Charles Barkley is at the "take it or leave it" portion of his broadcasting career. Chuck made it clear with his response to his "Cardi D" joke about rapper Cardi B's body that he doesn't care about his ESPN commitment. His show, "Inside the NBA," was brought over to the World Wide Leader this past NBA season, and Barkley is signed on to the network for seven years. His comments came during the broadcast of Game 3 of the Finals at Madison Square Garden, where Cardi B was performing as the halftime show act during the New York Knicks' eventual loss to the San Antonio Spurs.
When asked by Dan Patrick on his show about his "Cardi D" comments, Barkley defiantly said, "Dan, you know I'm hoping they fire me. I got 6 or 7 years left on my contract that they know I've got no chance of doing. I would love for them to fire me and have to pay me for the next 6 or 7 years."
Clearly, Sir Charles isn't being treated like royalty in his new gig. Barkley hasn't been happy with ESPN or with Turner Sports, which never even told the cast of "Inside the NBA" that they'd be off the network.
“I’ll tell you something really (expletive) about it too: I found out that we got traded to ESPN from ESPN,” Barkley said during a recent appearance on Bartstool Sports' “Pardon My Take” podcast. “I’m like, ‘what family? What are you talking about? I said, ‘Well you probably could have gave us a heads up.’ I said, ‘you traded us to ESPN and we have to hear about it on the internet. ... That’s just not the way you do business...
“One story said we lost it. The next story said we still in negotiation. Then we lost it. We’re still in negotiations. And TNT never came to us, like grown folks and said, ‘Hey guys, we’re probably going to lose the NBA,’ which we could have understood. I told ’em they sucked. Because there’s a way you treat people ... Because if they had come to us and said, ‘Hey, you know what, it’s a lot of money.’ Because we were paying $1.2 billion a year and it went to $2.5 billion. That’s a lot of money for 11 years. If they had said ‘it’s not a good deal,’ we would’ve understood.”
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The day Barkley leaves broadcasting will be a sad one for the Auburn family. Barkley is clearly over the job, which he's been doing consecutively since 2000. Chuck jumped right into it after retiring from the NBA. He may be ready to jump out of it after a major industry-shaking move to ESPN for the show.
Who could blame him? When something is working for so long, then your boss sells you out without even a warning, to a company that makes unpopular decisions constantly, your desire to go on fades. The golden age of NBA broadcasting has already come and gone. Everything is worse now.
It'd be tough to lose a pro-Tigers voice in mainstream media, but Chuck has done well representing the university for five decades now. If it's time to call it a career, it's been a great ride for the product of Leeds, Alabama.
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