CHARLES Barkley has been accused of a fashion faux pas live on Inside The NBA.
The NBA Hall of Famer showed up at Target Center for Game 2 between the Dallas Mavericks and Minnesota Timberwolves in an eye-catching outfit.
“Big topic of conversation today, the checkered shirt with the Chuckster today,” joked host Ernie Johnson to start the broadcast.
Barkley paired his plaid shirt with a striped tie and blue suit live on TNT.
“I’m experimenting. I have a whole new wardrobe for the Playoffs,” he explained, but it seems safe to say that none of his castmates were convinced by this particular experiment.
“This is terrible,” Shaquille O’Neal commented as Barkley continued to explain his look.
“I don’t want people to look at my clothes, I want them to look at my face,” Barkley said.
“I mean, you guys – this isn’t you, Ernie – when you’re ugly, you need to wear good clothes. I want people to look at the moneymaker.”
Meanwhile, Kenny Smith, who was sitting next to Barkley, gave the camera a look of disbelief.
Golden State Warriors star Draymond Green asked Barkley if he felt like he was “giving them the best of two evils by looking at the jersey?”
“That’s right, look at America’s face,” Barkley responded.
But to say O’Neal wasn’t convinced would be an understatement.
“Chuck, you don’t look good,” he commented bluntly.
Barkley would not take such criticism lying down, telling O’Neal that “whenever I have that face on, I look good.”
“I just hang out with ugly people and look good. That’s my new thing,” Barkley added.
Once the thread hit X, formerly known as Twitter, fans were quick to share their thoughts.
“He’s not here to do mischief,” one of them said of Smith, accompanying the comment with an impressed expression from Smith.
“Enjoy this crew while it lasts,” a second added.
While a third asked: “How the hell do they finish this table? Perhaps the best sport 4 in the history of sports broadcasting?”
Inside The future of the NBA remains up in the air as the battle continues between NBC and Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent company of TNT, for the third and final package of NBA broadcast rights.
Should TNT lose, as appears increasingly likely according to Sports Business Journalso the 2024-2025 season would be the network’s last.
Inside the future of the NBA?
The operation of the NBA on TNT Sports is in great doubt due to the NBA’s broadcast agreements.
The Emmy-winning sports show is a fan favorite thanks to the likes of Shaquille O’Neal and Charles Barkley.
But TNT’s broadcast deal with the NBA ends after next season and NBC appears poised to take over those rights in a $2.6 billion deal.
If TNT loses its NBA package, it will raise serious questions about the popular Inside the NBA.
One solution could be to recreate the show on another network, which would snatch the rights from the NBA.
As such, exactly what would happen with Inside The NBA is unclear.
Barkley recently suggested that he might try to convince his co-stars to join his production company, Fine Line Productions, and try to produce the show independently of a network.
“I would love to do that if we lose,” he said in The Dan Patrick Show.
However, until the battle between NBC and WBD comes to an end, this potential option remains only conjecture.
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