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TNT Sports CEO Luis Silberwasser doesn’t mind criticism from Charles Barkley.
The Basketball Hall of Famer and longtime analyst for TNT recently criticized the company in an appearance on The Bill Simmons Podcast last week for its handling of Inside the NBA.
This season the show will appear on ESPN for the first time after TNT Sports lost its rights to the NBA in the league’s media-rights agreement, which was finalized last year.
Barkley said he and his crew, which also includes Ernie Johnson, Kenny Smith, and Shaquille O’Neal, have yet to be given details on how the show will work on ESPN. TNT usually lets its cast talk for 10 or more minutes without commercial interruption, while ESPN tends to cut to SportsCenter after an NBA game and has a shorter halftime show with more breaks.
“TNT just sucks, to be honest with you,” Barkley said. “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.”
Inside the NBA aired on TNT for 36 years before the NBA’s media-rights deal expired at the end of the 2024–25 season. After TNT Sports lost the rights, it reached a deal with ESPN in November to license the show to the network.
Barkley said he found out about the new arrangement when he received welcome texts from ESPN employees the day it was announced and didn’t hear from TNT for two hours.
“I’ve really grown to hate the people I work for, to be honest with you,” Barkley added on his podcast appearance. “Because there’s a way you [should] treat people. We should not learn that we got fired or whatever from the internet.”
Silberwasser has no issues with Barkley’s comments.
“Charles is Charles,” Silberwasser said Tuesday at the Front Office Sports Tuned In summit in New York. “I think he is the personality that he is because of the way that he in many ways expresses what comes to his mind. … And it is one of the reasons why he’s so good at the end of the day, right? I don’t take things that he says very personally. I mean, I think we would be on medication if every time he says something like that we have to take it personally.”
Silberwasser said he understands the questions and concerns that come up with the show given the change it’s undergoing but doesn’t expect the product to be different. He also expects any concerns to be assuaged as the show gets closer to air.
“At the end of the day, you have to sort of step back a little bit and think about the change that is happening,” Silberwasser said. “We understand sort of the need for everything to be sort of the same as it was before. But it’s not going to be the same as it was before in many ways, right? We’re producing the show for ESPN. What I can guarantee everybody is that it’s going to be the same show. It’s going to be the same values and the same DNA that the show had before. It’s going to be [on] a different network.”
