Well past midnight in Paris with final preparations for the Olympics finishing up, NBC Sports president Rick Cordella was tired and in need of sleep.

On this late July evening, the official word if the NBA had returned to the NBC after nearly a quarter century was being confirmed in New York, a time zone six hours earlier.

In his room at the Sofitel Paris Baltimore Hotel, Cordella worked until 1:30 a.m. before finally going to bed. He set his iPhone alarm to go off every half hour as he anxiously awaited the official news from the NBA.

Cordella maybe didn’t need the alarm as his eager bosses and negotiating team were buzzing in with texts, asking if he had heard anything.

At 3 a.m. Paris time, Cordella’s alarm woke him and he checked his phone. He received the text from the NBA’s lead negotiator, Bill Koenig, informing him that TNT was making a play with its matching rights for Amazon Prime Video’s streaming package, not NBC’s. Cordella pumped his fist, called his bosses and some members of the deal team. Finally, he could go back to bed and sleep easy.

The network was back in the NBA business.

Just as ESPN had swiped the NBA from NBC in 2002, NBC had done the same to TNT, buoyed by a surprise distribution plan and an eye-popping financial offer made in the league’s 5th Avenue offices nearly four months earlier.

Being partners with the NBA is so vital in the future of media that the loser in the proceedings, the parent company of TNT Sports, Warner Bros. Discovery, is suing its still current partner, the NBA, in a Hail Mary attempt to stay involved. TNT, home to the wildly popular “Inside the NBA,” believes its matching rights from its current contract with the league should be enforced.

The implications of what has transpired over the last four months of haggling are magnified by the murky shape of media with cable in decline, streaming emerging, free broadcast networks, like NBC, born again as the top sports destinations, and uncertainty constant.

While there is an intense focus on the digital giants taking over, there are few big toys — save for UFC — available anytime soon.

With the NFL locked up into next decade, this NBA deal would be basically the final one before “The Great Rebundling” over the next decade in which consolidation, mergers and acquisitions will very well decide the future of how fans access games well into the end of the century.

“If you look at what else is available, there is not much coming,” Cordella said over the phone from Paris’ Mussée de l’Homme, where the “Today Show” set is located during the Olympics. “This was clearly a big one.”

The three agreements the NBA officially struck with ESPN, Amazon and NBC will result in the league receiving an extraordinary $77 billion over 11 years, beginning in 2025-26.

It is the exclamation point on ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro’s six-plus-year run, where he has outlayed nearly $80 billion to create a sports rights moat as his network enters its full direct to consumer streaming era.

It establishes Amazon Prime Video as the clear biggest player in the future of sports viewing with the full-year of programming and realistic designs to one day have a Super Bowl and/or NBA Finals.

And, nearly a quarter century after Bob Costas, Marv Albert and John Tesh’s “Roundball Rock” said goodbye to the league, NBC/Peacock will go into this next stage with the triple threat of the NFL, the Olympics and now the NBA leading as it further tries to establish its streamer and broadcast network as year-round must watches.

The deals also will improve the WNBA’s standing as its Finals will be spread between the three companies with ESPN maintaining five, while NBC and Amazon received three each. The WNBA also will have the ability to forge other agreements and eventually reopen talks with its three big partners if Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese and company continue to see their ratings skyrocket.

Toward the end of April, after TNT failed to reach an agreement with the NBA during an exclusive negotiating window, Comcast chairperson Brian Roberts was quickly on the phone with NBA commissioner Adam Silver, expressing NBC’s interest in the rights to the leagues’ games.

Shortly after, Comcast president Michael Cavanaugh, NBC Universal chairman Mark Lazarus and Cordella made the one-minute walk from their Rockefeller Center offices to the NBA’s on 5th Avenue.

At this point, the NBA already had a framework agreement with one incumbent, Disney’s ABC-ESPN to retain the Finals, while a newly formed streaming rights deal was being locked up by Amazon Prime Video.

While NBA executives, led by Silver and its president of global content and media distribution, Koenig game-planned for years of what could happen during negotiations, NBC surprised the league, according to executives briefed on the discussions.

Sitting across from the NBC team in the NBA’s offices, Silver, Koenig and their lieutenants listened to NBC’s pitch as talks took off.

Not only did NBC topple TNT’s best offer of slightly more than $2 billion, but also NBC put on the table more than it pays the NFL. The $27 billion deal over 11 years ($2.45B a season) is larger than the $22 billion the NFL receives for the same length of time.

In addition, NBC made available to the NBA two prime-time windows. The NBA executive team, according to those briefed on their thinking, thought NBC would want to add “Sunday Night Basketball” after its No. 1 rated in prime time, “Sunday Night Football,” but the NBA was pleasantly surprised that Comcast also had a special, national/regional hybrid plan for the NBA on NBC on Tuesdays throughout the season.

Besides the marquee events, such as six conference finals, the All-Star game and “Sunday Night Basketball”, NBC will have Tuesday night national games where the East and West coast will receive different games that begin in prime time locally.

On a given Tuesday, NBC could have a Knicks–Celtics game at 8 p.m. in New York, while the Lakers face the Nuggets at 8 p.m. Los Angeles time. All the matchups will be available via Peacock, which also will have exclusive games on Mondays.

Comcast’s idea is to combine the NFL, the NBA/WNBA, the Olympics, Premier League and the Big Ten on Peacock to prevent churn, creating a must-have product for the whole year.

“Our portfolio of sports on Peacock is incredibly robust,” Cordella, who played college hoops at Providence under Pete Gillen, said. “You add the NBA to it. I’m a sports fan. You are a sports fan. It feels like a must-have. If you are a sports fan worth your salt, you need Peacock. You need NBC.”

The network believes Peacock will add subscribers and they will stay. It thinks the streamer and the broadcast network will do well in the advertising market. It also hurt a rival, and the cable wing of Comcast could claw back affiliate fees from TNT.

The fear of TV executives for years was that the behemoth digital players — Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google/YouTube — would just start buying all the rights. But with this NBA round completed, it is clear that Amazon Prime Video is the one that will be a huge part of sports fans’ lives now and for the foreseeable future.

The others have dipped their toes in without fully committing and now will be largely shut out, save for a Christmas Day doubleheader (Netflix) and a Sunday Ticket sale (Google) and smaller leagues (Apple/MLS).

With Amazon’s 11-year, near $20 billion deal for the NBA and WNBA, it now has major sports programming throughout the year. The NBA/WNBA joins “Thursday Night Football” and NASCAR as part of Amazon’s Prime “Free Shipping” $139 per year subscription.

“The model is working,” Jay Marine, Amazon Prime Video’s global head of sports, told The Athletic.

When Amazon was invited to join ESPN and TNT Sports in the exclusive negotiating window early, prior to the late April deadline, Marine and his team showed up with plans as quickly as one of Amazon’s ubiquitous boxes appear on doorsteps. They expediently sealed a deal, including the worldwide rights to “League Pass,” in which fans can directly buy their favorite team’s games. They also will be the home of the WNBA Finals three times over the 11 years.

Only two years into Amazon’s NFL deal, the streamer already was a proven performer to NBA executives. When strong “Thursday Night Football” ratings would arrive, Koenig would text Marine congratulating him. The NBA and Amazon leaders further forged a relationship due to the streamer’s WNBA coverage and its deal to show the NBA in Brazil.

The global reach of Amazon also made the company an ideal partner for the NBA, which has focused on the international scene since late commissioner David Stern led the operation.

Marine loved the fit with the NBA, but also was very cognizant that, besides UFC, this was the last big deal and that the NBA would likely seek a very long-term contract.

“One of the things we talked about on this NBA deal is that, while it is an 11-year deal, we think about it more like a 30-year deal,” Marine said. “We want a three-decade, four-decade-plus relationship with the NBA. And we view this deal as kind of just the first chapter.”

Amazon already has convinced the NBA it is worthy of hosting conference finals six times and has grand designs for the future.

“I was asked the other day, ‘Would you ever want to broadcast the Super Bowl?’’ Marine said. “And I’ve never answered yes so quickly in my life. And do I see that being a reality at some point.”

How about an NBA Finals?

“Absolutely,” Marine responded.

During Pitaro’s six-plus years leading ESPN, he has gotten what he has wanted in the sports rights game. Pitaro, a diehard Yankee fan, has been on a shopping spree akin to George Steinbrenner in his heyday. The multi-path plan has been designed to beat away potential newcomers, protect its declining, but lucrative cable business and forge ahead with the dawn of ESPN’s streaming era.

Pitaro has built a sports rights moat by doling out nearly $80 billion – that’s a b for billions – in new deals with the NFL, college football playoff, MLB, SEC, NCAA, NHL, PGA, Wimbledon, La Liga and now the NBA.

One rival executive called ESPN’s suite of rights, “the greatest in the history of sports television.”

It continues to not be cheap. The just-signed NBA contract is for that quaint sum of 11 years and $28.8 billion. ESPN’s current NFL contract, which includes two Super Bowls and 25 games a year, mostly on Monday Nights, is for 10 years and $27 billion.

ABC/ESPN retained the Finals every year, while keeping a conference final for each season except for one. It also believes it added value for its soon-to-arrive full ESPN direct-to-consumer product with a Red Zone type show on its game nights and, internationally, where it can stream its games on Disney+. It will remain the top home for the WNBA with five of its Finals over the 11 years.

While ESPN will attempt to retain the UFC and is expected to use or threaten to trigger an opt-out in its MLB contract that is due after next season, it is largely done for the moment, according to executives briefed on its plans.

The NFL’s opt-out on ESPN’s deal is after the 2030-31 season, while the network’s and Amazon’s are up following the 2029-30 year. So ESPN has a slightly longer runway with the most important league rights, allowing it to move into streaming with the NFL and NBA leading the way.

The network has also discussed equity deals with both leagues that would see either or both have a stake in ESPN. Those talks could heat up again relatively soon.

While ESPN is looking to the future with streaming, it wants to maintain its linear carriage agreements, which are for $10-plus a month, still a great business even if the current 66.5 million homes are way fewer than the 100 million from 2011.

ESPN has upcoming negotiations with Comcast, YouTube TV, DirecTV and Verizon Fios over the next two years, and it always planned to have top NBA games, along with the NFL and college football, to stack its deck.

While the digital players outside of Amazon mostly sit on the sidelines, ESPN is about to make a big pitch to be the solution for sports fans without cable.

In the fall, the start of “The Great Rebundling” in partnership with Fox Sports and TNT Sports,  ESPN  will debut Venu Sports, a direct-to-consumer subscription service that will cost $42.99 per month.

In 2025, it will bring ESPN, the mothership, to consumers directly with its own offering that is expected to be priced in the $25-$30 range per month. Pitaro has structured all the new rights deals so ESPN’s entire programming lineup can be available to customers without a cable subscription.

Fans also can access ESPN through places such as YouTube TV, which can be had for $70-$75 and offers a larger collection of channels than Venu will. The billion dollar moat has been built so ESPN can meet customers at different price points to access its games.

TNT knows this is very well its final season with the NBA. Over its 35 years, it has built arguably the greatest sports studio show of all-time, centered around Charles Barkley. It is proceeding with the litigation in which it claims it has the right to match Amazon Prime Video’s package and continue with the NBA. It knows potentially losing the NBA is a huge blow to its portfolio.

While it is blaming the NBA and seems desperate to keep it, two years ago, Warner Bros. Discovery’s CEO David Zaslav told an investors conference, “We don’t have to have the NBA.” The network didn’t get a deal done during the exclusive negotiating window, allowing NBC to blindside it by making a financial and reach offer that exceeded what TNT had put forth.

TNT’s view of the NBA negotiations basically comes down to it believes it was Charlie Brown and the NBA was Lucy, moving the football at the last moment whenever a deal was close. The NBA looks at it differently and was prepared to never give NBC the opportunity if the TNT numbers were right. A judge will have a say about how it all works or maybe the parties will settle for some sort of rights and/or financial package.

But TNT is not putting “Going Out of Business” signs on its Atlanta studios. Barkely told The Athletic that his contract is for 10 years and $210 million. TNT, with or without the NBA, is determined to figure out a way to utilize him and not let him go elsewhere.

The “Inside the NBA” crew could be on its final season with TNT. (Brandon Todd / NBAE via Getty Images)

It has made moves over the last 10 months to try to fortify its lineup. It spent in excess of $25 million per game for a couple of first round College Football Playoff games in a sublicense agreement with ESPN. It added the French Open at $65 million a tournament. Big East men’s and women’s hoops and Mountain West football are going to be on TNT. They are singles and doubles compared to the home run of the NBA.

TNT already has deals for MLB and the NHL, including significant playoff action. United States men’s and women’s soccer, as well as NASCAR, are on its air.  TNT Sports are aligned with ESPN and Fox with the Venu Sports direct-to-consumer streaming service. The company is trying to turn TruTV into something equivalent to ESPN2.

Though Warner Bros. Discovery is in debt, it seemingly has billions in its vault that was headed to the NBA’s Fifth Avenue offices. It will need to be creative to grow, perhaps leaning on more sub-licensing to fill out its programming roster.

As far as the NBA, TNT left the door ajar, allowing NBC and Amazon to walk in and partner with the league, in the potential last market-moving deal of the sports media decade.

Amazon and NBC joined ESPN, forming the NBA’s new Big Three, believing the league was a must-have, an unusually available powerful commodity. Cordella was willing to wake up through the night to confirm it was official. Marine wants Amazon in business with the NBA for decades. Pitaro never looked back in keeping the “A” package.

It will be three presidential elections before the NBA rights are conceivably available again. The corporate winners and losers during the forthcoming media reckoning very well may be decided by then.

(Photo illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; photos: Getty; David Dow / NBAE, Slaven Vlasic, Garrett Ellwood / NBAE, Chris Graythen, Alex Wong)

The United States failed to go back-to-back in the women’s 3×3 basketball tournament, and one of the star players is blaming the referees.

The Americans dropped their semifinal matchup against Spain, who eventually lost to Germany in the gold medal game; the USA earned bronze by defeating Canada.

But gold for America in basketball is almost a given: In normal basketball, the men have won 16 golds in 20 appearances, while the women are 9-for-12 (one silver, one bronze).

That was not the case here. While the women earned gold when the 3×3 tournament debuted in Tokyo in 2021, they fell short this year.

TCU’s Hailey Van Lith, who transferred to the Horned Frogs after starring for LSU this past season, took her shot after dropping eight points in the semifinal.

“This was 1,000% BS. Those refs wanted the U.S. to lose,” she said after the game. “They were flopping left and right. They are not that good. Great job, ladies, we know who should have won.”

Her teammate, Cierra Burdick, went a different route.

Team USA’s Dearica Hamby, left, Cierra Burdick, Hailey Van Lith and Rhyne Howard celebrate their bronze medal in women’s 3×3 basketball on Aug. 5, 2024, in Paris. (Daniela Porcelli/Eurasia Sport Images/Getty Images)

US OLYMPIC SHOT PUTTER SAYS SHE HAD ‘NIGHTMARE’ WITH COMPETITION UNIFORMS

“Not the medal we wanted, obviously, but I don’t want to take away from the moment,” Burdick said after the bronze medal match. “A lot of gratitude, a lot of blood, sweat and tears were invested into this. That’s so cliché, but it’s so true.”

Van Lith’s comments, though, echoed what ESPN’s Brian Windhorst recently said.

“FIBA doesn’t really want the USA to do good at three-on-three basketball. They really want that to be for countries that can’t field five-on-five teams,” Windhorst said.

“So, they do all these things, like they have all these different layers and layers of things you have to do to qualify. … The only way you can play is if you play in, like, 15 qualifying events.”

Hailey Van Lith of Team USA is shown during the match against Germany at the Paris Olympic Games on July 30, 2024. (Alex Gottschalk/DeFodi Images via Getty Images)

The men’s 3×3 team failed to qualify out of group play, going 2-5 in their seven contests.

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Freddie Freeman was equipped with a towel as he walked into a Dodger Stadium interview room Monday afternoon. An emotional sort in the best of times, the veteran first baseman knew he wouldn’t get a minute into recounting the brutal ordeal his 3-year-old son, Maximus, went through over the last two weeks without crying.

He was right … and he didn’t care. The tears flowed, and so did the gratitude of an eight-time All-Star who returned after an eight-game absence, his son home from the hospital and on a long but hopeful road of recovery from Guillain-Barré syndrome, a rare neurological condition in which the body’s immune system attacks the nerves.

“Max is doing all right … but he’s got to relearn how to do pretty much everything,” Freeman said, pausing several times to rub his eyes and collect his thoughts. “Terrible syndrome, Guillain-Barré … but it’s a good thing I’m here, because it means things are trending better. No one should have to go through this, especially with a 3-year-old.”

Freeman and his wife, Chelsea, noticed Max walking with a limp on the morning of July 22, a Monday, and by that night, Max couldn’t walk. The symptoms, according to visits with several doctors, were consistent with transient synovitis, which can cause a pain in the hip after a viral infection.

By that Tuesday, Max couldn’t sit up, and by Wednesday night, July 24, while Freeman was playing a home game against the San Francisco Giants, Max had stopped eating and drinking and was taken to the emergency room. Doctors still suspected transient synovitis and recommended Tylenol. Max was discharged at 3:30 a.m.

Freeman played a day game against the Giants on about an hour of sleep that Thursday and traveled — somewhat reluctantly — with the Dodgers to Houston that night for the start of an eight-game, three-city trip.

“I called Chelsea on Facetime and said, ‘I don’t know if I should be leaving right now,’ ” Freeman said. “Something was off. It just felt wrong to leave. But we did just because [we thought] it would be OK.”

Things were not OK. Freeman had gone through his normal pregame routine in Houston’s Minute Maid Park that Friday before joining Max’s visit to a pediatrician via Facetime.

“And thankfully, that pediatrician said, ‘You need to go to the hospital now — this is not transient synovitis,’ ” Freeman said. “They were ready to call an ambulance for him, because they didn’t think he was going to be able to breathe that long … so I immediately told Scott [Akasaki, traveling secretary] to help get me home.”

With Max having “rapidly declined,” according to an Instagram post from Chelsea, he was rushed to the emergency room at Children’s Hospital of Orange County, “and within 2 ½ hours, he had a ventilator in,” Freddie Freeman said.

A paralysis began to drift upward, from Max’s feet toward his waist and then his shoulders, which was affecting his diaphragm and his breathing. Freddie arrived at the hospital at about 10 p.m., his youngest son hooked up to a ventilator and feeding tube.

“My 3-year-old son needing help to breathe, when five days earlier, he was doing front flips,” Freeman said, when asked to recall the toughest part of the ordeal. “You just wish you could switch. You really do. Like, I’ve been through a lot in my life. I lost my mom when I was 10, but you can’t really compare any of this because both are awful.

“But seeing your kid fighting for his own life when there’s nothing he or anybody else could do. His immune system started attacking his own nerves, and that’s the heartbreaking thing. He can’t breathe on his own, he’s on a ventilator, that was hard.

“I know Dodgers fans wouldn’t like this, but I would gladly strike out with the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth inning in Game 7 of the World Series 300 million times in a row than to see that again.”

There was encouraging news, though, when doctors diagnosed Max with Guillain-Barré and immediately started IVIG (intravenous immunoglobulin) treatments, which are made from donated plasma that contains healthy antibodies to help stop the harmful antibodies from damaging the nerves. Max responded well to two rounds of IVIG.

“He was starting shoulder-shrug, which was a massive sign for us, because that means, so paralysis starts from your toes up, so now [when it recedes] it goes top to bottom,” Freeman said. “It was starting to move back down, which was huge.”

Max’s condition continued to improve early last week, so much so that within 48 hours of experiencing full-body paralysis, he was excavated from his breathing tube and taken off a ventilator.

“It was [last] Wednesday at 10:46 p.m., I’ll never forget — he had his ventilator pulled, and within six minutes, he was sitting on me,” Freeman said. “I can’t tell you how good that felt, to be able to hold my son again. That was a special time, just knowing how hard he fought in those five days.

“When he was born, we were trying to figure out a name. We had two kids at that time, and Chelsea came upon ‘Maximus.’ I was like, ‘That’s a strong name.’ I said I didn’t know it was gonna have to be proved true within four years of his life, with how strong this little boy is.”

Freeman, who had started every one of the team’s first 104 games, missed the entire trip in which the Dodgers lost five of eight games at Houston, San Diego and Oakland. But when Max came home from the hospital on Saturday, Freeman could breathe a little easier.

“I mean, if you talked to me six days ago, I would never have been able to speak to you guys, I just couldn’t,” Freeman said. “But the reason I’m able to get through this is because of the huge wins we’ve been getting the last few days with him. It’s been a miraculous recovery. That’s what they say to us.”

Freeman went through rigorous workouts at his old high school, El Modena in Orange, on Saturday and Sunday and felt like he was ready to return on Monday. Greeting him were teammates and coaches who wore #MaxStrong shirts with No. 5 Freeman on back during batting practice before the series opener against the Philadelphia Phillies.

“I don’t know whose idea it was, but that was the first time I cried today, when I walked in and saw those,” Freeman said of the T-shirts. “It means a lot. The support from this organization has been … there’s no words. I can’t even put it into words, really. Things happen. I’m just so glad that he was able to be at CHOC.

“Dr. [Jason] Knight and his staff in the [pediatric intensive care] unit. The nurses day and night, absolutely incredible. The respiratory therapists, neurology, every department. I mean, I’m here nine days after, and it feels like a miracle, it really does. I can’t thank them enough.”

Freeman was among the team’s hottest hitters when he left the team, and he entered Monday night’s game with a .288 average, .888 on-base-plus-slugging percentage, 16 homers, 26 doubles and 67 RBIs on the season.

In his absence, a Dodgers offense that was already playing without the injured Mookie Betts and Max Muncy hit only .213 (65 for 301) on the eight-game trip, the fourth-worst average in baseball in that span.

But Freeman was back in the Dodgers lineup, batting third and playing first base, on Monday night, a little rusty but buoyed by the knowledge that 3-year-old Max would be at home watching Daddy on television.

“My brain is still a little mushy — not much sleep for mom and dad and the rest of the family — but we’re hanging in there,” Freeman said. “We’ve been told [Max] is going to make a full recovery. We just don’t know how long it’s going to be. But the prognosis of recovery is good.”