The Denver Nuggets looked completely dead in the water just over a week ago. An embarrassing Game 2 beatdown at the hands of the Minnesota Timberwolves had folks like Charles Barkley proclaiming Denver would get swept.
Well, heading into Tuesday night’s pivotal Game 5, the series is now tied at 2-2 after Denver took both road games in Minneapolis. And it sure seems like a diss track that Nuggets head coach Michael Malone pieced together really resonated with his team. Any time you feature prominent NBA media personalities doubting your players in public, it’s bound to strike a chord.
Upon realizing that Malone might have actually featured Barkley in said video, the TNT analyst was not happy that his own words and opinion were potentially put on blast by the Nuggets:
“Dude, we get paid to give an opinion. If you watched those first two games, you didn’t think Denver was going to win.”
Chuck on Michael Malone using an edit of critics to motivate Denver ahead of Game 3 https://t.co/qrN7zFls65 pic.twitter.com/siKtmQmDYQ
— NBA on TNT (@NBAonTNT) May 14, 2024
To be fair to Barkley, he does make a point.
He, like other TV analysts, mostly diagnoses what information he has. If he’s on the postgame show of a matchup featuring a blowout, he’s probably going to reasonably hedge toward the team that won by many points. And vice versa. He can only operate in the context of the actual games. That doesn’t mean he has to have the strongest possible take or opinion rooted in emotion and the heat of the moment.
But that is, ultimately, what he’s paid to do — give an opinion.
That said, I’m not sure why Barkley seemed so annoyed by this Nuggets diss track possibility. He’s one of the most famous figures in basketball media, period. Everyone’s been taking clips of things he said — right and wrong — for years. What makes Denver using a motivational clip he’ll likely never see any different from all of his other opinions having the spotlight on them?
It’s honestly a fascinating conversation about the nature of sports television, but it’s still not that big of a deal.
