Charles Barkley gives honest take about ‘Inside The NBA’ moving over to ESPN

Charles Barkley doesn’t want Inside The NBA to change when it moves over to ESPN via licensing on the new NBA television deal. Barkley will now go over to the network, as he revealed he signed his contract.

NBC is back in the NBA television rights, along with ESPN/ABC. The latter has the rights for the long time Turner Sports show. Initially, Barkley didn’t want his workload to increase as he got older.

He’s already been on TV for nearly three decades and he didn’t want to suddenly increase his media exposure. But it seems like Barkley is ready to do whatever it takes to keep the show how it is between him, Shaquille O’Neal, Kenny Smith and host Ernie Johnson.

“I don’t want us to change,” Barkley said on Beadle and Decker. “I mean, one reason the show’s been successful, honestly, I’ll tell you something. I just signed the contract this week. I told myself I’m not going to make a rash decision to just go over to ESPN … I don’t want our show to change. And I don’t want to start doing stupid stuff for TNT, because they’re gonna try to do some on TNT … I’m not exactly sure, because they don’t know what the hell is going on. I don’t know how many games we’re gonna do on ESPN, ABC, but they want to try to do something on Turner. And I was like, we’re not just gonna do something, just to do it, that’s just stupid.” 

Barkley was particularly critical of TNT and the network in general due to not getting a deal together for a new NBA package. It wasn’t about the money or staying on TV for him; it was the 100s of workers behind the scenes.

“And so I actually just signed my contract this week, just to sign off on the deal,” Barkley said. “So they have talked me into it. So I’m looking forward to it, because my main objective was to make sure everybody TNT kept their job. Because, you know, when we lost the NBA, it was hundreds of people gonna lose their jobs and that was my only concern. I wasn’t worried about me, Ernie, Kenny or Shaq. You know, I’ve been there 25 years. I’ve seen some of these people have kids, graduate high school, graduate college and have babies. They’re part of my family.”

How big was the new media deal for the NBA? It was reportedly an 11-year, $76 billion agreement that’ll keep games on ESPN/ABC, in addition to airing them on NBC and Amazon Prime. TNT did not match.

So, Barkley will be on the ESPN family of networks with Inside The NBA. Just don’t expect him to waltz his way into the Get Up or First Take studios.