The '90s Called: It wants credit for two great things.

Of all the things being done to celebrate the 250th birthday of this great nation, we find none more positive than hearing that McDonald’s is bringing back its Fried Apple Pie dessert to the menu (for a limited time only, as they say.) Why our enthusiasm for this questionable delicacy that has been responsible over the years for the burning off of several layers of tissue from the roof of our mouths?

Well, for starters, it’s fried. In the same machines that fry the chain’s amazing French fries. It contains a filling similar to that of an actual apple pie, if that pie were made by a giant food corporation and filled with not-quite-all-natural ingredients.

And it’s damn delicious.

At least it was when we last had one. Which turns out to be in the early 1990s, when McDonald’s moved to having baked apple pie pockets on the menu. It was done, “for health reasons,” the chain said at the time. Apparently, on the occasion of the nation’s 250th anniversary of being founded, health considerations may be briefly suspended so that said pies can accompany orders — even to places like the White House.

Listen, we think a lot of things from the 1990s are worth reconsidering and appreciating for their true greatness. One of those things is the television program Inside the NBA.

Technically, Inside the NBA debuted in 1989, but it was 1990 that Ernie Johnson, Jr. took over the role of hosting the program, so that’s the decade we place the show’s true birth in. And some 36 years later, Inside the NBA, because it moved to a new network and due to that move, the show was able to wrap up its greatest season ever.

Inside, as we’ll shorthand it for the rest of this column, was born when Turner Network Television acquired its first NBA contract to televise games in the 1989-1990 season. From inauspicious beginnings, the show has grown into what many now call “the best studio show in sports television.” The additions along the way of opinionated and outspoken NBA greats Kenny “The Jet” Smith in 1998, Charles Barkley in 2000, and finally Shaquille O’Neal in 2011 have made the show truly “must-see TV” not just for basketball fans, but really any sports fan.

Yes, Inside has all the trappings of every sports-centric studio show. But the standard-issue highlights and analysis take a back seat to the personalities and one-upmanship of the participants. And giving credit where it’s due, host Ernie Johnson plays it all with a deftness and amusement that gives the proceedings an insouciance that would be perfect, even if it didn’t come with an occasional seriousness and gravity that gives the program a total range that is surprisingly impressive.

That network move we mentioned before was on full display this past NBA season. In getting itself ready to be sold to the highest bidder, WarnerBros Discovery, which owns TNT (and all the former Turner networks, including CNN) lost its contract to carry NBA games and it looked like “Inside the NBA” was headed for the shelves of television history. But in one of the smarter moves to ever be made in Bristol, Connecticut, the headquarters of the self-proclaimed “Worldwide Leader” of sports television, ESPN, Inside The NBA was drafted to be part of that network’s NBA coverage.

The truly inspired part of ESPN’s pickup of the show was to simply “not screw around with it.” Inside is still produced by TNT Sports in its Atlanta studios, and delivered to ESPN pretty much the same as it was in previous years. The on-camera folks all returned and what makes the show great is still on full display before, during and after each NBA game that ESPN airs.

And because the ESPN schedule includes the NBA Finals, which airs on the sister Disney-owned ABC television network, Inside the NBA got to do something this season that it never has been able to do before: Be live at the sites for each of the final games that determined the league’s champion.

It was some glorious stuff to watch. On top of the games that were pretty good as well. (Especially if you happened to be a Knicks fan.)

We share this appreciation of what could just as easily be dismissed as “another studio-based sports highlights show” because we think it has some lessons to teach about how to create any version of “must see TV” on any scale.

Inside may be the best example of what we were talking about in our last item here discussing Quarterbacks versus Teams at the anchor desk. While “EJ” as fans know Ernie Johnson is called, could be considered “the quarterback” of the show, he sets up and questions each of the other three stars like a conductor cueing sections of a symphony orchestra. His knowledge and love of the game are evident, but so is his understanding of the personas he is working with. The foursome is so strong that they added doing studio work during the annual NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament back in 2011, when Turner Networks began sharing “Final Four” coverage with CBS.

It is just as watchable when they are talking about college basketball rather than the pro game. Kudos as well to the production team behind the broadcast for being smart enough to roll with whatever the on-camera folks want to do and creating moments around things as simple as one of them having to take an unscheduled trip to the restroom during a commercial break.

Also, as the TV music aficionados that we are, a shout out to the memorable Inside The NBA theme frrom film composer and former frontman for the band “Yes,” Trevor Rabin. Airing for well over two decades, it is among the all-time great sports-on-TV themes. Even The New York Times said so. (ESPN has kept it as well.)

The foursome at the Inside the NBA anchor desk is reminiscent of when the best local television newscasts had foursomes that not only delivered the news, weather and sports each day, but also attracted an audience because of the interactions between the four that took place throughout the newscast. What was initially derided as “happy talk” by journalism purists, was seen by the audience as an attractive quality to have in the people they choose to invite into their home each night (and later, each morning as well.)

It turns out that people like to watch people who are interesting and have something to say.

Given that the 2025-2026 NBA season has ended, the Inside crew has “Gone Fishin’” until this October when they will return. We can hardly wait to see them again.

We just hope that the McDonald’s Fried Apple Pie is still on the menu then.

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