‘Inside the NBA’ ending? Charles Barkley sounds off as cancellation reportedly close

Charles Barkley is getting his LinkedIn profile ready — and has been for a while now.

Amid ongoing reports that his network might lose the rights to broadcast NBA games starting in the 2025-26 season, the TNT basketball analyst joked about possibly having to use the employment-focused social media platform, with the implication that he and his “Inside the NBA” co-hosts could soon be out of a job, during a May 19 broadcast of the show.

More than two weeks later, Barkley made a similar comment Tuesday on the “Beadle & Decker” Sirius XM radio show Tuesday.

“I’m getting my LinkedIn profile together, so I might call y’all,” Barkley told co-hosts Michelle Beadle and Cody Decker. “I might put you all on my resume. Is that cool?”

“Might” was the operative word, since an official announcement still hasn’t been made about what will happen with the league’s broadcasting rights when the current deal with TNT parent company Warner Bros. Discovery and ESPN parent Disney ends after next season.

Read more: How the NBA’s next TV deal could disrupt the media landscape

The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that the league is “closing in” on a deal to broadcast its games on NBC, ESPN and Amazon, which would leave TNT out of the loop for the first time since 1989. As of Tuesday, though, Barkley said he hadn’t heard a word from his employer on whether the show on which he’s appeared since 2000 will be coming to an end next year.

“That’s the one thing that really, really bothered me the most about the TNT experience,” said Barkley, who hosts “Inside the NBA” with Shaquille O’Neal, Ernie Johnson and Kenny Smith. “Like, hey man, just tell us something. ‘Cause, you know, everybody’s got an article coming out every day about we still got a chance or we’ve lost it. I’m like, yeah man, you guys see us every week. How ‘bout picking up the phone, saying ‘Hey, we still negotiating’ or ‘you know what, we’ve lost it.’

“Just truth us. Cause the one thing that really sucks, we gotta do this next year no matter what.”

Barkley has been making the same point for weeks. On May 23, he made no attempt to conceal his…


Source link : https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/charles-barkley-still-knows-nothing-214620206.html

Author : LA Times

Publish date : 2024-06-05 21:46:20

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