We now know that while it will still be produced by Warner Bros. Discovery, Inside the NBA will be airing on ESPN after the current NBA season.
This decision, of course came after months of uncertainty about the beloved NBA studio show following the failed bid this summer from Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent company of Turner Sports, for the final piece of the pie in the recently solidified NBA right deal. Charles Barkley has been a star of Inside the NBA since his playing days ended. And while being with the network for more than 20 years would indicate that there’s a strong relationship between Barkley and his bosses at Turner Sports, he recently detailed that things have not gone well of late.
Barkley recently spoke with Kate Constable and Gabe Ramirez, who host The Bettor Angle show on The BetQL Network about the move to ESPN and his time at Turner, saying that he has been “frustrated” about his lack of job security.
“I was never worried about me, Ernie, Kenny, and Shaq because obviously we’re gonna have our opportunities. But it was very frustrating. It’s been frustrating. I’ve never had normal life. I don’t mean that in a negative way. But like, when you talk to people who you are friends with. They’re like ‘Yo man, I’m married, I have kids, I have a mortgage and I’m not gonna have a job in six or seven months.’ That’s like a real thing. That’s like a real thing. I’ve been in the NBA my whole life so I’ve never been around people who have had to worry about their job security. But it was so stressful at work because number one, you could tell we were gonna lose the contract.”
It has been fairly obvious from the constant jokes on Inside The NBA about potentially losing his job dating back to the end of last season that Barkley has indeed been quite stressed over the uncertainty of his career.
Unfortunately, uncertainty also hasn’t been the only problem as of late for Barkley at Turner. Constable, who was an intern at TNT in the summer of 2011, spoke about her experience, calling the brasses at the network “the nicest people in the world”.
“Chuck, I mean, going back to when I was there, they were the nicest people in the world that was the best summer of my life working in Atlanta with a lot of those people,” said Constable.
This is how things used to be at Turner, according to Barkley. Now, he believes that he and others have not “been treated with dignity” due to multiple mergers at the company.
“Kate, it’s not like that now,” said Barkley. “We used to have a great, great organization going to back to Mark Lazarus, who runs NBC now, and David Levy who was a great boss. Our last two mergers have put us in with some people who don’t even treat people with dignity. And it really pisses us off. Turner used to be the greatest place in the world to work. Like you said. But we’ve merged twice, and it seems like the more times we merge, the worse people get treated.”
Barkley went on to share that he was not notified about not getting the NBA media rights deal nor about the move to ESPN, instead learning about the latter by being welcomed by some of his future colleagues.
“I’ll tell you what’s fun. They haven’t even told us we lost the NBA,” added Barkley. “We have to hear it through the media. And even this thing with ABC/ESPN, I heard about it on the internet. Scott Van Pelt, Brian Windhorst, Elle Duncan, Bob Myers, all friend of mine who I really like a lot. They texted me welcoming me to the ESPN family. And I’m like, what happened? TNT didn’t even have the courtesy… Basically we got traded. If I was going to trade somebody that I had respect for and appreciate, I would at least give them a heads up. I wouldn’t let them hear about it from other people or the internet.”
Based on these comments, it sure sounds like the remainder of the season will be an incredibly uncomfortable one for the Inside The NBA cast.
[Audacy Sports on YouTube]
