Charles Barkley rips TNT after getting blindsided by ‘Inside the NBA’ moving to ESPN

For Charles Barkley, learning the new fate of “Inside the NBA” was as if he was a player who found out he had been traded when it was reported in the media.

On a Saturday night earlier this month, The Wall Street Journal broke the news that TNT had struck a deal to license the iconic studio show to ESPN.

During a recent appearance on “The Bettor Angle” show with Kate Constable and Gabe Ramirez on the BetQL network, Barkley said he received no head’s up from his bosses at Warner Bros. Discovery’s Turner Sports that the move was in the works.

“I’ll tell you what’s fun. They haven’t even told us we lost the NBA,” Barkley said, as covered by Awful Announcing.

“We have to hear it through the media. And even this thing with ABC/ESPN, I heard about it on the internet. Scott Van Pelt, Brian Windhorst, Elle Duncan, Bob Myers, all friends of mine who I really like a lot. They texted me welcoming me to the ESPN family. I’m like, what happened? TNT didn’t even have the courtesy.

“Basically, we got traded. If I was going to trade somebody that I had respect for and appreciate, I would at least give them a heads up. I wouldn’t let them hear about it from other people or the internet.”

Amid all the transition with TNT, which is set to exit its longtime partnership with the NBA after this season, Barkey said that he was most concerned for the production staffers with career uncertainty.

“I was never worried about me, Ernie, Kenny, and Shaq because obviously we’re gonna have our opportunities. But it was very frustrating. It’s been frustrating. I’ve never had normal life. I don’t mean that in a negative way,” Barkley said.

“But like, when you talk to people who you are friends with. They’re like ‘Yo man, I’m married, I have kids, I have a mortgage and I’m not gonna have a job in six or seven months.’ That’s like a real thing. That’s like a real thing. I’ve been in the NBA my whole life so I’ve never been around people who have had to worry about their job security. But it was so stressful at work because number one, you could tell we were gonna lose the contract.”

Barkley has been part of “Inside the NBA” since 2000 and cohosts the program alongside Kenny Smith, Ernie Johnson and Shaquille O’Neal.