Charles Barkley has never minced words, and in his latest interview, he took some direct shots at both TNT and the NBA.
Speaking on Tuesday’s episode of The Bill Simmons Podcast, Barkley said that TNT has not been communicative about how it will approach its NBA coverage for the upcoming season. Front Office Sports reported that the network has licensed Inside the NBA to ESPN after TNT lost broadcasting rights to the NBA.
“TNT just sucks to be honest with you. They made this deal. They haven’t told us when we’re going to work. They haven’t told us how it’s going to work,” Barkley said.
TNT normally allows the crew of Barkley, Ernie Johnson, Kenny Smith, and Shaquille O’Neal to run segments of the studio show for ten or more minutes without commercial interruptions. ESPN normally cuts to SportsCenter after an NBA game, while its halftime show is mostly made up of short segments separated by commercial breaks.
“I’ve really grown to hate the people I work for, to be honest with you. Because there’s a way you [should] treat people. We should not learn that we got fired or whatever from the internet,” Barkley said.
He went on to say that he found out about the news that Inside the NBA was being licensed by ESPN after he received welcome texts from four ESPN talents.
“About two hours later, I get a call from TNT. … How about if y’all signed the deal, call us four immediately and say, ‘Hey guys, we got a deal to trade y’all’s show to ESPN,’” Barkley said.
The 62-year-old also said that he nearly took a more lucrative offer to move to NBC, which included the entire Inside the NBA crew, but chose to stay when he realized that NBC was asking him to work on other events like the Kentucky Derby and Olympics. Barkley has said previously that he wants to work less, and even said last year he was going to retire from broadcasting, before reversing course months later.
Shots at the NBA
Barkley criticized the NBA for its media-rights deal: an 11-year, $77 billion deal with ESPN, Amazon, and NBC Universal that includes several exclusively streamed games on Prime Video and Peacock.
“I think the NBA has a big problem. How are they going to tell people which night the games are on?” Barkley said.
The NBA announced the full schedule for the 2025–26 season last month, which includes an additional 75 national games—though the count includes exclusively streamed games. By February, around when football season ends, there will be a national NBA game on every day of the week that will rotate between the three partners.
Barkley and Simmons agreed the league simply took the deal that offered them the largest payday without thinking about the experience for fans.
“I think it’s a big deal because they just took the money from all three networks. … For the next 11 years, they don’t give a shit about the fans,” Barkley said.
