Hockey is one of the fastest-growing sports in the United States right now. Its blend of violence, action, entertainment and sheer chaos — the equivalent of soccer on ice — is so fun that it is now finding a market in people who barely cared about the sport before. Included in that group of newcomers are Charles Barkley and Ernie Johnson. Not included, according to his cohosts, is the loudest, most outspoken member of Inside the NBA on TNT, Shaquille O’Neal.
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The pair of puckheads spent a portion of their podcast, The Steam Room, talking about their love of hockey and their disappointment in Shaq and Kenny Smith after the two failed to appreciate an earlier opportunity to meet and hang out with Wayne Gretzky, or even meaningfully engage with The Great One’s sport.
Until relatively recently, hockey has not been mainstream in the same way basketball, football and baseball have been. It was Gretzky’s heroics as a four-time Stanley Cup champion with the Edmonton Oilers and his 1993 Cup contention with the Los Angeles Kings that popularized the sport in California and helped advance it across the States.
Despite the boom in fan interest, Shaq and Kenny had no real idea what was going on. As Chuck put it, “First of all, Kenny and Shaq have never watched a hockey game in their entire lives. This is zero plus zero. Shaq has never watched a hockey game in his life … so I didn’t know a thing about hockey til I got to Philadelphia, and … I love the sport.”
O’Neal and Smith’s lack of knowledge was also a lack of interest, it seems. During a 2021 episode of NBA on TNT on which Gretzky made a guest appearance, both Shaq and Kenny kept messing around and refusing to take the segment seriously. While the pucks were lined up for a shooting challenge, Shaq could not stop needling Chuck. “He don’t know what he’s doing,” yelled Barkley.
“I’m like the Black Marty McSorley … All I wanna do is fight. I don’t want to play hockey,” responded Shaq, as he playfully attacked Barkley.
It was clear that the only one of the four hosts who had actually played was Ernie, who demonstrated how to get the puck in the air on his shot attempts. Meanwhile, Barkley continued to go at Shaq as the two are wont to do.
Chuck’s Steam Room slant that O’Neal knows nothing about hockey and had never even watched a game is a little contradictory.
Shaq has shown up on NHL on TNT often. In fact, he once had Barkley in tow. The two have both very clearly watched hockey, and they have done so in each other’s presence! For Barkley to claim the opposite — and Johnson forget to correct him — was a baffling miss from both commentators.
As hockey continues to grow in popularity, we’ll likely get more moments like these. It’s a truly fun sport that’s worth watching, but some on the set of Inside the NBA certainly need remedial lessons. Maybe someday we’ll even see Shaq in ice skates.
