The NBA playoffs tipped off in 16 major cities last month before taking an unexpected detour to Galveston, Texas.

As Charles Barkley saw it, the New Orleans Pelicans were so dismal in their first-round series against the Oklahoma City Thunder that they didn’t deserve an off-season vacation in Cancun. “We’re gonna send them to Galveston, where that dirty-ass water be washin’ up on the shore,” Barkley said on Inside the NBA, the long-running TNT studio show. One of his cohosts, fellow Hall of Famer Shaquille O’Neal, was in stitches. And for Barkley, that’s like a coach giving him the green light to keep shooting. “Come on, man,” he continued. “They didn’t even try, man. We’re not giving them no plane ticket to the beach.”

Barkley’s riff quickly took on a life of its own, going viral on social media and setting off a playful feud between a Gulf getaway destination and an NBA legend. Tina Knowles, the mother of Beyoncé and a Galveston native, got in on the fun, warning Barkley that locals “don’t play about Galveston.” In recent weeks, billboards have popped up around the city responding in kind to Barkley’s ribbing (“Hey Charles, our water is cleaner than your golf swing”).

Behold the power of Inside the NBA, one of the most consistently entertaining programs on television for two decades running. The unequivocal GOAT of studio shows (really, one of the only good studio shows), it is part basketball commentary, part comedy roast, alchemized into TV magic by the singular talent of Barkley and organic banter with his cohosts: Ernie Johnson, Kenny Smith, and O’Neal. Inside the NBA premiered when NBA games began airing on TNT in 1989, but Barkley’s arrival in 2000 transformed the show into a bona fide cultural institution. O’Neal joined in 2011, rounding the panel into the sports media equivalent of a superteam. Few programs in any genre of television have ever boasted a higher approval rating; if you’re a fan of the league, you’re probably a fan of Inside the NBA.

But now, those fans are forced to contemplate a future without the show. Two days after Barkley turned Galveston into a punchline, news broke that Comcast, the parent company of NBCUniversal, had prepared a $2.5-billion-per-year bid to pry the NBA’s broadcast rights away from TNT owner Warner Bros. Discovery. (A spokesperson for NBC didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.) With the league’s current media deal set to expire at the end of next season, the NBA’s pursuit of a new pact has unfolded in the backdrop of the league’s postseason. Sources familiar with the talks stressed that the negotiations are fluid and far from over. One source told me that a deal is probably still weeks away. “They’re juggling multiple partners and multiple agreements and multiple situations,” another source said of the NBA. Whenever that day comes, there is a real possibility that TNT will be the odd one out, making the negotiations yet another referendum on Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, whose efforts to cut costs and pay down debt may come at the expense of a storied sports broadcasting partnership. And no matter who prevails in the negotiations, the new deal is guaranteed to look much different from the current one.

Ten years ago, network executives didn’t even really break a sweat during negotiations with the NBA. At the time, the league opted to renew with its incumbent partners––Disney, which owns ABC and ESPN, and Time Warner, the then parent company of TNT––while still in the exclusive negotiating period rather than open bidding to other networks. John Skipper, president of ESPN at the time, said that the companies submitted a joint bid early in the process in order to thwart any would-be competitors, one that “was good enough that [the NBA] didn’t need to create a third package.” The deal, which was worth $24 billion over nine years, enshrined the networks as the national broadcasting partners for the NBA’s regular season and playoffs.

This time around, the league is seeking something bigger, with more partners and money attached. And that means, yes, you’ll likely need more streaming and cable subscriptions to watch a complete season. The NBA, and premium live sports more generally, is one of the last reliable audience drivers in an increasingly fragmented TV landscape, and various reports have indicated that the league is pursuing a deal worth more than twice as much as the last one. Instead of renewing with incumbents during the exclusive negotiating period, the league took the bidding to the open market, where it has unsurprisingly not struggled to find new suitors. In addition to interest from NBC, Amazon has made a reported bid of $1.8 billion per year to get its own slice of the package, which would give the company another major sports league to add to its streaming portfolio after it became the exclusive home of the NFL’s “Thursday Night Football” in 2022.

Skipper said the proliferation of streaming in live sports represents the biggest change from the NBA’s previous deal. “Last time, there was no advantage to creating a third package,” he said. “This time, the streamers are all in different stages of being involved in sports. You don’t want to be left out of that experience.” According to multiple reports, the NBA has agreed to a “framework” of a deal with both Disney and Amazon. On an earnings call last week, Disney CEO Bob Iger said he was “confident” that the company will renew with the league. The company has made a reported $2.6-billion-per-year offer to remain the league’s top media partner.