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Mark Cuban: The reason I'm on team Steve Ballmer, right, is when I go back and I looked, the deal was in 2021 before their arena opened, right? Right when Kawaii signed their new contract, and it's $300 million. When you get a deal of that size with a new category sponsor, the NBA has to approve it. So, first of all, the NBA had to have looked into this. But that wasn't the overwhelming thing. Then they defaulted on that deal, right? they stopped doing it and Balmer made an announcement at some point in time saying that the deal was not moving forward and this was several years ago. But that wasn't really the trigger for team Bomber. The trigger for team Ballmer was in January of 2024 when it was either the SEC or CFTC said that that they were under investigation. So the minute Aspiration was under investigation, I guarantee you, in the mortal words of Charles Barkley, I guarantee it that the NBA took a hard look at it. And not only that, that Ballmer, if he did something illicit and under the table and tried to, you know, um, work around the salary cap, then he's got to be sh*tting bricks, right? Because at that point in time, he's the dumbest human being on the planet because he trusted these scammers to do something he knew would was against all NBA rules. A, I just don't see that happening. B, the NBA would have found it easily. Three, and this alludes to the Steve Balmer can't be that dumb thing. I've been scammed. Everybody's scammable but in order for this to work, in my opinion, he has to trust that whole company. And at that point in time he trusted them enough to give them an investment at some level. But I don't see how he would trust that company to keep probably his darkest secret as an NBA owner so that it wouldn't get out. I just don't see in any way, shape, or form that all those things could happen.
Charles Barkley: TNT sucks, they haven't told us when we're going to work
“We don’t know,” Barkley responded. “This has been one of the worst, TNT just sucks to be honest with you, Bill. They made this deal. They haven’t told us when we’re going to work. They haven’t told us how it’s going to work. Because, we’ve been talking behind the scenes, like … after the game are we going to get anytime or are they gonna say, ‘Hey, you guys got to go to SportsCenter.’ “That’s the best part of our show, after the game [where] we can, like, have conversation and have fun,” Barkley continued. “Are they gonna say, ‘You guys got three minutes, five minutes, 15, 20, 30, 45?’ Or are we going to go straight to SportsCenter? They haven’t given us an answer whatsoever. And TNT, I think they sold the show and they haven’t been noncommunicable [sic] at all.”
While he's has changed his tune about working with the Worldwide Leader he’s needled time and time again, Charles Barkley still feels uncomfortable with some of the unanswered questions. “We’re all going to be doing the show in Atlanta, but we’re all kind of like, how’s this thing going to play out?” Barkley said during a recent appearance on The Bettor Angle on Audacy’s BetMGM Network. “I’ve been asked that question a thousand times, and I don’t have any idea. We think our show is going to be similar or the same, but going to another network, we don’t even know how that’s going to work. Because you have to factor in, obviously, I’m a big fan of ESPN. I think they’re the greatest sports network ever. But you know, when they do a game, they have to rush off the network to go to SportsCenter.”
Charles Barkley: “And we’re trying to figure out — our best stuff is 40 minutes after the game, when we can just have some fun. But are they going to say, ‘Hey, you guys got five minutes or 15 minutes, then we gotta go to SportsCenter.’ So, we don’t know, but, hey, the deal’s been made. When October 22 gets here, we’re going to be ready to go. But we have no parameters of what the show’s going to be, so that’s a little disconcerting to be flat-out honest with you. But, hey, it is what it is.”
Richard Jefferson on why he’d choose Karl Malone over Charles Barkley: It’s about the level of professionalism Malone brought to the game
But Jefferson picked ‘The Mailman,’ and his reasoning was rooted in what he called Malone’s “level of professionalism.” “The reason why I would pick Karl Malone over Charles is because of the level of professionalism that Karl Malone always approached,” Jefferson said on his Road Trippin’ pod. “Karl Malone also had a top-five point guard — wherever you want to rank him — in John Stockton next to him.” “So when I look at Karl Malone, with Charles when he was in Philly, he was in and out of shape, and then he would, you know, some of his off-the-court partying that we knew about…I’m saying Charles was a rebel. He’s not a role model. So I’m not taking shots at him. But I’m saying, when you look at a guy like Karl Malone, who trained for eight hours a day, he played for 19 years. He was second in scoring. And if his body would have held up, he probably would have been the all-time leading scorer.”
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Barkley is now coming forward to rip how TNT officials communicated during the negotiations. “They did an awful job of keeping us abreast,” he said in an interview on Barstool Sports’ Pardon My Take. “We were playing golf during the playoffs and we were reading the internet, finding out if we are gonna get fired or not. And I was like, TNT our bosses, they sucked, plain and simple. They’re like, ‘yo man, just tell us. Shoot us straight.’ These are real people. We’re literally were playing golf during the playoffs looking at the internet. Then one story said we lost it. The next story said we still in negotiation. Then we lost it. We’re still in negotiations. And TNT never came to us, like grown folks and said, ‘hey guys, we’re probably going to lose the NBA,’ which we could have understood. “But I thought they sucked. I told ’em they sucked. Because there’s a way you treat people. Because if they had have came to us and said, ‘hey, you know what, it’s a lot of money.’ Because we were paying $1.2 billion a year and it went to $2.5 billion. That’s a lot of money for 11 years. If they had said ‘it’s not a good deal,’ we would’ve understood. But to let us hear about it…”
“I’ll tell you something really sh*tty about it too: I found out that we got traded to ESPN from ESPN,” he said. “I’m sitting at home on a Friday night. I get a text from Scott Van Pelt, Brian Windhorst, Elle Duncan and Bob Myers welcoming me to the family. I’m like, ‘what family? What are you talking about?’ “And then about an hour and a half later, I get a call from TNT like, ‘well the story broke.’ I said, ‘well you probably could have gave us a heads up.’ I said, ‘you traded us to ESPN and we have to hear about it on the internet.’ I said, ‘that’s just not the way you do business.’”
For the first time since 1989, the NBA will not be broadcast on TNT. And while that fact has been clear for some time now, Charles Barkley is still mad about it. Barkley, the star of TNT’s crown jewel, “Inside the NBA,” will still be a part of the league’s national television programming. But it will not, of course, be on TNT; instead, he, Ernie Johnson, Kenny Smith, and Shaquille O’Neal will occasionally appear on ESPN as part of a licensing deal in which “Inside” will be produced by TNT’s crew but broadcast on ESPN.
The agreement, while helpful in partially justifying Barkley and Co.’s massive deals with Warner Bros. Discovery (TNT’s parent company), remains a point of great annoyance for the former NBA star. “TNT never came to us like grown folks and said, ‘Hey guys, we’re probably going to lose to NBA,’ which we could have understood,” Barkley said on the ‘Pardon My Take’ podcast. “But I thought they sucked. I told them they sucked. Because there’s a way you treat people. Because if they had came to us and said, ‘Hey, you know what? It’s a lot of money.’ Because, you know, we were paying 1.2 billion dollars a year and it went to 2.5 billion. That’s a lot of money for 11 years. If they had said ‘it’s not a good deal,’ we would have understood. But to let us hear about it — and I’ll tell you something really s—-y about it, too: I found out that we got traded to ESPN from ESPN.”
Charles Barkley knows what you did this summer, Jon Wallace and Ben Tenzer. And he bloody loves it. “I think (the Nuggets) and the Houston Rockets have probably had the best summers (in the NBA),” Barkley, the longtime hoops analyst/icon, told me last Saturday night at Gaylord Rockies Resort & Convention Center. “And (the Nuggets), they’ve got the best player in the world (in Nikola Jokic). They just needed some more depth. They kind of broke the team up after they won the first championship (2023), and that’s really unfortunate. (They’ve) still got the best player. You want to give them as many opportunities as possible. But I thought they had a great summer.”
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And speaking of Denver dreams, Chuck, did the Nuggets land enough lightning for Nikola Jokic to run with the Thunder in 2026? “They probably had the best chance of beating OKC (in the playoffs),” Barkley replied. “So it’s not like they were that far off. But like I say, them and the Rockets have both had great summers. So that’s all you can say until they start playing. “I thought, in no particular order, the Nuggets, the Rockets (and) the Hawks, those three teams had the best summers.”
Byron Scott: Tell us your All-Time starting five, you included, so you got to pick four, so you got to give me a point guard, small forward, power forward, and center. Mitch Richmond: I'm going to go Magic Johnson at point guard. I'm gonna put Michael Jordan at the three. The four… Damn. There’s Karl Malone, Tim Duncan, Charles Barkley… Charles is a little undersized, but Charles was good. And you got Kevin Durant, Kevin Garnett… I'mma go with Kevin Durant cuz we're spreading it out. And then I'mma go Big Shaq at center.
Charles Barkley is coming off his best celebrity golf performance ever but remains the biggest long shot in the field to win this week's American Century Championship at South Lake Tahoe, Nevada. Barkley's odds? 7,500-1 at Caesars Sportsbook. Those odds have enticed a select few bettors to invest in the Basketball Hall of Famer with the unusual swing. He finished in a career-best 58th place at last year's tournament. The sportsbook set the over/under on Barkley's finishing position at 65.5 this week. "We have seen a handful of tickets on Barkley to win it all, but we may see those tickets on eBay soon," Anthony Salleroli, lead golf oddsmaker for Caesars Sportsbook, joked in an email to ESPN.
Ice Cube: The basketball world really does hold Charles Barkley career over Robert Horry. The way he's treated and the way what he means to basketball. At the end of the day, the fans get it right. The players who were star players that didn't get a championship are treated like superstars.
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