During a Coaches vs. Cancer tournament in Lefkoe’s first college basketball season with Bleacher Report, he hosted a pregame show, and some of the crew in the production truck who worked on Inside the NBA complimented his performance. From there, he’d receive opportunities to host a show with former NFL quarterback Chris Simms, and then a chance to co-host The Match golf challenge between Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson in 2018 led to a palpable on-screen chemistry with co-host Charles Barkley.
After that came a chat with former TNT Sports president David Levy and an invitation to co-host Inside the NBA on Tuesdays in 2020.
He’s credited Inside the NBA’s improvisational approach—which let him come up with intros for Parker and Dwyane Wade on Day 1, fist-bump co-host Shaquille O’Neal, and absorb O’Neal’s jokes about the “bullet hole” flowers on his jacket—as key to his initial success.
Since settling in, he still favors riffing to working off of the teleprompter, but is in constant contact with producers during the week and, after observing co-host Ernie Johnson, focusing on stories of the day, statistics, graphics, video assets, and the “sweet spots” of his analysts—knowing Parker’s defensive acumen, O’Neal’s superstar psychology.
As he returns for the newest incarnation of Inside the NBA, new coverage of Roland-Garros, and his The Big Podcast with O’Neal, Lefkoe observed that TNT Sports executives “are not rooted in ego and just want to make good, fun content.” Watching colleagues on other TNT Sports shows express themselves, and seeing the division’s focus on him and his colleagues as people—whether he’s filling in so Johnson can go to a graduation or he’s taken off the schedule to go to his one-year-old’s birthday party—Lefkoe doesn’t get the sense that the grass (or clay, or hardwood) is necessarily better-tended in other corners of the industry.
“I’ve been working with Shaq and Candace now for five years, and when we’re up there, all the fear is gone, all the love is there,” Lefkoe said. “Now it’s a little bit of, ‘How much fun can we have? How crazy can we get? And how many references can we mention while we’re up there?’”
Lauren Jbara, Unrivaled/NBA on TNT/NHL on TNT/MLB on TBS
Ten years ago, Lauren Jbara was working for the State Champs Sports Network in Michigan, interviewing a high school pitcher after a no-hitter, when the Gatorade bath his teammates prepared for him missed almost entirely and landed squarely on Jbara. The on-air personality told ADWEEK that, at MLB on TBS—one of Jbara’s several homes at TNT Sports—commentator Brian Anderson “still makes fun of me for it.”
“I asked him one question. I’m like, ‘How’d that feel?’ and he’s like, ‘Great,’ and I go, ‘Love it,’ and he just walks away,” Jbara said of the high school Gatorade incident. “So it’s just really cool to see, full circle, being able to do MLB Postseason this year. I was like, ‘Wow, we have come a long way in the last 10 years.’”
A graduate of the University of Michigan, stints as an arena host for the Detroit Red Wings and reporter for the Detroit Pistons and Oakland University eventually led Jbara to Denver to serve as a host and reporter for the NHL’s Colorado Avalanche and Major League Soccer’s Colorado Rapids. In 2021, she joined Bally Sports South in Atlanta to expand her repertoire with the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks and MLB’s Atlanta Braves—but also to be closer to TNT.
