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The Emmy Award-winning “Inside the NBA” aired for the final time on TNT, following the Indiana Pacers' Eastern Conference Finals-clinching victory versus the New York Knicks on Thursday night. The legendary postgame show, which features Ernie Johnson, Charles Barkley, Shaquille O'Neal and Kenny Smith, will move to ESPN for the 2025-26 season, beginning a new and uncertain era of sports television.
TNT Sports will continue to produce the program for the Disney-owned media company, but the network is hoping to recapture Inside the NBA's” magic and also stick it to The Association for rejecting its offer to match Amazon's media rights bid last summer. It is working on a new show that will center around the unique personalities that helped make TNT a viewing destination for the last few decades.
But Barkley, who was the last member of the four-man panel to formally commit to a new deal with TNT, seems concerned about how this experiment will go. Apparently, the goal is to produce compelling television that will rival NBA games that air on NBC, Amazon or ESPN next season, ensuring that the network remains a mainstay in the basketball world. The problem is, though, TNT is prohibited from airing highlights. That limits what the crew can effectively discuss.
According to Barkley, preparation has already begun. He was not impressed.
“We taped a pilot about a month ago, and it was the stupidest s**t I've ever seen in my life,” the Hall of Famer told “The Dan Patrick Show,” showcasing the type of unfiltered honesty that has made him one of the most popular and successful sports analysts of all-time. “I will give TNT credit, they did say it was an awful pilot.”
"We taped a pilot about a month ago, and it was the stupidest s**t I've ever seen in my life." 😅
– Charles Barkley discusses the plan for Inside the NBA on TNT, despite not having the rights to NBA footage. pic.twitter.com/bdZwOza2Nn
— Dan Patrick Show (@dpshow) June 2, 2025
Can Charles Barkley and the rest of the crew give TNT another gem?
Although Barkley did not go into detail about what the show's content would consist of, he said it was about “stupid stuff” and not NBA-centric. Given what the 1993 MVP and his cohorts accomplished on TNT, he is concerned that this so-called “stupid” idea will tarnish Inside The NBA's legacy.
The moments most synonymous with the Barkley-O'Neal-Smith-Johnson quartet have little to do with basketball — Barkley's controversial comments about San Antonio women and Galveston, Texas' water, Shaq's nonsensical rant about buying gas and Smith's classic foot races to the big board — so it makes sense that TNT Sports would want to focus on an array of topics.
But it is hard to script a program that is meant to be off-script. One of the reasons these guys work so well together is because there is an element of unpredictability. A variety show or whatever the network is cooking up may not produce the right mix of chaos and structure. Like Charles Barkley implied, it could miss the mark completely.
And he “would not want to go out like that.” Fortunately for all involved, there is plenty of time to work out all the bugs.
