Draymond Green has logged enough hours on the Inside the NBA set to be anointed Charles Barkley’s heir apparent in some media circles, but he’s not about to crown himself.
With Barkley reiterating this week that the 2026-27 season will be his swan song on the show, Green was asked in a recent interview with Front Office Sports whether he harbored any ambition of inheriting one of the most coveted chairs in sports media. The Warriors forward, who has become the program’s go-to understudy whenever a regular is absent, credited TNT Sports chief content officer Craig Barry and the production team for embracing him, and pointed to his run on the show during this year’s playoffs and All-Star Weekend.
“I’ve been incredibly fortunate that Craig Barry and the entire team at formerly Turner Sports, but you know, at Turner, that they took a liking to me and they appreciate what I bring to the table, what I bring to the show,” said Green. “And they’ve had me on during playoffs, All-Star. I mean, I’m still kicking myself that I did the NBA Finals with them this past year.”
Despite years of speculation casting him as Barkley’s natural successor, and despite a résumé of fill-in appearances that now stretches from the regular season to the Finals, Green was adamant the chair isn’t his to claim, and he took issue with the premise that anyone could step into it.
“It’s not my place or role to say, like, yeah, that’s the seat I’m filling,” he said. “I just don’t make that decision. You know, Charles Barkley is a legend. So to even think that you’re filling his seat, I think that’s a grave mistake. You never replace superstars in the NBA. Michael Jordan still hasn’t been replaced in Chicago some 30 years later. You don’t replace greatness. You don’t replace GOATs.”
Barkley has flirted with retirement for years, but he’s sounded unusually resolute this time. Earlier this month, he told Bill Simmons that the coming season would be his last “100 percent,” and on Monday, he told WSFA 12 News in Alabama that he was planning to step back from public life at age 64, adding that Ernie Johnson had persuaded him to stay on for two more seasons. Johnson’s own future remains unresolved.
Any network hoping to fill Barkley’s void, he said, should look for someone with the conviction to establish a voice of their own, because a talent like Chuck, “a one-of-one” in his words, is impossible to recreate in the aggregate. Ultimately, that choice rests with the executives at TNT Sports and ESPN, not Green, whose more pressing concern is proving Barkley wrong about the Warriors.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.