Can basketball fans really have it all? “Roundball Rock” is back, Charles Barkley isn’t going to retire and Inside the NBA will continue?
After peddling his retirement for more than two months with Warner Bros. Discovery losing its NBA rights, ending TNT’s 35-year partnership with the league, Barkley recommitted to his TNT Sports contract this week. Thursday morning, Barkley joined The Dan Patrick Show to discuss what changed.
“TNT flew to Philly last week,” Barkley told Patrick. “And they said, ‘We’re gonna keep doing the show.’ And I’m like, ‘What?’ And they’re like, ‘We’re gonna keep doing the show.’”
TNT planning to continue Inside the NBA obviously brings a cast of new questions. But when Patrick asked for clarification on what that means, Barkley couldn’t really answer it, and it sounds like TNT wouldn’t be able to either.
“They said, ‘We’re gonna continued doing the show. I don’t have any idea what that means,” Barkley said. “I think they’re gonna try to figure it out. We won’t have the NBA, so I think they’re gonna try to figure it out. But my number one concern has always been the people at Turner. Even if we do something, a lot of people at Turner are going to keep their jobs. Like I said, Dan, I have zero idea what we’re gonna do.”
Patrick asked whether Inside the NBA will turn into nightly sports show, similar to SportsCenter , but Barkley quickly pushed back on the idea of having to work every night.
“We’re not gonna work every night, that’s not gonna happen,” Barkley said definitively. “But I truly believe they want to keep people employed at Turner which was my number one priority and I think we’re gonna have to try to figure it out as we go. Like I said, they couldn’t give me any concrete plans because they don’t have any concrete plans.”
Barkley shockingly claimed he even offered to take a pay cut if it meant keeping more people employed at the network and with the show, but he was told that won’t be necessary.
“The only reason I said I was gonna retire was because I didn’t want to go through the hassle of breaking in another crew and going to another network,” Barkley explained. “And when they flew up last week, I was totally shocked when they said, ‘No, we’re gonna keep the show going.’”
“I heard some of the most horrific stories the last six months from people I work with,” Barkley continued, noting he’s never been in a position of losing his job or having to worry about how to pay his mortgage. “Once they said those people are going to keep their jobs, I’m like, whatever y’all decide to do… I don’t know anything about tennis, but I know we just got the French Open…I’m just happy a lot of people at TNT are going to keep their jobs, that was my number one priority.”
That all sounds great and it seems like Barkley and TNT are hoping for a sort of happy resolution for those employees who were worried about losing their jobs. But the only thing that is clear right now, is that as of today, Barkley will remain with TNT beyond the next year. Will that be the case tomorrow or six months from now? We don’t know.
To think TNT saying, ‘We want to keep doing the show, but have no idea how it’s going to work or what the show is going to be’ confirms Barkley, Shaq, Kenny Smith, and Ernie Johnson will be hosting a weekly sports show in 2026, is kind of crazy. There are so many moving parts at Warner Bros. Discovery right now, particularly with TNT Sports. It bodes well for them to say they’re going to figure it out and move forward with their popular Inside the NBA cast, but without the NBA, there are still questions to be answered.
[ The Dan Patrick Show ]
The post Charles Barkley confirms TNT will continue ‘Inside the NBA’: ‘I have zero idea what we’re gonna do’ appeared first on Awful Announcing .
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