Charles Barkley responds to Colin Cowherd’s ESPN claims: ‘Shut the hell up’
By Sydney Hunte
Published:
Charles Barkley responded to assertions from Colin Cowherd that “Inside the NBA” is being intentionally “buried” by ESPN because of how the long-running studio show portrays the league.
If you’re unfamiliar, ESPN licenses “Inside the NBA” from TNT Sports and uses it as its pregame, halftime, and postgame show during select NBA broadcasts. That’s a reversal from when the popular program was on TNT and shown weekly during the season before the network lost NBA rights.
While Barkley and the rest of the show’s cast were aware that their presence would be scaled back, Barkley stated on “The Dan LeBatard Show” that he wasn’t fond of not being on the air as much. Cowherd jumped on the comments, suggesting the show was “buried” at the request of NBA commissioner Adam Silver.
“I know there were people upstairs in the NBA office that didn’t like how they had lampooned the league and some of the players,” Cowherd stated on “The Herd” on Friday.
On Saturday, it was Barkley’s turn to respond. While he didn’t mention Cowherd by name, it’s obvious who he was referring to.
“There’s some fools at home or on the Internet (saying) we were talking bad about the players, so they made us work less. Shut the hell up,” the Hall of Famer said. “These guys are like, ‘They’re going to put them on the shelf because they don’t want them on TV.’ Man, y’all need to shut the hell up. This was already planned months and months ago. All I said was, ‘I would like to work more.'”
There’s nothing wrong with Barkley wanting the show to air more frequently. Perhaps TNT Sports and ESPN will make that happen someday. Whatever the case, we likely haven’t heard the last of this Barkley-Cowherd feud.
Sydney is an Atlanta-based journalist who has covered everything from SEC and ACC football to MLS, the U.S. men's national soccer team and professional tennis. His work has appeared on such platforms as SB Nation, Cox Media Group and FanSided.
