It was once feared that Inside the NBA would end at the conclusion of this season, but ESPN has deemed the fan-favorite show too valuable to retire. The sports programming juggernaut swooped in when TNT lost the rights to the show, but Charles Barkley isn’t exactly elated about the change. The Hall of Famer griped about joining ESPN during his recent appearance on the OutKick podcast.
Advertisement
Turner Sports Network notably ceded the rights to Inside despite being responsible for its inception in the 1989-90 season. The show has undergone changes over the decades, namely with its hosts. Since the 2011-12 season, though, Inside has been a consistent source of basketball entertainment starring Ernie Johnson Jr., Charles Barkley, Shaquille O’Neal and Kenny Smith.
Things weren’t always smooth sailing for the crew with TNT, but the change in leadership has Barkley frustrated. The 1993 MVP explained to Dan Dakich that not only does he not know who he’ll be working with at ESPN, but he doesn’t even know how much he’ll be working. The massive number of unanswered questions has Chuck questioning his future in the industry.
“I just want to make sure the people I work with got a job. Like I said … I didn’t know the people I worked for here at Turner were so stupid. They were going to lose the NBA,” Chuck said, sharing that he had planned to pass the torch to Vince Carter or Jamal Crawford in the coming years before everything went down.
Even with his discontent, Barkley has no worries about his job security. “But I’m not going to change my personality … They can’t fire me. I made too much money to get fired … First of all, they’d have to pay me for seven years, and I’m going to quit way before then. But they wanna fire me, I would love for them to do that,” Chuck told Dakich as he flexed his $210 million fortune.
At 62-years-old and with over 20 years in the sports media business, Barkley never planned to spend too much more time working. But his new partnership with ESPN could fast-track his retirement, especially considering what he’s said about the brand in the past. “Not gonna work me like a dog and not pay me,” he said to ESPN in a 2017 segment of Inside.
Chuck has always had a certain level of disdain for ESPN, but he’ll now be forced to make amends with the company’s recent acquisition of his show. The Sixers legend shared that he still plans on retiring within 2-3 years, rather than finish out his contract until 2032. But only time will tell if Barkley can even last that long under these new conditions.
