hearing A Tribe Called Quest's “Electric Relaxation” during breaks — and there's that mix of rap songs that Street Cred EJ knew.

Shaq, Kenny, and Chuck are from the hip-hop generation and helped make the culture mainstream. Even Kenny was sometimes impressed and surprised by a producer's musical choices. When they first played Kendrick's recent Drake tracks, he said they shouldn't pick sides, they should play Drake's songs too. They may be older, but the three former players have hit it off. They took what the late, great Stuart Scott did at ESPN in the early 90s and perfected it, continuing his legacy of bringing hip-hop culture into households across the Country.

During these playoffs. The producers have gone into their bag playing the hits. “Like That” and “Not Like Us” were TNT favorites during the Kendrick and Drake beef. They also played the instrumental “No Vaseline” – an absolutely insane thing to hear during a national sports broadcast. And just last night they played Don Toliver's “Attitude” with Cash Cobain and Uncle Charlie Wilson dimly in the background. It doesn't get more reliable than that.

A friend and I had a routine in the early 2000s. We were fresh out of high school and worked the same part-time job while taking classes at local colleges in North Jersey. After getting off work we'd hit a few trees on the way home and tune in later that night to watch the NBA on TNT. We did this every Thursday night during the NBA season. Sometimes we got the 8pm game too. and the 10:30 p.m. game. — but we always made sure to watch Inside the NBA then, even if it meant staying up until 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning.

Now that I'm older, whenever I can stay awake to watch the best sports show on TV, I think back to those days. Date TV is a rarity in the age of streaming, and for 24 years, kids over the Inside the NBA made you regret falling asleep and missing not only the basketball veteran's analysis and arguments with each other, but all the jokes and shenanigans. “Elevator” Ernie Johnson also deserves some love. He brings it all together by controlling the chaos while also letting Kenny, Chuck and Shaq be themselves.

If next season really is their last, they deserve a legitimate farewell tour. Bringing back John Tesh's “Roundball RockIt's not worth losing these four family members. Prime Minister Bob Costas is not walking through that door. The only way NBC can get back into our good graces after forcing Inside the NBA to shut it down early is to bring it back NBA Inside Stuff without making it skinny.

Inside the NBA had one of the longest streaks in sports television history over the past 24 years. I'm looking forward to one last NBA season with my kids. Now that I think about it, ending things at 25 sounds about right.

Now I leave you with some Yo Momma jokes from the crew.