“My People At Turner Get To Keep Their Jobs” – Charles Barkley Says He Left $100 Million On The Table Returning To TNT For Another Year

Charles Barkley is looking out for his fellow co-workers.

One of the biggest stories of the NBA off season has not been about where a certain superstar will land, but rather where a beloved TV show could end up after the rights to NBA broadcasts shift around. Following the 2024-25 season, the rights to air some games will continue on ESPN, while others will find new homes on NBC and Amazon Prime Video.

The issue is that Amazon getting the rights to NBA games effectively took them away from TNT, who has been a broadcasting partner of the association for a decade. TNT is also home of Inside The NBA, which features Ernie Johnson, Shaquille O’Neal, Kenny Smith, and Charles Barkley providing pre-game, halftime, and post-game analysis on broadcasted games.

It’s widely renowned as one of the best – if not the best – sports programs on TV.

And even though TNT ended up matching Amazon’s offer to the NBA, the association appears to be leaning towards the future the moving with the streaming service instead of the basic cable channel. TNT is still fighting the decision, and released this statement when it was initially discovered that the NBA didn’t honor their contract match:

So with that disappointing news, many believed that Inside The NBA was in jeopardy, even though TNT retains their broadcasting rights through the end of this next season. However, with only one year guaranteed, there was no promise that Johnson, O’Neal, Smith and Barkley would all stay locked in at TNT, especially with potential suiters pursuing them knowing that they’d be available as soon as 2025.

But from the looks of it, the TNT crew is fighting to stay together, even if it means the show will look a little different. There have been rumblings that Inside the NBA would remain on TNT even after they lost the rights to games, and it’s also been thrown around that the show’s purpose could pivot to a Sportscenter-esque program rather than a pre-game and post-game show.

Regardless of what they ultimately decide to do, the main core of Inside The NBA seems to love what they do and who they work with. A lot of decisions made so far by the show’s hosts have been driven by making sure that their TNT co-workers and crew are taken care of.

In fact, Charles Barkley revealed today that he took a huge pay cut – or at least passed up on a lot of other lucrative offers – to stay with TNT, telling The Dan LeBatard Show with Stugotz:

“The number one thing for me is that my people at Turner get to keep their jobs for at least another year. That’s all I was concerned with. (I left) a minimum of $100 million (on the table). A minimum.”

It’s not often that you see someone in media choose the people they work with over boatloads of money, but Chuck is clearly going against the grain on this one (and he already has a ton of money). Barkley went on to say that the offers he was getting from other networks were staggering, though at the end of the day, he prioritized TNT above everything else:

“It was a great feeling. And I want to thank all of those networks for reaching out to me. It was really humbling and cool to be honest with you. Even though they were throwing crazy numbers, and I was like, ‘Damn,’ as long as I got my people safe at TNT man, I feel really good.

They’re gonna pay me to go and talk about nothing, so I can’t look a gift horse in the mouth. And I probably would have had to do an honest day’s work if I went to one of those other networks.”