Rumors

Former Hawks executive Grant Liffmann is joining the network, sources told Front Office Sports. His job as front office insider will be to analyze roster moves, a critical role as NBA fans obsessively follow transactions and salary-cap minutiae. The 38-year-old Liffmann is returning to NBC after spending the past three seasons with the Hawks as the VP of basketball operations under GM Landry Fields, who was fired in April. Before joining the Hawks front office, Liffmann worked for NBC Sports Bay Area for more than five years as a broadcaster for Warriors games.

Front Office Sports

NBC continues to bolster its NBA talent lineup. Former Hawks executive Grant Liffmann is joining the network, sources told Front Office Sports. His job as front office insider will be to analyze roster moves, a critical role as NBA fans obsessively follow transactions and salary-cap minutiae.

Front Office Sports

Central to that reticence is the league’s new 11-year, $76 billion media rights deal, beginning next season, with new partners NBC, Peacock – NBC’s streaming service – and Amazon Prime, along with existing partners ABC and ESPN. Warner Bros. Discovery, which had broadcast NBA games since 1989, was left out of the new deal. Several owners would, at present, rather begin collecting and splitting the massive new revenues among the existing teams, rather than bringing in new partners that would also receive a cut of the financial pie.

New York Times

Terry Gannon, a former college basketball player who has excelled as an Olympic and golf commentator at NBC, will join the network’s impending NBA coverage as its third play-by-play announcer. A member of N.C. State’s 1983 national championship team, Gannon -- represented by Sandy Montag, CEO of The Montag Group -- returns to the sport that gave him his broadcast start at ESPN when he worked NBA and WNBA telecasts.

Sports Business Journal

“I hated it,” Mark Cuban said of NBA players participating in the Olympics. “I complained about it every single year. Because, in my attitude, guys going to play for the Olympics, Comcast/NBC is making billions. The IOC, making billions. Even FIBA, making a lot. …And we’re giving all these guys for free and taking all the injury risk.”

Awful Announcing

A Chicago-area mansion once owned by all-time NBA great Michael Jordan is now listed on Airbnb, offering high-end travelers the chance to vacation like a six-time champion. Champions Point is a seven-bedroom, 17.5-bath estate on 7.39 acres that can accommodate 12 guests, according to the Airbnb listing and property owner John Cooper.

NBC

The home, in Highland Park, Illinois, has a stunning price tag and requires a minimum seven-night stay. For example, a weeklong respite over Labor Day weekend, checking in on Aug. 29 and out on Sept. 5, would cost $120,920.

NBC

On April 5, hours before the Blue Devils lost in the national semifinals of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament and nearly three months before the NBA draft, that future appeared in flux. All visas held by South Sudanese passport holders were being revoked, the State Department announced. Questions immediately arose about whether Khaman Maluach would be eligible to be selected. But thanks to a little-known division of the NBA few have heard of, he’s set to walk across the Barclays Center stage in Brooklyn, New York, on Wednesday night.

NBC

At each stop, the NBA’s international operations team worked to smooth his travel from one country to the next, just as it does with all of its international players. That work continued this spring after the State Department’s action against South Sudan, as Maluach stayed in the United States to train ahead of the draft. “We’ve been on this journey ... with Khaman since age 14, and we’re going to continue on this journey with him through the rest of his career, and we’ll continue on this journey with him post his career,” Troy Justice, the NBA’s senior vice president and head of international basketball, said. “These are lifelong commitments that we make to all of our international players.”

NBC

As Maluach’s lone season at Duke ended, the NBA began paperwork for him to receive a B-1/B-2 business tourist visa, which is pending, according to the league. Should Maluach be drafted Wednesday or Thursday as expected, the NBA will begin the process of acquiring either a P-1 visa — the typical professional athlete visa for the United States — or the Canadian version if he is drafted by the Toronto Raptors.

NBC

Jovan Buha: First — no, I was not fired by The Athletic. My contract was set to expire in August, and I intentionally structured it that way to become a free agent this summer. It’s a big summer with major movement on the NBA media side, with NBC and Amazon entering the mix. I wanted that freedom and flexibility. Around December or January, I started really thinking about what I wanted next. The more I thought about it, the more I enjoyed speaking into this microphone, doing these episodes, and connecting with you all during these lives. And the less I was enjoying the beat life — the writing. For me, two big things looking ahead were: I wanted to take the next step and level up, and I wanted to travel less and write less. I wanted to focus more on podcasting, TV, and digital multimedia content. That includes continuing Buha’s Block, building out my YouTube channel, and prioritizing content creation over the grind of beat reporting.

YouTube

Jovan Buha: No, I was not fired by the Athletic. My contract was set to expire in August and I intentionally structured my contract to be a free agent this summer because it is a big summer with NBA movement on the media side with the new TV players of NBC and Amazon, coming into the mix. So, I wanted to have that freedom and flexibility for this summer. So, around December, January, I really started to think about that and where I wanted to be. And the more I thought about it, the more I was enjoying this and speaking into this microphone and doing these episodes and doing these lives with you guys.

YouTube

Adam Silver: The game itself—we’ve not put our best foot forward. The players recognize it. We recognize it. So, as you mentioned, we’re talking about changing the concept—maybe doing something similar to what the NHL did with their Four Nation Faceoff. If it were just a straight-up USA vs. World game, as much as fans would love that, I’m not sure it would be fair to the players. Roughly 30% of the league is from outside the U.S., so it wouldn’t be balanced—30% versus 70%. But we’re looking at different formats. We’re talking to the Players Association—we’d need their agreement. But the goal is to recreate that passion around USA vs. other countries or regions of the world. I’m particularly excited because next year, the All-Star Game is moving to NBC—where it was in the old days. And it’ll be smack in the middle of the Winter Olympics.

YouTube

Maria Taylor has been named NBC Sports’ lead NBA and WNBA studio host for the company’s upcoming NBA coverage on NBC and Peacock, an industry source briefed on the move said Monday. NBC Sports will make the news official later Monday.

New York Times