Charles Barkley heard from the co-workers who don’t appear on screen during TNT’s ‘Inside the NBA’ as its future was in flux over the past year ‒ about how they were worried about paying their mortgage or for their children’s education if they were to lose this job.
The lingering uncertainty bothered the former NBA star, and it still bothers him now that TNT lost the broadcast rights to the NBA and ‘Inside the NBA’ is being licensed to ESPN beginning with the 2025-26 season.
Barkley blasted his bosses at TNT during an interview on Barstool Sports’ ‘Pardon My Take’ podcast released Monday because ‘they did an awful job keeping us abreast.’
‘We were playing golf in the middle of the playoffs and we were reading the internet to find out if we were going to get fired or not,’ Barkley said. ‘And I was like TNT, our bosses, they suck, plain and simple. Yo man, just tell us. Shoot us straight because these are real people. … And TNT never came to us like grown folks and said, ‘Hey guys, we’re probably going to lose the NBA,’ which we could have understood. But I thought they sucked. I told them they sucked because there’s a way you treat people.’
Barkley went on to reveal he found out TNT had licensed ‘Inside the NBA’ to ESPN through congratulatory text messages from current ESPN hosts and analysts like Scott Van Pelt, Elle Duncan, Brian Windhorst and former Golden State Warriors GM Bob Myers as the news broke. Barkley said he only received a call from TNT executives about 90 minutes later.
‘I get a text from Scott Van Pelt, Brian Windhorst, Elle Duncan and Bob Myers welcoming me to the family. I’m like, ‘What family?’ ‘ Barkley recalled. ‘Then, about an hour and a half later, I get a call from TNT that the story broke. I said, ‘Well, you probably could have given us a head’s up. You’ve traded us to ESPN. We have to hear about it on the internet.’ I said, ‘That’s just not the way you do business.’ Ernie Johnson deserves, because he’s the godfather, Ernie Johnson should not hear he got traded from ESPN people or the internet.’
TNT officially lost its NBA rights in July 2024. The NBA announced a new 11-year, $76 billion media rights deal with ABC/ESPN, NBC and Amazon that goes into effect beginning with the 2025-26 season.
Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent company of TNT, agreed to a licensing deal in November 2024 that will allow ‘Inside the NBA’ to be broadcast on ESPN. The talent on the show ‒ Barkley, Johnson, Shaquille O’Neal and Kenny Smith ‒ will remain employees of TNT. Barkley has been on ‘Inside the NBA’ since 2000, 10 years after it debuted with Johnson as host and two years after Smith joined the show. O’Neal joined the regular cast in 2011.
ESPN, in its statement announcing the licensing agreement, said ‘the legendary Inside the NBA studio team will appear on ESPN and ABC surrounding high-profile live events, including ESPN’s pregame, halftime and postgame coverage of the NBA Finals on ABC, Conference Finals, NBA Playoffs, all ABC games after January 1, Christmas Day, opening week, the final week of the season and other marquee live events.’
Barkley, however, remains skeptical about how ESPN will handle the Emmy-winning show.
‘I’m happy it’s going on but it’s going to be interesting,’ Barkley said on the podcast about ‘Inside the NBA’ moving to ESPN. ‘It’s going to be different, but you know that’s the bad thing about it. We don’t know how it’s going to be different.’