Nikola Jokic and the Denver Nuggets, despite coming off a season in which they steamrolled the opposition en route to winning the franchise's first-ever championship, still face a ton of disrespect on the regular. One instance in particular stood out to many analysts and fans on Twitter. With the season set to open on Tuesday night, TNT put out a graphic including all of the prominent stars that will be suiting up on opening night, including Stephen Curry, LeBron James, and Kevin Durant. However, the network inexplicably forgot to exclude Jokic, putting Jayson Tatum in his place instead even though the Boston Celtics won't be playing until Wednesday.

This naturally drew a ton of backlash; how could TNT forget Jokic of all people? After all, The Joker is the reigning Finals MVP and after a stellar 2022-23 season, he has the strongest argument for being the best, most unstoppable player in the league. And it's not like the Nuggets star is a boring player to watch; he makes insane passes look routine, and he pulls off atypical, arrhythmic moves that must be seen to be believed.

As a result, Charles Barkley, one of the analysts in TNT's Inside the NBA, had to apologize for the network's inexcusable gaffe.

“You sent me that graphic and I showed it to Ernie [Johnson] and we just want to apologize to the Nuggets, Joker and the city of Denver. That's completely stupid not having Joker on that graphic. I mean, we're here all day!” Barkley said on 92.5 Altitude Sports Radio, via Vic Lombardi of Altitude TV.

It really is baffling how that graphic made it past the producers at TNT. After all, Nikola Jokic and the Nuggets deserve so much more respect than they are getting. What makes this even more weird is that Jayson Tatum and the Celtics won't be playing their first game on TNT until December 19 when they take on the Golden State Warriors.

Charles Barkley's words definitely carry weight as he is a prominent TV personality at the network, so this sort of mistakes shouldn't happen again. Give the Joker the respect he has earned.