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Gina Mizell: Nick Nurse’s pregame availability is delayed because the team bus he is on is caught in San Francisco (and Super Bowl week) traffic. There were no players/staff on the court when I arrived at the arena, which is unheard of. Stars, they’re just like us!
With nine MLB teams still likely poised to abandon Main Street Sports Group, three sources said Friday their exit could create financial flexibility for Main Street to avoid immediate liquidation and pay NBA and NHL teams reduced rights fees the remainder of this season. “What is bad from MLB might be good for us,” said an NBA and NHL team source asking for anonymity due to the sensitivity around the topic, which has many industry stakeholders on edge.
Because Main Street would then cease to exist after April, those NBA and NHL teams would still need to find local broadcast solutions for at least next season -- a one-year bridge scenario until, in the NBA’s case, it is expected to launch a national streaming RSN for the 2027-28 season.
Tom Friend of Sports Business Journal reported Wednesday that “multiple” NBA, NHL and Major League Baseball franchises are in “emergency talks” with Victory+ ahead of the potential shuttering of Main Street Sports Group, operator of the FanDuel Sports Network RSNs. Per previous reporting, Main Street has until the end of this month to line up a buyer before the nine MLB franchises with which it is partnered — all of whom opted out of their deals earlier this month — leave for good.
Fullcourtpass: They asked Nick Gallo why he didn’t join the altercation at the end of the Pelicans and Thunder game ?? (h/t @MrBuckBuckNBA)
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Chloe Peterson: PER RELEASE: Caitlin Clark will join NBC Sports as a special contributor for the newly-launched Basketball Night in America on Feb. 1, preceding the Lakers-Knicks game at Madison Square Garden. It will be CC’s first time in an analyst-type role on TV.
In recent weeks, rumors have flown around the newsroom about the size of the cuts and when they would be implemented, but the conversation reached a fever pitch late last week, aided by unverified reports about section-wide eliminations. The Post has largely remained silent, leaving staff to read the tea leaves in conversations between individual editors and reporters: Some editors have quietly been suggesting to staff across various verticals, including sports, that it may not be a bad idea to begin looking for other jobs, Semafor has learned, and one Post source said editors would not answer questions about whether there would be a sports section after the cuts at all. One person familiar with the planned cuts, however, cautioned Semafor against taking the public reporting over the weekend at face value, noting it has been largely based on newsroom rumors, not confirmed facts.
According to former NBA All-Star guard Gilbert Arenas, this was not always the case, as press people during the 80s and 90s did not engage in negative talk about players or speak ill of them. Arenas cited Michael Jordan‘s performance in the Barcelona Olympics as an example. “There was no negativity in the early 80s, 90s. The game was glorified and pushed positive. They didn’t bash Magic/Bird/Kareem for losing in finals…. Imagine USA ’92 team today, and looking at Michael Jordan box scores are talked about today from how he performed. In ’92, nobody knows MJ was struggling in Olympics and shooting that bad against guys who were wearing AAU uniforms… We didn’t hear struggling,”
But I decided to ask Bryant for a one-on-one interview. I had nothing to lose, except getting laughed out of the gym, fired and missing an upcoming girls basketball tournament, during which I’d have to cover a mind-numbing 10 straight games. It was a risk I was happy to take. In those days, Lakers players walked past reporters to get to the training room. So, I shot my shot. As Bryant walked by, I introduced myself and asked if he’d be willing to answer a question or two. He obliged. Over the next year, I regularly attended practices and games. Bryant couldn’t have been kinder to me. He’d allow me to pull him off to the side and point a camera in his face. Whatever he said went viral.
CJ Fogler: Glen Taylor owns the Star-Tribune and just made $1.1 billion selling the Timberwolves but the paper refuses to regularly fund his own beat writer's travel to cover that team. He also recently shut down the strib's printing plant, it's now printed in Iowa. Funny how quote tweets are disabled for this
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Dave McMenamin: ESPN sources: @Tim MacMahon will be on the sidelines tonight for Lakers-Mavericks on ABC in his home city of Dallas, with the winter storm going through the country affecting travel for our broadcast crews. Howdy, partner
Sports Media Watch: In window that was supposed to feature Warriors-Timberwolves: "Inside the NBA" postgame show from 5:30-6 PM ET, then ABC News from 6-8 PM ET. "Inside the NBA" will resume at 8 PM, as was originally scheduled, leading into Lakers-Mavericks.
Moving from cable to broadcast, the NBA’s Martin Luther King Day games saw an expected lift over last year. Monday’s Mavericks-Knicks and Thunder-Cavaliers NBA regular season games averaged 2.2 and 1.8 million viewers respectively on NBC across Nielsen and Adobe Analytics — up from a Nielsen-only 1.3 million and 671,000 for last year’s equivalent TNT windows (Celtics-Warriors and Timberwolves-Grizzlies). The games delivered the league’s two largest afternoon audiences on Martin Luther King Day since 1992.
As is usually the case in the current era of measurement, the numbers come with some caveats. To begin with, TNT delivered larger audiences for its primetime MLK Day games — including as much as 4.7 million for Cavaliers-Warriors in 2017. The NBA stopped scheduling primetime TNT games on MLK Day in 2022, when the NFL began playing playoff games on the holiday, but prior to that point they were a regular occurrence. In addition, NBC differs from the other networks in using a separate company (Adobe Analytics) to measure its streaming viewership.