It didn’t take long for pundits to find issue with the new-look Dallas Mavericks, with Charles Barkley lambasting the franchise’s use of No. 1 overall draft pick Cooper Flagg in his debut.
Flagg got off to slow start in the first half with zero points, while initiating the offense at times in a role that Barkley, the NBA Hall of Famer and “Inside the NBA” commentator, said misused the Duke product.
“The Dallas Mavericks trying to outthink everybody, think they the smartest dude in the world and realized it’s just basketball,” Barkley said. “They need a point guard, first of all. Cooper Flagg, he only got two attempts. Why’s he only got two attempts? They got him trying to initiate the offense. Man, start D’Angelo Russell till Kyrie [Irving] comes back. These guys always wanna act like lets reinvent the wheel. Man, it’s basketball. … They didn’t even put Cooper Flagg in a position to be successful.”
Flagg eventually scored the first bucket of his NBA career at the beginning of the first half, a top of the key jump shot off a handoff from Dereck Lively.
The Mavs started Flagg, Klay Thompson, PJ Washington, Anthony Davis and Lively. With Kyrie Irving not expected back till January, head coach Jason Kidd has been vocal about Flagg playing point guard.
Kenny Smith agreed with Barkley, arguing that Flagg shouldn’t be concerned about the duties of a point guard and that he should instead be focused on offensive rebounding, finishing and cutting, saying those are the things he’ll be great at.
Lawrence Dow is a digital sports reporter from Philadelphia. He graduated with a master’s degree in journalism from USC. He’s passionate about movies and is always looking for a great book. He covers the Texas Rangers and other sports.
Charles Barkley is blasting the NBA’s move to snub a broadcast deal from Warner Bros. Discovery to continue airing games in favor of teaming with Amazon, claiming the pro basketball league is choosing money over fans.
The NBA announced this week that it had inked 11-year agreements to air games on Amazon Prime Video, Disney and NBC. Warner Bros. owns cable channel TNT, which has carried NBA games for nearly four decades as well as “Inside the NBA,” an Emmy-award winning show hosted by Barkley, Ernie Johnson, Shaquille O’Neal and Kenny Smith.
“Clearly, the NBA has wanted to break up with us from the beginning,” Barkley wrote in a social media post on Friday. “I’m not sure TNT ever had a chance. TNT matched the money. The league knows Amazon and these tech companies are the only ones willing to pay for the rights when they double in the future. The NBA didn’t want to piss them off.”
“It’s a sad day when owners and commissioners choose money over the fans,” he added. “It just sucks.”
(L-R) Shaquille O’Neal, Ernie Johnson Jr., Kenny Smith and Charles Barkley speak onstage an NBA awards banquet on June 25, 2018, in Santa Monica, Calif.
Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Turner Sports
The NBA didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about Barkley’s statement.
Warner Bros. files suit
Warner Bros. Discovery isn’t taking the rejection lying down. The media giant on Friday filed a lawsuit against the NBA in New York state court in Manhattan. It is requesting an order to delay the league’s new deal from taking effect for the 2025-26 season, along with a judgment that Warner Bros. Discovery matched Amazon Prime Video’s offer.
The company also claims that its existing agreement with the NBA gives it the right to match any competing offers to broadcast games, according to the suit.
“Given the NBA’s unjustified rejection of our matching of a third-party offer, we have taken legal action to enforce our rights,” TNT Sports said in a statement. “We strongly believe this is not just our contractual right, but also in the best interest of fans who want to keep watching our industry-leading NBA content with the choice and flexibility we offer them through our widely distributed WBD video-first distribution platforms — including TNT and Max.”
NBA spokesman Mike Bass said in a statement that Warner Bros. Discovery’s claims are “without merit” and that “our lawyers will address them.”
The NBA’s new broadcast pact leaves the fate of “Inside the NBA” unclear. The new deals means that games will be televised on a mix of both broadcast TV and streaming services, including Amazon Prime as well as Peacock and ESPN’s upcoming standalone streaming service, expected to launch in 2025. The agreements are worth a combined $76 billion, according to the Associated Press.
In an interview with The Athletic, Barkley said Friday he will continue his 10-year, $210 million contract with TNT Sports or consider offers from Amazon, ESPN or NBC.
Aimee Picchi is the associate managing editor for CBS MoneyWatch, where she covers business and personal finance. She previously worked at Bloomberg News and has written for national news outlets including USA Today and Consumer Reports.
Sir Charles Barkley, formerly known best for his dominance on the basketball court, has had quite an interesting career since hanging up the hi-tops.
The NBA Hall of Fame power forward has been gracing television sets since the year 2000. This time, though, he’s losing a show rather than gaining one.
The Bread Truck’s latest venture was a weekly show on CNN called King Charles, co-hosted with Gayle King. While not a bad idea in principle – call-in shows can be wildly entertaining – in practice, it didn’t work out.
The New York Post reports that new episodes of King Charles were handily beaten in the ratings by reruns of Friends and South Park. It seems not even the nation’s airports could keep The Round Mound of Rebound afloat.
To Barkley’s eye, the fault lay with his busy schedule. More likely, it is simply a victim of CNN’s disastrous ratings in general. All this, despite a CNN spox claiming that viewers were young, affluent, and diverse.
The Gayle King/Charles Barkley CNN show has been cancelled after just six months. A ratings disaster. Charles is great on TNT with Kenny and Shaq, but pairing him with the patently-overrated Gayle King was a horrible (Chuck voice) idea from the get-go. https://t.co/w2n54cZban
Barkley landed in hot water on the show when he recently said he wanted to assault black people who are fans of President Donald Trump.
What got under Barkley’s skin was apparently Trump’s claim that he got street cred in the black community due to his epic mugshot. “It’s incredible, black people walking around with my mugshots!” Trump told a rally.
Barkley was less than impressed. One may even say he was triggered.
“First of all, I’m just gonna say this: if I see a black person walking around with Trump’s mugshot, I’m [gonna] punch him in the face,” the original Dream Team member told CNN’s Gayle King.
King’s gentle reminder that he’d be facing assault charges was no deterrent for Barkley.
“I will bail myself out and go celebrate,” he quipped.
Watch:
NEW: CNN CANCELS Charles Barkley and Gayle King’s weekly show ‘King Charles’ after 6 months because of LOW ratings
‘King Charles’ was the lowest-rated prime time weeknight series debut for CNN in at least a decade
Hall of Famer Charles Barkley indicated he’d like to punch some black people who support Donald Trump in the face. Barkley was responding to comments made recently by the former President who suggested the black community embraced his infamous mugshot photo.
“When I did the mug shot in Atlanta, that mug shot is No. 1,” Trump said at the Black Conservative Federation’s annual Honors Gala. “You know who embraced it more than anyone else? The black population.”
“It’s incredible. Black people walking around with my mugshots!”
“First of all, I’m just gonna say this: if I see a black person walking around with Trump’s mugshot, I’m [gonna] punch him in the face,” the original Dream Team member told CNN’s Gayle King.
King’s gentle reminder that he’d be facing assault charges was no deterrent for Barkley.
“I will bail myself out and go celebrate,” he quipped.
“If I see a Black person walking around with a Trump mug shot, I’m gonna punch him in the face.” – Charles Barkley pic.twitter.com/g8sbf4AEMy
Barkley continued his tirade toward Trump for the mugshot remarks.
“If I was at that conference I would have got up and walked out. That was an insult to all black people,” he insisted. “To compare black history, when we’ve been discriminated against, to his plight – first of all he’s a billionaire, and they’re prosecuting him for stuff he did wrong.”
Fortunately, those in attendance at the gala are not nearly as easily triggered as Charles Barkley apparently is. Additionally, there is an element of truth to what Trump said.
Craig Scott, a man freed from prison in 2019 by a criminal justice reform bill signed into law by Trump, said the Republican’s mugshot gives him more “street cred” with those who have dealt with the justice system.
In a Newsweek op-ed column Scott, who described himself as a ‘Black Robinhood’, argued “Trump’s repeated run-ins with the law, and what seems like an unfair obsession with catching him and punishing him disproportionately for his so-called ‘crimes,’ reminds a lot of us of what was done to us.”
“He’s literally been in my shoes. No other president can brag on that,” added Scott. “And believe me, he will brag about it.”
Trump called The New York Times journalist to talk about his multiple civil and criminal cases. But much of what the Republican 2024 front-runner said “I didn’t report on,” Haberman told Gayle King and Charles Barkley on Wednesday’s episode of CNN’s “King Charles.”
Haberman recalled Trump being “very upset” about some of her reporting in her 2022 book “Confidence Man: The Making Of Donald Trump And The Breaking Of America.”
Allegations in the book included him flushing papers down White House toilets and having a racist response to staff members of color, which prompted him to repeatedly slam Haberman as “Maggot.”
But Trump will “always engage with a reporter eventually if he sees some reason to,” Haberman explained to King and Barkley.
“I was writing a story about how politics and the courts are going to converge again,” she said. Most of Trump’s comments “I didn’t report on” but “he thinks he’s his own best comms director and his own best defender and you’ll see more of that I suspect.”
Haberman also predicted a grim few months ahead of the 2024 election.
“I think this is going to be a pretty bleak campaign on many levels,” the New York Times journalist told Gayle King and Charles Barkley on Wednesday’s episode of CNN’s “King Charles.”
“I just think that the way our campaigns are fought now are all about who you hate and who hates you back and I think you are going to see that to the nth degree in 2024,” she said.
Sixty nights a year, basketball legend Charles Barkley is the go-to guy on TNT’s Inside
the NBA. He shares with Jon Wertheim how he transitioned from playing on the court to
analyzing the game.
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.
In his hall of fame NBA career, Charles Barkley accumulated 12,546 rebounds, but he pulled the ultimate rebound when he finished playing, equaling—maybe even eclipsing—his considerable skills on a basketball court, with his singular talent in a TV studio. For the last 23 years, Barkley has been delivering witty, blunt, provocative opinions on every imaginable topic, often imparted with a smile; always imparted with i-don’t-give-a-damn-if-you-agree-with-me candor. Imagine Mark Twain with a low-post game.
As we first reported in March, despite his lack of a tongue editor, maybe because of it, Barkley, now 60, seems cancel-proof, granted license to go right up to that midcourt line of acceptability, even to stomp over it sometimes. It’s made him more relevant than ever. It’s made him more money than he ever earned playing basketball. It’s made him—dare we say it?— an American treasure.
Jon Wertheim: Why do you suppose people wanna listen to you?
Charles Barkley: (laughs) I think they know that I’m gonna be honest, I’m gonna be fair, I don’t have a hidden agenda. Not many people on TV that you can say that about.
Sixty nights a year, Charles Barkley is the go-to guy on TNT’s “Inside the NBA”
A pathbreaking, Emmy-dominating show that makes for riveting, unscripted TV.
Charles Barkley getting ready to go on air.
60 Minutes
Jon Wertheim: You have fun up there?
Charles Barkley: It’s just basketball! (laugh) We’re not solvin’ inflation, we didn’t just get back from Afghanistan.
Jon Wertheim: But you’re not a used car salesman either. I mean, if a game’s no good, you’ll admit it, you’ll say it.
Charles Barkley: Oh yeah, because the fan, the fans ain’t stupid. They just saw it. If I tell them that was a good game, they’re gonna be like, ‘What the hell is Charles (laugh) talkin’ about?’
Jon Wertheim: You said sometimes you’ve even fallen asleep on the set
Charles Barkley: Oh, I fall asleep, like, just sittin’ there watchin’, like, ‘Yo, man, this is just bad basketball.’
This is what America has come to expect from Charles Barkley.
Ernie Johnson: For Chuck, it’s just, ‘I’m gonna let it fly. And if you don’t like it, tough.’
Ernie Johnson is the longtime host of “Inside the NBA.”
Jon Wertheim: How many times do you say, ‘Where- where’s this goin’?
Ernie Johnson: We’ll start a show and Charles will look at me and say, ‘I gotta get somethin’ off my chest (laugh.) It could be something that involves world peace, or the Brooklyn Nets or it could be somethin’– he could be upset that his plumber showed up late, (laugh) and he just has to get it off his chest.
Charles Barkley
60 Minutes
But if Barkley brings levity, he also brings gravity.
Memphis Grizzlies star, Ja Morant, was suspended in March after this Instagram live video showed him flashing a gun at a strip club. Barkley used it to make a broader point.
Charles Barkley on TNT: Guns, especially in the Black community, the way we killing each other, is just really unfortunate and sad. And we got to – it’s always been a problem, but it seem like it’s gotten worse in the last few years – Black on Black crime and the way we’ve been killing each other.
Barkley may be at his most visible in the studio in Atlanta, but for a fuller sense of the man, head two hours west to his hometown of Leeds, Alabama.
Charles Barkley: I’m tellin’ y’all, I did not name the street after myself.
Jon Wertheim: You didn’t lobby for Charles Barkley Avenue?
Charles Barkley: I did not lobby for Charles Barkley Avenue.
Charles Barkley Avenue in Leeds, Alabama
60 Minutes
We interviewed Barkley in the home he still keeps in town. It’s a few hundred yards from where he grew up.
Jon Wertheim: You were angry that your dad left the family when you were 1 years old.
Charles Barkley: I was very angry. And I was even angrier cause he kept sayin’ he was gonna send us money, and he didn’t do it. ‘Cause like, you know, my mom and grandma were workin’ their behinds off. And the thing that was really bad about it, I was standin’ by the mailbox, like, once every three or four months.
Jon Wertheim: Waitin’ for the checks.
Charles Barkley: Yes, but they never came.
His indomitable grandma, Johnnie Mae, who helped raise him, still inspires stories when Charles and his buddies get together in Leeds.
Kenneth Venue: Shoot, Granny was the real deal (laughs)
Male voice: Actually, Charles is the spittin’ image of Granny, really.
Charles Barkley: So, we were really poor. We didn’t know at the time. So to make ends meet, she sold alcohol (laughter).
Jon Wertheim: Where? (laugh)
Charles Barkley: In, in, in the house.
Male voice: Called the shot house.
Jon Wertheim: Out of your house?
Charles Barkley: Yeah. So people would come over Friday and Saturday and play cards. Everybody starts drinkin’. Once somebody lose their money, there’s gonna be a fight. (LAUGH) So my grandmother, this little old lady, she’s walkin’ around with a six-shooter. (LAUGH) And she’s keepin’ the peace. I didn’t even know any better, Jon. I thought this was normal stuff.
Jon Wertheim: Woah…
Charles Barkley: Yeah. Think it’s time for a new floor (laughs)
Jon Wertheim and Charles Barkley walk through Leeds, Alabama
60 Minutes
Barkley also took us to his old junior high gym. It stands (barely) as a symbol of how far he’s come.
Jon Wertheim: 14, 15-year-old Charles Barkley walking in here. Who’s that kid?
Charles Barkley: He’s a 5’9″, 5’10”, big boned, not fat, big boned, chubby, whatever word you wanna use. I’m a 5’10” backup point guard.
Jon Wertheim: You remember s– specific plays and shots from playin’ here? Tie game. We got you on the wing.
Charles Barkley: No. Well, first of all, if it was tie game, I’m not gonna be in the game. Let’s (laugh) get that out– let’s get that out the way.
A six-inch growth spurt helped turn Barkley into a high school basketball star, but his formative teenage experience came at the school football stadium.
Charles Barkley: Wow.
This is where he stood along, at a distance, watching his classmates graduate.
Charles Barkley: I flunked Spanish, so I didn’t graduate. I was at home all by myself, devastated. And I drove around the backside here, and I stood here for two hours and watched the graduation. And I cried the whole time. Even now, it’s kinda hittin’ me in a, in the heart a little bit. Man, what a traumatic night that was.
Jon Wertheim: You remember the name of the teacher?
Charles Barkley: Ms. Gomez. I’ll never forget that. And Ms. Gomez, when I go back and think, was one of the sweetest, kindest people I’d ever met in my life. But in that moment, I was so mad ’cause, you know, (LAUGH) I wanted to throw my hat in the air too.
He graduated, thanks to summer school.
At Auburn, he was a star, yes, for his skills, but also for his heroic appetite. He embraced his nickname: the Round Mound of Rebound.
Drafted in 1984, he became a charismatic NBA star, for the Philadelphia 76ers.
He’s the shortest man ever to lead the NBA in rebounding, proof that— for all Barkley’s yuks—he played with fury.
Charles Barkley: I was playing to stick it to my dad, Miss Gomez, and some of the kids who had made fun of me, instead of just wantin’ to be great at basketball.
Jon Wertheim: What’s firing up this furnace is the anger you have for your Spanish teacher that flunked you.
Charles Barkley: Yes.
Jon Wertheim: And your dad.
Charles Barkley: Yes, 100 percent.
Jon Wertheim: What caused you to flush out this anger and get motivated for a different reason?
Charles Barkley: The spittin’ incident in New Jersey.
In 1991, he spat at a heckler and inadvertently hit a young girl. He calls it the low point of his career.
Charles Barkley: I got suspended, rightfully so. I was sittin’ in my hotel room, and I was like, ‘You are the biggest loser in the world.’ I, I remember saying ‘This is it tonight.’
Jon Wertheim: Meaning what?
Charles Barkley: I am only gonna play basketball ’cause I’m great at it, and I love to play. I’m getting’ all the dirt off my shoulders. Ms. Gomez, bye! Dad, BYE! That was really the turning point for me.
Barkley was the NBA’s MVP in 1993 for the Phoenix Suns. And then, months after retiring in 2000, he embarked on a broadcasting career.
Full disclosure, you may have seen him on this network working March Madness.
Jon Wertheim: What do you make of the college game today?
Charles Barkley: It’s a travesty and a disgrace. I’m so mad now how we can mess up somethin’ that’s so beautiful.
Jon Wertheim: How’d we mess it up?
Charles Barkley: We can’t pay all these players.
Barkley hates the new, wild west of college sports where players go to the schools that can bid the highest.
Charles Barkley: In the next three to five years, we’re gonna have 25 schools that’s gonna dominate the sports ’cause they can afford players, and these schools who can’t afford or won’t pay players are gonna be irrelevant.
Almost a quarter century since Barkley last played, his opinions, free of varnish, still matter.
His takes don’t always go over well. Kevin Durant, a perennial all-star, once said of Barkley, ‘I don’t know why they still ask for this idiot’s opinion.’
Jon Wertheim: Kevin Durant.
Charles Barkley: He’s very sensitive. Great player. He’s part of that generation who think he can’t be criticized. He’s never looked in the mirror and said, ‘Man, was that a fair criticism?’
Jon Wertheim: We’re in agreement today’s players are a little more sensitive to criticism than your generation
Charles Barkley: That would be a understatement.
Jon Wertheim: Today’s players take offense, but so have players from your generation. It’s been, been a while since you and Michael Jordan spoke.
Charles Barkley: Michael disagreed with somethin’ I said, and he broke off the friendship.
Born three days apart, Barkley and Jordan were once the best of friends, but as Jordan struggled as owner of the Charlotte Hornets, Barkley minced no words.
Charles Barkley: And what I said, I think that he don’t have enough people around him that are gonna tell him, ‘No.’ And he got really offended, and we haven’t spoken. But, Jon, I really, I’m gonna do my job. Because, I have zero credibility if I criticize other people in the same boat and not criticize my best friend.
Jon Wertheim: Even if you have nothing to apologize for, you think of just pickin’ up the phone and tryin’ to repair this thing with Michael?
Charles Barkley: I got a ego too, Jon. (laugh) You can’t be great at something, like, y– that doesn’t give you the right to be a jerk.
Jon Wertheim: You think you’ll resolve this eventually?
Charles Barkley: He got my number.
If you really want to get Barkley going on disappointment, ask him about his daughter Christiana’s basketball skills.
Jon Wertheim: Your daughter’s not a basketball player.
Charles Barkley: That was, that was brutal. She was 6 feet tall from, from birth (laughter). I’m gonna have the best female basketball player in the world. I can’t wait till she’s old enough. I’m gonna teach her everything. And then we start playin’ and I’m sittin’ in the stands, and I’m sayin’ to myself, ‘Oh, man. She is not aggressive at all’ (laughter). So I ask her one day, I says, ‘you don’t like basketball, do you?’ She says, ‘Oh, Dad, I hate basketball.’ And I said, ‘Oh, okay (laugh).’ And it took me a little while to get over that, cause like I said…
Jon Wertheim:…you’re being serious now?
Charles Barkley: Yeah. But she’s a great person and a straight A student. So I have to brag about that.
Jon Wertheim: I guarantee that makes you feel every bit as good as her hittin’ a game-winning jumper.
Charles Barkley: Not quite. But (laughter) it is close enough.
Christiana, now 34, recently had a son, Henry. The new grandpa says he’s never felt joy like this. When we arrived, he broke out this video.
Charles Barkley: It is by far and away the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me in my life.
Jon Wertheim: Lives up to the hype?
Charles Barkley: It lives up to the hype. I want to spend time with him, because I’m not morbid, I’m not upset, I’m on the back nine. I hope I’m on hole ten or 11, but you never know. I could be on 17 and 18. So I wanna spend as much time with him as possible. And then when he gets older, I want him to Google me.
Jon Wertheim: Google me kid…
Charles Barkley: Yeah, hey, yeah…
Jon Wertheim: Do you know who I am?
Charles Barkley: I hope he does some research on me. I’ll be long gone, but I would like him to know that I accomplished some things in my life.
Produced by Draggan Mihailovich. Associate producer, Emily Cameron. Broadcast associate, Elizabeth Germino. Edited by Sean Kelly.
“No one could outjump LeBron. I once saw him jump straight through the roof of a house, then he kept going, he went up about 100 feet and crashed into a bird. The bird plummeted to the earth. When LeBron saw what he’d done, he quickly reversed course, and willed himself to fall faster than the bird. By the time the bird was about to land, LeBron was already there, and he caught the bird softly in his palm. As the bird landed, it died, but as it died it laid an egg into LeBron’s palm. LeBron sat on that egg until it hatched, and he raised that bird—it was a cardinal—as one of his own children. A class act and fierce competitor.”
The TV journalist and NBA Hall of Famer will co-host a weekly live show on the news network on Wednesdays titled “King Charles,” CNN announced on Saturday.
King and Barkley discussed the new gig during an appearance on “NBA Tip-off,” a TNT show Barkley co-hosts.
The former NBA player said he wants the show to be “nonpolitical,” although he and King clarified that they would discuss politics, along with other topics, such as pop culture and food.
“We don’t want to say ‘we’re a liberal, conservative, Republican, Democrat,’ that’s one of the things that’s already ruined television in general,” he said. “I know she’s going to be a straight shooter, you know I’m going to be a straight shooter.”
Barkley later added, “I know she’s going to be fair and honest, and you know I’m going to do the same thing.”
King said she wants conversations on the show to have “decorum and courtesy and kindness.”
She added: “Everybody I know has an opinion about something. I just think we have to figure out a way to have a good conversation without tearing each other down. And I think that we can do that.”
King will keep her current position as a co-host on “CBS This Morning,” and Barkley will continue his hosting job on TNT, they announced on Saturday.
The two were once rivals on the court and close friends off of it ― but fell out after their playing days ended, and Barkley criticized Jordan’s moves as the owner of the Charlotte Bobcats (now the Hornets).
“And what I said, I think that he don’t have enough people around him that are gonna tell him, ‘No,’” Barkley said on “60 Minutes” on Sunday night. “And he got really offended, and we haven’t spoken.”
That was more than 10 years ago ― but the longtime “Inside the NBA” analyst said he was just doing his job.
“I’m gonna do my job,” he said. “Because I have zero credibility if I criticize other people in the same boat and not criticize my best friend.”
Jon Wertheim of “60 Minutes” asked Sir Charles if he ever thought of calling Jordan to clear the air.
“I got an ego too, Jon. You can’t be great at something ― that doesn’t give you a right to be a jerk,” he said.
“Do you think you’ll resolve this eventually?” Wertheim pressed.
Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley were best friends until Barkley criticized Jordan’s management of his NBA team. The friendship ended, and they haven’t spoken in years.
“I love Michael, but he just has not done a good job,” Barkley said on “The Waddle & Silvy Show.”
He said it was likely due to the people around Jordan.
“One thing about being famous is the people around you, you pay all their bills so they very rarely disagree with you because they want you to pick up the check,” Barkley said. “They want to fly around on your private jet so they never disagree with you. I don’t think Michael has hired enough people around him who will disagree.”
He spoke to Jordan once more after that… but it wasn’t a pleasant conversation.
“He went ballistic,” Barkley recalled on Showtime’s “All The Smoke” last month. “He called me and that’s the last thing I heard was, ‘Motherfucker fuck you, you’re supposed to be my boy.’ I said, ‘Man, I gotta do my job.’ We haven’t spoken since that night.”
Sixty nights a year, basketball legend Charles Barkley is the go-to guy on TNT’s Inside the NBA. He shares with Jon Wertheim how he transitioned from playing on the court to analyzing the game.
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.
In his hall of fame NBA career, Charles Barkley accumulated 12,546 rebounds, but he pulled the ultimate rebound when he finished playing, equaling—maybe even eclipsing—his considerable skills on a basketball court, with his singular talent in a TV studio. For the last 23 years, Barkley has been delivering witty, blunt, provocative opinions on every imaginable topic, often imparted with a smile; always imparted with i-don’t-give-a-damn-if-you-agree-with-me candor. Imagine Mark Twain with a low-post game.
Despite his lack of a tongue editor, maybe because of it, Barkley, now 60, seems cancel-proof, granted license to go right up to that midcourt line of acceptability, even to stomp over it sometimes. It’s made him more relevant than ever. it’s made him more money than he ever earned playing basketball. It’s made him—dare we say it?— an American treasure.
Jon Wertheim: Why do you suppose people wanna listen to you?
Charles Barkley: (laughs) I think they know that I’m gonna be honest, I’m gonna be fair, I don’t have a hidden agenda. Not many people on TV that you can say that about.
Sixty nights a year, Charles Barkley is the go-to guy on TNT’s “Inside the NBA”
A pathbreaking, Emmy-dominating show that makes for riveting, unscripted TV.
Charles Barkley getting ready to go on air.
60 Minutes
Jon Wertheim: You have fun up there?
Charles Barkley: It’s just basketball! (laugh) We’re not solvin’ inflation, we didn’t just get back from Afghanistan.
Jon Wertheim: But you’re not a used car salesman either. I mean, if a game’s no good, you’ll admit it, you’ll say it.
Charles Barkley: Oh yeah, because the fan, the fans ain’t stupid. They just saw it. If I tell them that was a good game, they’re gonna be like, ‘What the hell is Charles (laugh) talkin’ about?’
Jon Wertheim: You said sometimes you’ve even fallen asleep on the set
Charles Barkley: Oh, I fall asleep, like, just sittin’ there watchin’, like, ‘Yo, man, this is just bad basketball.’
This is what America has come to expect from Charles Barkley.
Ernie Johnson: For Chuck, it’s just, ‘I’m gonna let it fly. And if you don’t like it, tough.’
Ernie Johnson is the longtime host of “Inside the NBA.”
Jon Wertheim: How many times do you say, ‘Where- where’s this goin’?
Ernie Johnson: We’ll start a show and Charles will look at me and say, ‘I gotta get somethin’ off my chest (laugh.) It could be something that involves world peace, or the Brooklyn Nets or it could be somethin’– he could be upset that his plumber showed up late, (laugh) and he just has to get it off his chest.
Charles Barkley
60 Minutes
But if Barkley brings levity, he also brings gravity.
Memphis Grizzlies star, Ja Morant, was suspended this month after this Instagram live video showed him flashing a gun at a strip club. Barkley used it to make a broader point.
Charles Barkley on TNT: Guns, especially in the Black community, the way we killing each other, is just really unfortunate and sad. And we got to – it’s always been a problem, but it seem like it’s gotten worse in the last few years – Black on Black crime and the way we’ve been killing each other.
Barkley may be at his most visible in the studio in Atlanta, but for a fuller sense of the man, head two hours west to his hometown of Leeds, Alabama.
Charles Barkley: I’m tellin’ y’all, I did not name the street after myself.
Jon Wertheim: You didn’t lobby for Charles Barkley Avenue?
Charles Barkley: I did not lobby for Charles Barkley Avenue.
Charles Barkley Avenue in Leeds, Alabama
60 Minutes
We interviewed Barkley in the home he still keeps in town. It’s a few hundred yards from where he grew up.
Jon Wertheim: You were angry that your dad left the family when you were 1 years old.
Charles Barkley: I was very angry. And I was even angrier cause he kept sayin’ he was gonna send us money, and he didn’t do it. ‘Cause like, you know, my mom and grandma were workin’ their behinds off. And the thing that was really bad about it, I was standin’ by the mailbox, like, once every three or four months.
Jon Wertheim: Waitin’ for the checks.
Charles Barkley: Yes, but they never came.
His indomitable grandma, Johnnie Mae, who helped raise him, still inspires stories when Charles and his buddies get together in Leeds.
Kenneth Venue: Shoot, Granny was the real deal (laughs)
Male voice: Actually, Charles is the spittin’ image of Granny, really.
Kenneth Venue: Yeah, he got that mouth…
Male voice: He got that mouth like Granny. Yes.
Kenneth Venue: …and she had one too.
Charles Barkley: So, we were really poor. We didn’t know at the time. So to make ends meet, she sold alcohol (laughter).
Jon Wertheim: Where? (laugh)
Charles Barkley: In, in, in the house.
Male voice: Called the shot house.
Jon Wertheim: Out of your house?
Charles Barkley: Yeah. So people would come over Friday and Saturday and play cards. Everybody starts drinkin’. Once somebody lose their money, there’s gonna be a fight. (LAUGH) So my grandmother, this little old lady, she’s walkin’ around with a six-shooter. (LAUGH) And she’s keepin’ the peace. I didn’t even know any better, Jon. I thought this was normal stuff.
Jon Wertheim: Woah…
Charles Barkley: Yeah. Think it’s time for a new floor (laughs)
Jon Wertheim and Charles Barkley walk through Leeds, Alabama
60 Minutes
Barkley also took us to his old junior high gym. It stands (barely) as a symbol of how far he’s come.
Jon Wertheim: 14, 15-year-old Charles Barkley walking in here. Who’s that kid?
Charles Barkley: He’s a 5’9″, 5’10”, big boned, not fat, big boned, chubby, whatever word you wanna use. I’m a 5’10” backup point guard.
Jon Wertheim: You remember s– specific plays and shots from playin’ here? Tie game. We got you on the wing.
Charles Barkley: No. Well, first of all, if it was tie game, I’m not gonna be in the game. Let’s (laugh) get that out– let’s get that out the way.
A six-inch growth spurt helped turn Barkley into a high school basketball star, but his formative teenage experience came at the school football stadium.
Charles Barkley: Wow.
This is where he stood along, at a distance, watching his classmates graduate.
Charles Barkley: I flunked Spanish, so I didn’t graduate. I was at home all by myself, devastated. And I drove around the backside here, and I stood here for two hours and watched the graduation. And I cried the whole time. Even now, it’s kinda hittin’ me in a, in the heart a little bit. Man, what a traumatic night that was.
Jon Wertheim: You remember the name of the teacher?
Charles Barkley: Ms. Gomez. I’ll never forget that. And Ms. Gomez, when I go back and think, was one of the sweetest, kindest people I’d ever met in my life. But in that moment, I was so mad ’cause, you know, (LAUGH) I wanted to throw my hat in the air too.
He graduated, thanks to summer school.
At Auburn, he was a star, yes, for his skills, but also for his heroic appetite. He embraced his nickname: the Round Mound of Rebound.
Drafted in 1984, he became a charismatic NBA star, for the Philadelphia 76ers.
He’s the shortest man ever to lead the NBA in rebounding, proof that— for all Barkley’s yuks—he played with fury.
Charles Barkley: I was playing to stick it to my dad, Miss Gomez, and some of the kids who had made fun of me, instead of just wantin’ to be great at basketball.
Jon Wertheim: What’s firing up this furnace is the anger you have for your Spanish teacher that flunked you.
Charles Barkley: Yes.
Jon Wertheim: And your dad.
Charles Barkley: Yes, 100 percent.
Jon Wertheim: What caused you to flush out this anger and get motivated for a different reason?
Charles Barkley: The spittin’ incident in New Jersey.
In 1991, he spat at a heckler and inadvertently hit a young girl. He calls it the low point of his career.
Charles Barkley: I got suspended, rightfully so. I was sittin’ in my hotel room, and I was like, ‘You are the biggest loser in the world.’ I, I remember saying ‘This is it tonight.’
Jon Wertheim: Meaning what?
Charles Barkley: I am only gonna play basketball ’cause I’m great at it, and I love to play. I’m getting’ all the dirt off my shoulders. Ms. Gomez, bye! Dad, BYE! That was really the turning point for me.
Barkley was the NBA’s MVP in 1993 for the Phoenix Suns. And then, months after retiring in 2000, he embarked on a broadcasting career.
Full disclosure, you may have just seen him on this network working March Madness.
Jon Wertheim: What do you make of the college game today?
Charles Barkley: It’s a travesty and a disgrace. I’m so mad now how we can mess up somethin’ that’s so beautiful.
Jon Wertheim: How’d we mess it up?
Charles Barkley: We can’t pay all these players.
Barkley hates the new, wild west of college sports where players go to the schools that can bid the highest.
Charles Barkley: In the next three to five years, we’re gonna have 25 schools that’s gonna dominate the sports ’cause they can afford players, and these schools who can’t afford or won’t pay players are gonna be irrelevant.
Almost a quarter century since Barkley last played, his opinions, free of varnish, still matter.
His takes don’t always go over well. Kevin Durant, a perennial all-star, once said of Barkley, ‘I don’t know why they still ask for this idiot’s opinion.’
Jon Wertheim: Kevin Durant.
Charles Barkley: He’s very sensitive. Great player. He’s part of that generation who think he can’t be criticized. He’s never looked in the mirror and said, ‘Man, was that a fair criticism?’
Jon Wertheim: We’re in agreement today’s players are a little more sensitive to criticism than your generation
Charles Barkley: That would be a understatement.
Jon Wertheim: Today’s players take offense, but so have players from your generation. It’s been, been a while since you and Michael Jordan spoke.
Charles Barkley: Michael disagreed with somethin’ I said, and he broke off the friendship.
Born three days apart, Barkley and Jordan were once the best of friends, but as Jordan struggled as owner of the Charlotte Hornets, Barkley minced no words.
Charles Barkley: And what I said, I think that he don’t have enough people around him that are gonna tell him, ‘No.’ And he got really offended, and we haven’t spoken. But, Jon, I really, I’m gonna do my job. Because, I have zero credibility if I criticize other people in the same boat and not criticize my best friend.
Jon Wertheim: Even if you have nothing to apologize for, you think of just pickin’ up the phone and tryin’ to repair this thing with Michael?
Charles Barkley: I got a ego too, Jon. (laugh) You can’t be great at something, like, y– that doesn’t give you the right to be a jerk.
Jon Wertheim: You think you’ll resolve this eventually?
Charles Barkley: He got my number.
If you really want to get Barkley going on disappointment, ask him about his daughter Christiana’s basketball skills.
Jon Wertheim: Your daughter’s not a basketball player.
Charles Barkley: That was, that was brutal. She was 6 feet tall from, from birth (laughter). I’m gonna have the best female basketball player in the world. I can’t wait till she’s old enough. I’m gonna teach her everything. And then we start playin’ and I’m sittin’ in the stands, and I’m sayin’ to myself, ‘Oh, man. She is not aggressive at all’ (laughter). So I ask her one day, I says, ‘you don’t like basketball, do you?’ She says, ‘Oh, Dad, I hate basketball.’ And I said, ‘Oh, okay (laugh).’ And it took me a little while to get over that, cause like I said…
Jon Wertheim:…you’re being serious now?
Charles Barkley: Yeah. But she’s a great person and a straight A student. So I have to brag about that.
Jon Wertheim: I guarantee that makes you feel every bit as good as her hittin’ a game-winning jumper.
Charles Barkley: Not quite. But (laughter) it is close enough.
Christiana, now 33, recently had a son, Henry. The new grandpa says he’s never felt joy like this. When we arrived, he broke out this video.
Charles Barkley: It is by far and away the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me in my life.
Jon Wertheim: Lives up to the hype?
Charles Barkley: It lives up to the hype. I want to spend time with him, because I’m not morbid, I’m not upset, I’m on the back nine. I hope I’m on hole ten or 11, but you never know. I could be on 17 and 18. So I wanna spend as much time with him as possible. And then when he gets older, I want him to Google me.
Jon Wertheim: Google me kid…
Charles Barkley: Yeah, hey, yeah…
Jon Wertheim: Do you know who I am?
Charles Barkley: I hope he does some research on me. I’ll be long gone, but I would like him to know that I accomplished some things in my life.
Produced by Draggan Mihailovich. Associate producer, Emily Cameron. Broadcast associate, Elizabeth Germino. Edited by Sean Kelly.
NBA legend Charles Barkley left his fellow analysts in fits of laughter during Friday analysis of March Madness.
Amid a shoutout to team staff during the NCAA Tournament, Barkley issued a special thanks to those who clean the uniforms, claiming: “I’m so old, we used to take a shower in our uniforms.”
Kenny Smith stopped Barkley in his tracks.
“Wait, timeout. There’s no era where you did that,” Smith said, as Clark Kellogg and Greg Gumbel creased up.
“Stop. You’re making this up,” Smith said. “There’s no way you were supposed to wash your uniform with it on. You’re making this up.”
Barkley tried to explain:
“When I first got to the NBA, we flew commercial. So when you played the night before and flew the next morning, when was you exactly gonna get your uniform cleaned? You had to wash your uniform yourself. So after the game, when you got to your room, you took a shower in your uniform, and dried it, and dropped it off on the commercial airline the next day.”
“He’s making this up,” Smith said.
Barkley asked: “Y’all were playing in funky uniforms?”
“You can clean your uniform without showering in it,” Kellogg noted. “That is possible. You can actually clean it without showering in it.”
“You don’t have to have it on,” Smith agreed.
“No, but it’s easier to do it that way,” Barkley replied, sending his colleagues into further hysterics.
