Charles Barkley drops 'frustrating' take on Inside the NBA drama
Yesterday at 02:32 PM
Unless you have been living under a rock, you should know that Charles Barkley is not afraid to speak his mind. And that includes talking poorly of his own employer, which has become more of a frequent occasion amid the uncertainty around the ‘Inside the NBA’ program.
Barkley has been on ‘Inside’ for nearly 25 years and become possibly the most synonymous name and face tying NBA and TNT together. But that partnership is ending after this season, when TNT will no longer air NBA games as part of the league’s new television rights deal.
While ‘Inside the NBA’ is expected to live on and be licensed by ESPN starting next season, Barkley let his thoughtsbe known on the uncertain future of the program and the people working on it.
“I was never worried about me, Ernie [Johnson], Kenny [Smith], and Shaq[uille O’Neal] because obviously, we're gonna have our opportunities. But it was very frustrating. It's been frustrating,” Barkley told Kate Constable and Gabe Ramirez of The BetQL Network [h/t Awful Announcing]. “I've never had normal life. I don't mean that in a negative way. But when you talk to people who you are friends with, they're like, 'Yo man, I'm married, I have kids, I have a mortgage and I'm not gonna have a job in six or seven months.' That's like a real thing. That's like a real thing. I've been in the NBA my whole life, so I've never been around people who have had to worry about their job security. But it was so stressful at work because number one, you could tell we were gonna lose the contract.”
Barkley then directed his frustration at Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), the owner of TNT, and how, in his opinion, recent mergers have left the company with “some people who don't even treat people with dignity.”
To illustrate his point, Barkley claimed that the ‘Inside the NBA’ crew was not told by anyone at WBD that TNT would no longer air NBA games nor that ‘Inside’ was part of a deal struck between WBD and Disney, ESPN’s parent company.
“Basically we got traded,” Barkley said. “If I was going to trade somebody that I had respect for and appreciate, I would at least give them a heads up. I wouldn't let them hear about it from other people or the internet.”
Although ESPN officially announced it would license ‘Inside the NBA’ from WBD and air it starting with the 2025-26 NBA season, questions still remain about who will be on the program and if ESPN will truly allow the multi-time Emmy-winning program to remain as is, especially with reports that O’Neal does not have a contract past this season.
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