Charles Barkley Dan Patrick

Turner Sports NBA analyst Charles Barkley is known for making plenty of controversial comments, but he came up with one that was notable even by his standards Thursday. At the end of a long 40-minute in-studio interview on NBCSN/Audience’s The Dan Patrick Show, which covered everything from golfing with Michael Jordan to Michigan’s plane crash to Saturday Night Live and marijuana, Barkley told Patrick that if he was dying, one of his final acts would be to kill Skip Bayless on live TV. Here’s the clip (the key part starts at 40:50):

Here’s a transcription, via Dime Mag:

Barkley: “You know what we should do for ratings? If I get a disease and I’m gonna die, how about you get Skip Bayless in here and I’ll kill him live on national television.”

Patrick: “I like it. Like pay-per-view.”

Barkley: “No, no, no. Just get him in here. Only when I know Imma die….Cause I just want to get Skip Bayless in a room one time and beat him like a dog.”

Patrick: “So you’d kill him.”

Barkley: “Yes. Only if I knew I was gonna die. Not if I’m gonna live, cause I don’t wanna go to prison. Cause like Mahorn say, ‘they would love you in prison.’”

That’s quite the quote. Barkley is obviously being pretty light-hearted here, and hey, the idea of killing someone on TV for ratings is not new. Barkley also has made it clear before he doesn’t like Bayless, so that’s not entirely revelatory. But still, this is quite the thing for one member of the media to say about another one on national TV and radio. It’s unlikely anything further comes of it, but it definitely provided an interesting quote.

[Dime Mag]

About Andrew Bucholtz

Andrew Bucholtz has been covering sports media for Awful Announcing since 2012. He is also a staff writer for The Comeback. His previous work includes time at Yahoo! Sports Canada and Black Press.