Vrabel-Russini Jab Proves ESPN is Keeping ‘Inside the NBA’ Promise

There was some healthy skepticism that ESPN would change Inside the NBA once it began licensing it from TNT Sports. But as the iconic studio show has hit its playoff stride, all signs point to the content remaining unchanged for Ernie Johnson, Charles Barkley, Shaquille O’Neal, and Kenny Smith.

When the program was doing its annual “Gone Fishing” graphic for teams that have been eliminated from the playoffs on Sunday night, they put Mike Vrabel and Dianna Russini doing the famous Titanic pose at the front of the boat. For much of the past month, Vrabel and Russini have been in the center of a media tempest after they were photographed holding hands and hugging at an adults-only resort in Arizona.

This is a sensitive matter for ESPN, which employed Russini for several years before she left in 2023 to become The Athletic‘s lead NFL reporter. ESPN has covered the story on its website—particularly in the form of an extensive report by Ben Strauss—but has largely stayed away from it on its airwaves. Mocking such a story would not be in line with ESPN’s longstanding decorum.

But it’s a new world order now. ESPN began a trend of licensing studio content when it added Peyton and Eli Manning’s Monday Night Football simulcast in 2021, outsourcing all creative and production to Peyton’s Omaha Productions. This continued with the addition of The Pat McAfee Show, which was a forerunner to Inside the NBA in the sense that ESPN has kept its promise not to meddle in the creative process.

After reaching the deal to license the show, ESPN’s president of content, Burke Magnus, vowed that Inside the NBA, which is still produced by TNT, would keep its fabric.

“Of course we’re not going to change the show,” Magnus told Sports Illustrated in 2024 after the deal was announced. “Why would we take something so successful and so iconic, bring it over and then be like, ‘We know better, we’re gonna change it.’ … We don’t want to change it. We don’t want to interject new talent into it. We don’t want to really do anything to it.”