Mindy Kaling Reveals Running Point Season 3 Goes Off-Season

If you thought a show about professional basketball would keep its drama squarely on the hardwood, Running Point season 3 is about to prove you delightfully wrong. Co-creator [Mindy Kaling](/) has pulled back the curtain on where the Netflix sports comedy is headed next, and the answer is somewhere the series has never gone before — the off-season.

A Basketball Show That Steps Away From Basketball

According to ScreenRant, Kaling opened up about the season 3 concept while speaking with TVLine, explaining that the upcoming chapter will unfold across the three months when the league isn't actually playing. For a show built around the Los Angeles Waves — the fictional NBA-adjacent team that Kate Hudson's Isla Gordon runs as president — that might sound like a counterintuitive choice. But Kaling made a compelling case for why it's actually the richest storytelling territory the writers haven't fully tapped yet.

"For most basketball teams, those three months are when the teams are kind of built, and it's incredibly interesting," she said, teasing storylines involving the draft in Las Vegas, player trades, and a deeper look at what athletes do when the games stop. Are they playing overseas? Building side businesses? Season 3 sounds set to answer all of that.

Why the Off-Season Actually Makes Perfect Sense

Here's the thing — Running Point has always been as much about the people surrounding the sport as it is about the sport itself. Isla's complicated family dynamics, the locker-room personalities of the Waves' roster, the business chess match of running a franchise: all of it has flourished in the margins of game night. Setting an entire season during the off-season doesn't abandon the show's identity; it leans all the way into it.

Players like Travis Bugg (Chet Hanks), Marcus Winfield (Toby Sandeman), and Dyson Gibbs (Uche Agada) are specifically flagged as characters whose off-court lives will get a meaningful spotlight. That's exciting news for anyone who's grown fond of the ensemble — and given the show's Rotten Tomatoes numbers (an 84% critics score and 80% audience score overall, climbing to a 90% critics score for season 2), there are clearly a lot of fans invested in exactly these characters.

The Team Behind the Show Keeps Growing

Kaling, who has been quietly building an impressive television empire — she recently joined Shark Tank Season 18 as a guest shark and has her Hulu comedy NSFW launching a breakout star — co-created Running Point with Ike Barinholtz, Elaine Ko, and David Stassen, who serves as showrunner. Hudson, in addition to her starring role, is an executive producer on the project alongside Jeanie Buss, a real-life minority owner of the Los Angeles Lakers, which gives the whole enterprise an authentic insider quality that clearly resonates with audiences.

The rest of the cast — Brenda Song, Drew Tarver, Scott MacArthur, Justin Theroux, Fabrizio Guido, and Ray Romano as the wonderfully grumpy Coach Norm Stinson — rounds out a ensemble that's become one of Netflix's more charming comedic ensembles in recent memory.

What to Expect Next

Filming for season 3 hasn't officially kicked off yet, though a fall production start is anticipated. Based on the rhythm of the first two seasons — season 1 debuted in February 2025 and season 2 followed in April 2026 — a 2027 premiere window feels like a reasonable expectation. The renewal itself came just weeks after season 2 dropped, which says everything about how much Netflix believes in this one.

For now, the off-season concept is enough to keep anticipation simmering. If season 3 can deliver the character depth its premise promises while still scratching that sports-drama itch through draft day drama and trade deadline chaos, Running Point might just be setting itself up for its best season yet.

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