The NBA has asked the New York Supreme Court to dismiss a lawsuit by Warner Bros. Discovery, which alleged that the league breached its contract by rejecting its matching offer for a new media rights deal and instead signed with Amazon.
) is a senior writer for ESPN Digital and Print, focusing on the NBA. He has covered the Lakers, the Celtics and previously worked for The Boston Globe and Los Angeles Times.
The NBA specifically argued that WBD -- the parent company of Turner -- attempted to improperly rewrite the terms of Amazon's offer and then accept those terms. The league argued that the matching rights that WBD cited from the NBA's 2014 media rights agreement with TBS were limited to distributing games only through its linear cable television network, along with the rest of its programming, and not on a standalone streaming service.
The NBA continued,"If TBS wanted linear TV distribution rights, it could have matched a separate more expensive third-party offer from NBC, but TBS elected not to do so, attempting instead to save billions of dollars by combining Amazon's lower price with the linear television rights granted to NBC."
Two days later, on July 24, the NBA responded to TBS and outlined several reasons -- which were cited in its court filings Friday -- that its response was not, in fact, a match.
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