Charles Barkley and Dick Vitale were on the call together alongside Brian Anderson for truTV’s coverage of Texas’s victory over NC State in the First Four round of the NCAA tournament on Tuesday night.
It didn’t take much effort to pair the legendary analysts. After the news broke in late 2024 that ESPN would license the iconic Inside the NBA studio show from TNT, Barkley and Vitale were talking with each other and came up with the idea of working together on some games.
“It was pretty easy on both sides. It came together pretty quickly because we all looked at each other and thought this is a really good idea and we should take advantage of this,” ESPN SVP of production Tim Corrigan, who oversees the network’s NBA coverage, told Front Office Sports.
“When you have two legends and they’re synonymous with the sport of basketball, pro and college, there’s always going to be an intrigue and an interest on both sides.”
CBS was also looped into the discussions, as Warner Bros. Discovery Sports partners with the network on the NCAA tournament. The two might be a combined entity by next year’s March Madness, as Paramount is set to purchase WBD pending regulatory approval.
Tuesday night’s First Four matchup was the second game Barkley and Vitale worked together after they previously called Indiana-Kentucky alongside Dave O’Brien on ESPN in December. Notably, it was also the first NCAA tournament game that the 86-year-old Vitale had called in his storied broadcasting career. CBS had explored the possibility of adding the former Detroit coach to its coverage in the past, but it never came to fruition.
“Obviously, Dick and Charles know each other and have respected each other for a long time, but the idea of bringing them together, as we saw earlier this year, was an absolute treat,” Corrigan said. “There was a lot of the history of the game that went through my mind listening to these guys call the game together.”
ESPN is licensing Inside the NBA—with Ernie Johnson, Barkley, Shaquille O’Neal, and Kenny Smith—for 20 dates this regular season as part of a deal that came together after WBD lost its NBA media rights. In return, TNT got the rights to a number of Big 12 football and basketball games.
ESPN decided to backload the shows for late in the season, so the frequency has been picking up as the NBA approaches the playoffs, and they will be on each time ESPN or ABC has live postseason coverage. This will be the first time Inside the NBA has been on for the NBA Finals.
“We can’t wait. They just finished a run for the last several weeks where they’ve been doing Friday, Saturday, Sunday, which is unlike what they’ve done in the past and probably a little bit more akin to the playoffs,” Corrigan said.
“We’re finding a rhythm. The show really hasn’t changed if you look closely at it, and we’ve made a point of giving them a runway to make sure that it doesn’t change. We loved what it was when we got it and we want to keep it that way.”
