IF CHARLES BARKLEY LOSES HIS TNT JOB, SOME OF US WILL EXPLODE IN LAUGHTER
NBA games will carry on, even if Warner Bros. Discovery’s CEO doesn’t win one of the final three broadcast bids, and as Barkley complains about rotten morale, perhaps he should know 24 years is enough
One night in Los Angeles, Charles Barkley yelled at me in a packed hotel elevator. I yelled back. What’s fascinating is why he was angry at ME for what HE does on the air. I speak my mind, just as he speaks his mind, but he thinks he should be allowed to do so while I spank myself.
He was so obsessed with me, he went on “The Tonight Show” and ripped away, zapping my phone for a week and giving Christmas jokes to friends. It’s one of those quirks that bugs me about Barkley, who has been part of “Inside the NBA” since 2000 and realizes he might not be employed there much longer.
Just because he’s King Chuck doesn’t mean he controls negotiations between Warner Bros. Discovery, which pays him as a studio commentator, and the National Basketball Association. Both are much larger than him, even by weight size, and at present, his network is out of contention for future broadcast rights. If he chooses to go away, the league will carry on with Luka Doncic and Jayson Tatum and Nikola Jokic and Anthony Edwards and Jalen Brunson — and the new studio shows will be more conservative for commissioner Adam Silver and less controversial for viewers.
That’s what Barkley doesn’t understand. He can haul off on everyone in the sport, by sending them fishing and making fun of “big ass” women in San Antonio, and Discovery CEO David Zaslav is the one who decides if TNT crashes in the end. As we write, Silver is selling his “A” package to ESPN and ABC for $2.8 billion a year, while Comcast/NBC Universal receives the “B” package at $2.5 billion and streaming Amazon Prime Video receives the “C” package at $2 billion. Two years ago, Zaslav said, “We don’t have to have the NBA.” He thinks Comcast/NBC has overspent. He might not try to knock off Amazon, either, and Silver is annoyed by his act. Barkley is livid.
Does anyone really care? I don’t. Do you? People watch games for the action, the thrills, a few for the gambling. People only watch Barkley because his face appears — before games, at halftime, after games — as he mugs with Kenny Smith and Shaquille O’Neal and host Ernie Johnson. Without them, fans will keep watching thanks to Mike Breen and play-by-play barkers. Has Barkley thought about the relative unimportance of analysts sitting at a desk and trying to walk up and down stairs to show highlights?
“The first thing is, (Zaslav) came out and said, ‘We didn’t need the NBA.’ So, I think that probably pissed Adam off,” he said. “Well, he don’t need it. But me, Kenny, Shaq, Ernie and the rest of the people who work there, we need it.”
As one who spent Memorial Day watching “Sight,” about a Chinese immigrant who does world-renowned eye surgeries free of charge, I don’t give a damn about Charles. Let him complain. “Morale sucks, plain and simple. I just feel so bad for the people I work with,” griped Barkley, trashing Zaslav on Dan Patrick’s show. “These people have families and I just really feel bad for them right now. These people I work with, they screwed this thing up, clearly, and we don't have zero idea what's gonna happen. I don't feel good. I'm not gonna lie, especially when they came out yesterday and said we bought college football. I was like, well, damn, they could have used that money to buy the NBA.
“I am (angry). I’ve been spending a lot of time with the crew lately. I’ve actually been with these guys where I’ve spent time with their — they bring their newborns in, they bring their kids in, they come in like when they were in high school and now they’ve graduated from college. That’s how long. Ernie’s been there 32 years, Kenny’s been there 27, I’ve been there 24, but think about that. Some of these people I work with, they brought their newborns in to say hello to us, they brought them in in high school when they graduated, and now they’ve already graduated from college. So, yeah, I’m angry at people — they’re part of my family, to be honest with you. And I feel bad for those guys.”
He already has spoken to Smith and O’Neal about joining his production company, Fine Line Productions, and selling their show to another network. NBC or Amazon could be interested, and he also can bring “the people” he works with. If not, and they want younger talkers, so be it. “My two favorite wines are Inglenook and Opus. These clowns I work for, they've turned us into Ripple and Boone's Farm and Thunderbird,” Barkley said. “I have my own production company, and I would love to do that if we lose it. Actually, somebody did suggest that to me, to be honest with you, on the Internet: ‘Why don’t Charles Barkley sign these three guys, four guys total, it’s his production company, and sell it?’ I’m like, that’s a great idea. But like I said, we’re just sitting back, waiting on these people to figure out what they’re going to do.”
Curiously, Silver continues to insist Barkley and his guys will air somewhere. “Who knows? We're all still talking. Who knows how it's gonna work out?” he told TMZ. “We're never gonna lose Charles and Kenny. They're always going to be covering the NBA. ... I can't imagine those guys won't be performing and announcing together in the future, and we all love them." He even loves Draymond Green, who should be in jail for headlocking Rudy Gobert, punching Jusuf Nurkic and stomping on the chest of Domantas Sabonis. The 12-game suspension to help Green’s mental outlook quickly became a farce, with Silver approving him to sit front and center on “Inside the NBA” this month.
“Rudy sucks, not me. What did I do? I didn’t do anything,” said Green, who was booed by Minnesota fans supporting Gobert.
He should have been hijacked and sent home. Silver, of course, didn’t respond. He’s too interested in coaxing Zaslav to outbid Jeff Bezos. Already, Barkley has lost a CNN show with Gayle King, called “King Charles,” after it failed to out-rate old episodes of “South Park.’’ The concept of losing one program hasn’t been accepted by Barkley, who said, “You know the type of boneheads I work with? First of all, it wasn’t canceled. I talk to Gayle all the time. They haven’t told us we were canceled. That’s how stupid these people are.”
“King Charles” indeed was canceled after 14 episodes. Next, Charles Barkley may be canceled on TNT. I will not cry. I might even laugh at him in the next elevator.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.