The era of Inside the NBA on TNT seems to be over, and Charles Barkley is not happy about it.
The NBA legend appeared Thursday on The Dan Patrick Show and ripped into TNT executives for having “screwed this thing up,” saying Warner Bros. Discovery’s seemingly botched effort to retain its NBA games has left staff morale low—and Barkley’s anger high, just a week after appearing on stage during the company’s upfront presentation to advertisers to represent TNT Sports.
“I don’t feel good, I’m not gonna lie—especially when they came out and said we bought college football. I was like, ‘Well damn, they could’ve used that money to buy the NBA,’” the Inside the NBA host said, referring to a deal announced Wednesday for TNT Sports to license college football playoff games from ESPN.
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The current deal structure for the NBA rights has Disney holding the “A” rights to the games, which includes the NBA Finals, and TNT holding the “B” package. Public reports indicate that Disney would retain the “A” package at double its cost while NBC Sports and Amazon are in the running for carved-up tiers of games. Warner Bros. Discovery may then try and match any of the offers, with its eyes potentially on Amazon’s bid, according to CNBC.
Barkley chastised Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav for a November 2022 remark he made that the company didn’t “need” the NBA, saying it likely “pissed” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver off.
“My two favorite wines are Inglenook and Opus, and these clowns I work for, they turned us into Ripple, and Boone’s Farm, and Thunderbird,” Barkley said. “Like, we got the best studio show—and it’s funny [because] we just won the best studio show [at the Sports Emmys] — but these fools turned us from Inglenook and Opus into damn Boone’s Farm and Ripple. It’s crazy.”
He also didn’t outright reject some internet proposals that he license the show elsewhere.
“I have my own production company, I would love to do that if we lose it,” Barkley said. “But I have definitely had—actually somebody suggested that to me, to be honest with you, on the internet—‘so why doesn’t Charles Barkley sign these three, guys four guys total to his production company and sell it?’ I’m like, ‘That’s a great idea.’”
