Charles Barkley and Ernie Johnson recently had a hilarious exchange during Sunday’s episode of “Inside the NBA.” Barkley was urging NBA Commissioner Adam Silver to address the league’s tanking epidemic when he got a key fact wrong about how many starters have been resting as of late.
However, Barkley’s numbers didn’t add up, and Johnson had to correct him. This then led to a hilarious response from the NBA legend.
Ernie Johnson Humorously Corrects Charles Barkley’s Math
The 2025-26 NBA regular season is coming to a close tonight, and one of the biggest storylines as of late has been the tanking epidemic and the number of players sitting out of games.
During “Inside the NBA,” Barkley went on a rant calling on Adam Silver to fix the league’s tanking issue: “As much as I love Adam Silver, we’ve got to do something, man. We can’t have 170 starters basically not playing in games. All these dudes just sitting out, that’s just disrespectful, man.”
Barkley was echoing recent reports, but his numbers were slightly off. During Friday’s slate of games, 168 NBA players sat out. According to Underdog, 155 players are listed as out for the final game of the regular season on Sunday due to illness or injury.
But Johnson couldn’t help but poke fun at Barkley.
“It’s hard to have 170 starters sitting since there are 150 in the league,” Johnson jokingly noted.
Barkley then humorously threatened to hit Johnson in the face after correcting him.
“Do it again. I’ll hit a man with glasses. Right between (your nose),” Barkley responded.
Kenny “The Jet” Smith chimed in, clowning Barkley for screwing up “simple math” and citing Victor Wembanyama’s impressive display of mental math recently.
Jokes aside, Barkley clearly feels that the tanking is a disgrace to the league.
Chuck on tanking:
“As much as I love Adam Silver we’ve got to do something man. We can’t have 170 starters basically not playing in games. All these dudes just sitting out that’s just disrespectful man” pic.twitter.com/DJBiujG0L5
— Oh No He Didn’t (@ohnohedidnt24) April 12, 2026
The issue that has taken center stage at the top of the NBA’s to-do list: the sheer number of teams that are tanking for the draft lottery has increased this year. Also, the lack of competitive games for large portions of this season has been quite extraordinary.
Now we see Game 82, normally a huge day on the NBA calendar, is a mere afterthought due to the vast number of starters sitting out for various reasons.
