Charles Barkley says TNT has ‘no idea’ what their plans are for ‘Inside the NBA’

Charles Barkley says TNT has ‘no idea’ what their plans are for ‘Inside the NBA’

Hall of Famer Charles Barkley announced exactly one month ago that he wouldn’t retire from TV at the end of the 2024-25 season and fulfill the remainder of his 10-year contract with Warner Bros. Discovery (TNT).

Unfortunately, the NBA is not renewing its media rights with TNT after a three-and-a-half decade partnership, signing an 11-year deal with Disney, NBCUniversal and Amazon worth over $75 billion. Barkley recently opened up about TNT’s plans with “Inside the NBA,” a pre- and post-game show that Barkley cohosted for the last several years alongside Shaquille O’Neal, Kenny Smith and Ernie Johnson.

Barkley recently told The Ringer‘s Bill Simmons on The Bill Simmons Podcast that TNT is currently undecided on how they’re going to progress with Barkley and the rest of the NBA coverage beyond the 2024-25 season, the last year of his current media rights deal.

“They don’t even have no idea what we’re gonna do,” Barkley said on The Bill Simmons Podcast. “So I’m sitting in this meeting in Philly. ‘We wanna keep doing the show.’ I was like, ‘What do you mean?’ Like, ‘We wanna keep y’all together.’ I says, ‘Well, I would consider that because I want all my friends to keep their jobs.’ I said, ‘What are we gonna do?’ They’re like, ‘We haven’t figured that out yet.’ I’m like, what? I says, ‘(TNT) won’t have basketball. What the hell are we gonna do?’

“And so that’s the thing that’s fascinating. Like I say, I know we got one more year with the NBA, then we’re going to lose it. And they wanna do the show at least another year, but I’m like, we don’t even have basketball. We’re going to pay for highlights.”

What will NBA’s new media rights deal include for Disney, NBC, Amazon?

With the sounds of it, it sounds like neither appears to know how to progress.

Perhaps TNT will trial run a few show or segment ideas on “Inside The NBA” during this next season so it’s not completely fresh by the time 2025-26 rolls around? That’s one way to approach things. It’s smart to have a few contingent ideas in place, just in case.

However, it’s currently anyone’s guess what will happen because few appear to have a true grip on the situation, though one could imagine that Barkley will have a massive say, when it’s all said-and-done.

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