Charles Barkley, already a Hall of Fame player, is closing the door on his equally impressive television career with TNT Sports.
“I just want to say that I’ve talked to all the other networks, but I’m not going anywhere else but TNT,” Barkley told NBA TV after the Dallas Mavericks’ Game 4 win over the Boston Celtics on Friday night. evening.
TNT is entering its final year with the NBA in 2024-25 after being outbid by NBC and Amazon in a $76 billion deal. And unless parent company Warner Bros. Discovery can find a way to agree to the pact at the last minute, TNT Sports will soon be left without NBA rights for the first time since 1988.
And even if the company can pull off a miracle, Barkley intends to limit his TV career to a quarter century: “I’ve made the decision myself, no matter what, next year will be my last year in the company.” television”.
Friday’s somber moment was rare for Barkley, who has spent the past 24 years making audiences and co-hosts laugh with his Alabama accent. The 61-year-old may be an 11-time All-Star, NBA MVP and Olympic gold medalist, but he will be best remembered as basketball’s funny man, as seen in DailyMail.com’s look back at his truly television career. only:
TNT analysts, from left, Shaquille O’Neal, Ernie Johnson Jr., Kenny Smith and Charles Barkley
TNT analysts Charles Barkley, Kenny Smith and Ernie Johnson speak on camera in 2010
SOME ADVICE FOR JUSSIE SMOLLETT
An actor since childhood, the co-star of Fox’s ‘Empire’ was caught orchestrating a hate crime hoax in 2019.
He initially said he was attacked by a group of racists outside his apartment, but Chicago police soon discovered that Smollett paid two Nigerian-American brothers, Abimbola and Olabinjo Osundairo, to organize the assault.
To make matters worse, Smollett paid the couple with a check for $3,500, prompting some back and forth between Barkley and co-hosts Ernie Johnson, Shaquille O’Neal and Kenny Smith.
“America, let me tell you something,” Barkley said in February 2019. “Don’t commit check crimes.”
It was at this time that another actor, Liam Neeson, started a debate by admitting some pretty racist thoughts decades earlier, when a friend of his was allegedly attacked by a black man.
Charles Barkley advised Jussie Smollett (left) to talk to Liam Neeson (right) in 2019.
As Neeson told the Independent: ‘I walked around areas with a (gun), waiting for someone to come up to me – I’m embarrassed to say that – and I did it for maybe a week, waiting for someone to (use air quotes with fingers)’ The ‘black bastard’ He’d come out of a pub and attack me about something, you know? To be able to kill him.
The comment gave Barkley an idea, which he passed on to Smollett at TNT.
You’ve wasted all that damn time and money. Do you know what you should have done? “I just went to Liam Neeson’s neighborhood,” Barkley said to a laugh from his co-host.
In the end, Smollett served only six days of his 150-day sentence for lying to Chicago police.
BARKLEY’S MEA CULPA
It’s true that the Round Mound of Rebound has crossed the line over the years.
She apologized to then-NBC anchor Hannah Storm in 1997 for telling her Rockets teammates that women had no business covering men’s sports, a comment she later called “stupid and sexist.”
Barkley also apologized to Beyoncé’s mother, Tina Knowles, for criticizing the “dirty water” along the coast of her native Galveston, Texas.
But for women in another Texas town, San Antonio, Barkley’s pleas for forgiveness may have been insincere.
For Barkley, San Antonio was always a tough place to play because David Robinson and the Spurs were so scary in the 1990s. Coach Gregg Popovich continued that tradition with the Spurs after Barkley became an analyst for TNT and won five NBA titles.
“Listen, listen, I’m telling you,” Barkley told his co-hosts in 2022. “You know, I think it’s a great city… I think they have the best organization in the NBA.”
Chuck wasn’t done.
“But they also have some big old ladies,” he added. “I mean, come on now.”
The comment was a continuation of Barkley’s continued criticism of San Antonio women.
He finally offered an apology, but San Antonio would not have appreciated it.
“I want to apologize to the women of San Antonio,” Barkley told Johnson. ‘Ernie, I had churros last night.
“I see what all the fuss is about,” he said of the fried dough. “Those damn things are good, Ernie.” Those churros are good. I understand why they brought all those big women in San Antonio. Those churros are the bomb!’
IF CHUCK SAYS HIS TEAM ‘SUCKS’, HE DOES IT
Barkley has taken to telling NBA teams and their irrational fans when they “suck.”
He sometimes uses the word “terrible,” which non-Alabama viewers ridicule as “tearing bull,” but he’s also happy to follow up with “suck” when appropriate.
And when angry fans approach him, he keeps it simple.
“They (say), ‘You think our team sucks,'” Barkley told the panel about Knicks fans during a bad year in New York. “I only think that because they suck.”
Other times, Barkley likes to drag out his unscientific critiques of teams.
Charles Barkley, dressed in his Texas suit for a broadcast during the 2006 season.
Chuck interacts with the Denver Nuggets mascot at the start of the 2023-24 NBA season
When the Knicks were struggling in 2018, Barkley told a humorous (and fictional) story to illustrate his point.
“I left two (Knicks) tickets at the hotel for one of my family members, and when I got back to the hotel there were four tickets there,” Barkley joked.
In 2017, when the NBA began selling individual games on its streaming app, Barkley couldn’t help but mock the lackluster $6.99 Bucks-Lakers matchup he was supposed to be promoting.
‘Man,’ Barkley interrupted Johnson, ‘that should be more like a $1.99 game.
‘Come on, man, they’re ripping people off!’ Barkley said. “If they pay $6.99 for that, they’re being scammed.”
“That should be at the dollar store.”
BARKLEY KISSES THE ASS
Barkley was so sure that 7-foot-5 Houston Rockets rookie Yao Ming would fail in the NBA that he told Smith he would kiss his ‘ass’ if the Chinese center scored 19 points in any game in 2002-03.
So, when the time inevitably came, Smith devised a plan to “buy” a donkey, thus replacing his own butt with a genuine one.
In the end, Barkley obeyed and kissed the donkey’s butt on live television.
And, somewhat ironically, Ming would go on to average exactly 19 points per game throughout his illustrious, injury-plagued career.
Charles Barkley kisses Kenny Smith’s donkey after losing a bet during the 2002-03 season
Barkley took issue with an overweight Lakers fan who accused him of overdoing it on donuts.
DON’T CALL CHUCK ‘FAT’ UNLESS YOU’RE SKINNY
Until recently, when Barkley began losing weight with Ozempic, the Hall of Famer’s battle with the bulge had been a regular topic of conversation on Inside the NBA.
Barkley, of course, can dish it out too, so O’Neal frequently catches some shrapnel in these discussions.
And when a Lakers fan had the courage to tweet a fat joke about Barkley, Sir Charles quickly turned the tables.
‘@NBAonTNT Charles Barkley would choose Krispy Kreme donuts with the first pick (in the NBA Draft,’) the fan wrote on Twitter.
Inside the NBA it was moving to commercials when the post was shared on the screen, but Barkley was having none of it.
“Look at your fat ass too,” Barkley said after seeing an image of a rotund Lakers fan next to the Twitter post. ‘Put that guy’s photo back. Don’t go to the commercial break!
‘Is he going to talk about me eating donuts? Look at her fat ass. Look at her stomach.’