A discussion of soap on "Inside The NBA." A discussion of soap on “Inside The NBA.” (NBA on TNT on Twitter.)

A discussion on the Ernie Johnson-Charles Barkley WBD Sports The Steam Room podcast this week led to an unusual revelation from Barkley on his travel habits, especially when it comes to soap. And Johnson smartly asked for more details on what led to this revelation, and got quite the funny answer. And that then led to the clip being played on TNT’s Inside The NBA Thursday, and to fellow analysts Kenny Smith and Shaquille O’Neal having their own remarkable reactions:

The clip here starts with a section from The Steam Room, with a listener voicemail asking Barkley if a bar of soap is dirty or clean once it’s dropped. Barkley says “Soap is always clean,” Johnson says “What if you drop a bar of soap into a sandbox?”, and Barkley says “Now you’re just making stuff up.” But he goes on in a thoroughly unexpected direction from there, saying “You know, I travel with my own soap, you knew that, didn’t you?” Johnson says “Nope,” and Barkley says “I travel with a big bar of soap. I love soap.” Johnson says “Why? Are you afraid it’s not going to be in the hotel? Is there a reason dermatologically that you need a certain soap?” And then this gets real weird.

Barkley says “Nope. These hotels, they started being cheap. Those bars ain’t big enough. Because I almost had a couple accidents with the soap at hotels.” Johnson asks “In what way?”, and Barkley responds “I was washing a part of my body, and I almost had a little incident.” Johnson cracks up and Barkley adds “I almost had an incident with those little bars of soap. I almost lost it, and I was like ‘Whoa, that was too close for comfort!’ So now I travel with my own big bars of soap.”

This then cuts back to the Inside The NBA set, and to Johnson, O’Neal, and Smith all laughing. O’Neal, with his head in his hands, says “We’ll be kicked off the air! Hold on, Chuck, what happened with the soap?” Smith says “I’ve got so many jokes, but I don’t want to get in trouble.” Barkley says “They keep making them hotel bars so tiny, Shaq!” and O’Neal, through his cackles, says “I’m also aware, Chuck.” Smith says “Hey Shaq, I don’t know where he lost it, but I’m still kind of worried that he prefers bigger bars of soap now. That makes me worry too.”

That leads to the shot of the cracking-up cast seen at top, including O’Neal head-desking. And that was a good ending to possibly the funniest, and likely the most extensive, discussion of soap on a national sports broadcast.

[NBA on TNT on Twitter]

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.