Over the past several years, TNT Sports analyst Charles Barkley has had lots of criticisms of San Francisco. His latest came on the truTV alternate broadcast of the NBA All-Star Game Sunday night. There, Barkley was paired with Taylor Rooks and Draymond Green (with Jamal Crawford as a roaming sideline reporter).
At the end of the third quarter, Barkley, Rooks, and Green had a crossover exchange with the main booth of Brian Anderson, Reggie Miller, and Candace Parker (with Allie LaForce as the sideline reporter for that broadcast). There, after some discussions of the cold in Indianapolis, Barkley weighed in to bash San Francisco out of nowhere:
Charles Barkley again bashed San Francisco, this time around talk of the cold in Indianapolis. "If you had the chance between being cold or being around a bunch of homeless crooks in San Francisco, which would you take?" pic.twitter.com/o0W9aUQCyI
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) February 19, 2024
The “being around a bunch of homeless crooks” line Barkley dropped there drew quite the reactions from everyone else on the background, including Green (who, of course, plays in San Francisco for the Warriors). Rooks said “We love San Francisco,” Barkley said, “No, we don’t,” Green said “Yes, we do,” and Barkley said “You can’t even walk around down there.” Green said “Yes, you can walk around there!” and Barkley said “Yeah, with a bulletproof vest.” Anderson then told Barkley he should have used his cough button to keep those comments off-air: “Just hold that down.”
As noted above, this isn’t the first time Barkley has gone off on San Francisco on a NBA broadcast. He notably did so in 2022 on a NBA on TNT Warriors game against the Dallas Mavericks, saying “All that dirtiness and homelessness, man, you got to clean it off the streets.” And he criticized San Francisco on-air Saturday night as well. So this is far from new for him.
And Barkley has used plenty of strong language before on many fronts. That included calling NCAA leadership “boneheads” earlier Sunday. But still, “homeless crooks” is quite a thing to say on a national TV broadcast of a basketball game.
[Awful Announcing on Twitter]
