When the media rights battle heated up during the 2024-25 season between TNT and the NBA, basketball fans everywhere had one major worry on their minds: what’s going to happen to “Inside the NBA”?
Eventually, the show found a new home at ESPN. All fans breathed a sigh of relief. Crisis averted, right? Well, not quite. Even after the move, analysts and commentators keep taking shots at the show, and Charles Barkley has finally had enough of the criticism.
Charles Barkley Had Enough of Criticism Regarding “Inside the NBA” Show
The latest controversy started after sports media personality Colin Cowherd floated a theory on his radio show. If we see, Cowherd suggested that ESPN had quietly pushed Inside the NBA to the side at the request of NBA commissioner Adam Silver.
“My feeling is, this is just conjecture. ESPN has a great relationship with the NBA, and they said, ‘Yeah, we’ll bring that show over. You won’t see it as much. Put it on the shelf a little bit’… There were people upstairs in the NBA office that didn’t like how they lampooned the league and some of the players. NFL shows don’t make fun of the players. Why are we making fun of the players? I heard that before,” Cowherd said on a segment of “The Herd”.
Barkley didn’t let that theory slide. The NBA legend responded strongly during a recent segment, and he made it clear he was tired of hearing Cowherd speculate about the show’s fate.
“We were off for two months, there was no reason for us to be off two months…. There’s some fools at home/on the internet saying we were talking badly about the players, so they made us work less. Shut the hell up! This was already scheduled” Barkley said during a recent segment.
For those who don’t know the history, “Inside the NBA” has been a fixture of basketball broadcasting since 1989, when it launched as part of TNT’s coverage. Ernie Johnson stepped in as host the following year and has been the steady voice guiding the ship ever since.
The legendary crew we all know today came together piece by piece. Kenny Smith became a regular fixture in 1998. Barkley arrived in 2000 and added his unfiltered opinions. Finally, Shaquille O’Neal joined in 2011, completing what many consider the greatest sports studio show ever assembled.
But starting with the 2025 offseason, fans haven’t been pleased with how ESPN has handled their beloved program.
Sports Media Watch reported last August that ESPN squeezed the show into just a 30-minute time slot after its first doubleheader of the 2025-26 season. The broadcast was scheduled to air from approximately 12:05 a.m. to 12:35 a.m. Eastern Time, immediately followed by SportsCenter. That’s pretty late for most viewers on the East Coast.
These changes left many fans feeling that ESPN hasn’t done right by one of the most beloved shows in sports television, and whether better adjustments will be made moving forward remains to be seen.
