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🎤 QUICK START ✍️

🥊 Max Kellerman returns. Nearly two years to the date that he was first laid off by ESPN, Max Kellerman has made his next move. At a press conference in New York City on Sunday, Dana White announced that the former First Take co-host will be a part of the broadcast team for the September super fight between Canelo Álvarez and Terence Crawford, which will headline the first fight card for Zuffa Boxing — the promotion created out of TKO’s partnership with Saudi Arabia.

🏈 🏀 Pac-12, CBS reach deal. The rebuilt Pac-12 has announced a major part of its next media rights package, revealing that CBS will be its primary partner. The five-year deal calls for the network (and Paramount+) to host a variety of football and men’s basketball games, including the league’s football conference championship game and men’s basketball tournament. The conference is also expected to add more media partners in the near future.

📺️ Jay Harris provides update. Earlier this month, ESPN’s Jay Harris revealed that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer. On Monday, the SportsCenter anchor shared an encouraging update, revealing that his surgery successfully removed his cancer and that he plans to return to the network’s airwaves on July 12.

🚨LEADING OFF 🚨

Big number for a small series

For all of the talk about market size, the 2025 NBA Finals delivered. All it took was a winner-take-all Game 7, which turned out to be the most-watched NBA game since 2019.

According to Front Office Sports’ Colin Salao, Sunday’s Game 7 averaged 16.35 viewers, peaking with 19.3 million viewers. The championship-deciding game, however, proved to be an anomaly in the series, which averaged 10.26 million viewers in total. That made it the least-watched NBA Finals since 2021 and the least-watched since 2007 when excluding the seasons impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

So what does it mean?

Perhaps the most obvious answer is that viewers crave two things: stars and stakes, the former of which this series was apparently lacking to the casual viewer. The 2022 NBA Finals had Steph Curry and the Warriors taking on an established brand in the Boston Celtics. 2023 had Nikola Jokić and Jimmy Butler. Meanwhile, last year saw the Celtics face Luka Dončić. Apparently, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Tyrese Haliburton weren’t capable of captivating audiences in the same way until viewers knew a championship was officially on the line.

The lackluster series rating is hardly a surprise considering the early returns and the reality that this was the smallest-market NBA Finals in league history. Diehard basketball fans might have been all-in on a matchup that was truly for the sickos, but the same couldn’t be said for the general public — at least not until Larry O’Brien was also in the house.

Still, there’s something to be said for the Game 7 rating, especially since it doesn’t look like this iteration of the Thunder is going anywhere anytime soon. Anyone who watched Oklahoma City win its first title on Sunday now has a connection with SGA, Jalen Williams and perhaps even Lu Dort. That could come in handy as soon as next June.

Ultimately, it’s not a surprise that the first Game 7 Finals game since 2016 drew such a massive number, but even when considering that context, this still wound up being the most-watched NBA game since before COVID was even a thing. For all of talk about the league’s ratings and popularity, the 2024-25 season ended on an undisputed high note. Moving forward, it will be worth monitoring whether it’s able to do anything with that perceived momentum.

🎤 MEDIA MOMENTS ✍️ 

• While the Thunder won the title, the primary storyline coming out of Sunday’s Game 7 was Tyrese Haliburton suffering an apparent Achilles injury midway through the first quarter. And that has already prompted a variety of takes, including Colin Cowherd’s belief that the NBA should shrink its playoff series’ from best-of-seven to best-of-five.

• The recent NBA news cycle didn’t just focus on the Thunder and Pacers but also the sale of the Lakers and the trade rumblings regarding Kevin Durant (who was ultimately dealt to the Houston Rockets hours ahead of Game 7). That came as a surprise to Dan Patrick, who said he knows for a fact that former NBA commissioner David Stern didn’t want any non-Finals news to happen during the league’s championship series.

• For now, WWE is still planning on hosting a show in Saudi Arabia this Saturday. And in the lead-up to Night of Champions, the pro wrestling promotion’s polarizing partnership with the country has already factored into the on-screen storyline for the WWE Undisputed Championship match between John Cena and CM Punk. Here’s how.

🔥 THE CLOSER 🔥 

In appreciation of The Ringer

Like many Ohioans this time of year, I recently made the trek to Florida for my annual summer vacation. That meant 30 combined hours in the car roundtrip, in which I listened to a lot of Pearl Jam.

No, I wasn’t listening to “Even Flow,” “Better Man” or “Last Kiss,” but rather just the opening chords to the band’s rendition of “Corduroy” at Wrigley Field. That’s to say that I spent a lot of time listening to The Bill Simmons Podcast, specifically on my solo drive home in which I had saved up four full episodes from the previous week.

Over the span of that drive, I listened to Simmons break down Game 5 of the NBA Finals with Doc Rivers, debate the Desmond Bane trade with Chris Vernon, and interview an impending lottery pick/Simmons super fan (?!) Kon Knueppel and agonize/defend the Rafael Devers trade with Hench.

Throw in a copious amount of draft talk and Kevin Durant trade rumors with Ryen Russillo and a few episodes of The Zach Lowe Show and I didn’t just survive my drive, but I did so even more excited for Sunday’s Game 7 than I already was. Say what you will about Simmons — and I’ve said plenty in this gig — but his love for basketball can never be questioned. Nor can what he’s built at The Ringer, which may not exactly be Grantland 2.0, but it is still pretty damn good.

Especially so when it comes to its NBA coverage, which is anchored by Simmons, Lowe and Russillo — three ex-ESPN employees whose passion for the league left a void on the network’s airwaves. As I wrote on Monday, The Ringer’s NBA Finals coverage was everything that ESPN’s wasn’t; perhaps best evidenced by Simmons’ sarcastic jabs at the network’s morning shows about how “Tyrese Haliburton needs to step up!”

You can read that column there, but for now, I just want to show some love to The Ringer and its coverage. If ever there was a sports media personality cut out for an NBA Finals as unique as this one, it was the Sports Guy.