The future of Inside the NBA and Charles Barkley are up in the air as TNT Sports sorts out its legal dispute with the NBA, but ESPN commentator and fellow hooper Jay Williams is already pledging to put his money behind a potential Barkley-led media company.
During a recent panel conversation with Front Office Sports, Williams made the case for Inside to go independent and explained why he would invest in their company in a heartbeat.
“Chuck is one of the most talented people there is in sports,” Williams said. “Why work with a media company, why just not build your own? Shaquille O’Neal and his relationships that he has with a lot of his different partners, I think he’s brilliant. Kenny Smith sitting on multiple boards, Charles Barkley and his reach, why just not form your own entity? I would invest in that in a heartbeat.”
While the elder Barkley may be the biggest draw and most highly paid of the group, Williams makes a great case for how each of the three retired NBA stars on Inside could combine their powers to be a pretty darn attractive media entity.
As for the show itself, once the hypothetical new company raised money, it could produce Inside by itself and license the show to one of the league’s media partners.
“Why wouldn’t you just license that programming back to an Amazon?” Williams suggested. “To me, there’s really no other way they should be doing it other than that way.”
Barkley has never publicly entertained the idea of producing Inside the NBA independently, and most assume that Ernie Johnson will remain at TNT regardless of the show’s fate or whether the network airs the NBA. But Williams can’t be the only one who would jump at the opportunity to get in business with one of the most iconic sports personalities of all time.
