It was sometime in the 1990s when I asked Charles Barkley a basketball question and about 20 minutes later, he was still answering it. That 20 minutes was one of the best basketball educations I ever received.
That’s the thing about Barkley. He says goofy things. He’s opinionated. He’s boisterous. Most of all, he’s brilliant. He’s a basketball savant and fits perfectly into the greatest sports studio show of all time, TNT’s ‘Inside the NBA,’ because intelligence is that show’s propulsion system.
Barkley seemed to know something bad was coming. Barkley, who recently announced he’s retiring from television next year, spoke earlier this month about the possibility of TNT losing the NBA.
‘I really feel bad for everybody at TNT,’ Barkley said. ‘I really hope we match. Honestly in my heart, I think we have lost the package. That’s my honest opinion.’
Added Barkley, who is 61: ‘The main reason I was talking about next year being my last year – I wouldn’t feel comfortable going to work for another network. It’ll be 25 years that I’ve been working with Turner, and I love everybody at Turner, but at this age to go and start over, I don’t know if I want to do that.’
If the current situation holds (and there’s always an outside chance TNT can somehow salvage it), next season would be TNT’s last, meaning the possible end of the staggeringly good ‘Inside’ show.
Let’s just hope this is all a bad dream and TNT continues broadcasting NBA games and we keep getting our doses of Barkley, Kenny Smith, Shaquille O’Neal and Ernie Johnson. But if that doesn’t happen, we need to put into proper context the historic importance of Barkley and that show.
So let’s talk about legacy.
There’s never been a sports show, of any kind, in any medium, that so skillfully explains the guts of that sport, with a combination of humor and strong opinion, all presented without condescension, with the skill that this one does. Nothing comes close.
Barkley is a combination of John Madden and Howard Cosell. Listening to Smith talk basketball is like hearing Carl Sagan talk about galaxies. Shaq is the uncle at the barbecue who tells stories about how he once dunked on Chris Dudley’s head and can you get him another beer, please. Johnson is the perfect television quarterback who lets all the stars free flow.
How this team was assembled and some of the behind-the-scenes stories (the real ones) would make for a perfect HBO series. But what we saw, and hope to see again, was remarkable chemistry. All the pieces seem oblong and unattachable, but they fit with a type of synchronicity and rhythm you only see in the best personal relationships.
‘They transcend what basketball really is,’ Hall of Famer and TNT analyst Reggie Miller told USA TODAY Sports’ Mackenzie Salmon.
Meaning, they are as identifiable as any of the star players themselves. People know Barkley as much as they do Luka Doncic.
It’s possible the show transfers to another network but there are so many moving parts, it’s not clear how that could happen. What’s frustrating about this situation is that it didn’t have to come to this. All things end, sure, but this is just dumb.
In fact, ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith blasted TNT for not keeping the rights. Smith said on his podcast that NBA Commissioner Adam Silver approached executives from TNT’s parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, and told them they would need to match another offer.
“There was a bunch of hemming and hawing,” Smith said. “See, that’s why Barkley has been going off, because he knew and still knows it never had to come to this.”
Warner Bros. could sue but it’s not the NBA’s fault. It’s their own.
“All I can say is I don’t know where (TNT) goes from here. I mean how many episodes of ‘Law & Order’ can you air?” Smith said. “I’m just trying to figure it out, along with some of your other programming. You need something live, you need something fresh. How many old movies can you air? So it’s going to be real interesting to see what they do beyond next season.”
Smith added: “The last days of TNT, the NBA on TNT, is arriving next season.”
Again, it’s slightly possible TNT does something to fix this mess. If they don’t, we’ll see the end of something remarkable.
Not just that. Something so good we’ll never see anything like it again. In part because there’s only one Charles Barkley.