Shaquille O’Neal clearly has no patience for Charles Barkley interrupting one of his fellow “Inside the NBA” panelists.
During Tuesday night’s postgame coverage of the Phoenix Suns’ 104-96 win over the Golden State Warriors that aired on TNT, O’Neal once again threatened to throw down over a perceived Barkley transgression.
What set Shaq off was how Sir Charles had the audacity to interrupt Ernie Johnson during an interview with Suns point guard Chris Paul.
“Hey Chris, I just wanna tell you, there’s many nights here we don’t wanna hear Kenny (Smith) either,” Barkley said.
“Charles, don’t interrupt Ernie again,” Shaq countered. “Interrupt Ernie one more time, I’m gonna punch you in the stomach. Interrupt the godfather one more time, I’m gonna stick the bodyguard on you.”
What made the entire scene that much more comical is how Barkley again cut off EJ as he was sending the show to a commercial break. That came after Barkley actually backed down and apologized for his rudeness to Johnson, which in and of itself is a surprise.
The obvious reasonable assumption is that O’Neal’s threat to Barkley was made in jest, but it’s not the first time these two outspoken analysts have engaged in heated debates that led to the former threatening to punch the latter.
What’s more, it was just last June that O’Neal warned Barkley amid a contentious panel discussion during TNT’s coverage of the 2021 NBA playoffs, “Let me finish before you get knocked out.”
In other words, it was more or less business as usual Tuesday night on NBA on TNT, which is of course a good thing given “Inside the NBA” is widely hailed as the best sports studio show in television history.
More must-reads: