“I wanted to make sure I covered my ass.”
That was how NBA playing legend Charles Barkley, star of the popular TNT studio show Inside the NBA, explained a clause in his current 10-year deal with Warner Bros. Discovery, which lets him opt out of the deal if the conglomerate loses rights to the NBA starting in the 2025-26, when the league's new national TV deals take hold.
Making the media rounds Wednesday, Barkley hopped on the phone with ESPN 850 AM radio in Cleveland to discuss his situation.
"I wanted to make sure that if we lost the NBA in 2 years, I could be a free agent," - Charles Barkley on if TNT loses the NBA TV rights. Charles also talks about the future of 'Inside the NBA' pic.twitter.com/hyDIVcUapyMay 1, 2024
Also read: Are Kenny, Chuckster and 'Inside the NBA' Moving to Amazon?
Barkley recounted that as he and his agent negotiated a deal that will reportedly pay him upwards of $100 million, "I said wait a minute. If you guys lose the NBA, I wanted to make sure I could get out of there."
The erstwhile “Round Mound of Rebound” said he and his backers expected either Apple or Amazon to enter the bidding fray.
“We didn't know NBC was going to come out of the woodwork,” Barkley noted.
It was Amazon that secured a new slice of the NBA’s national TV deal, agreeing to a basic framework with the league last week. With fellow national rights incumbent Disney/ESPN already locking down a deal in principle, TNT Sports parent WBD must surpass a reported $2.5 billion-a-season bid from Comcast NBCUniversal if it’s going to hold onto an NBA national TV contract its had since 2007.
It's unclear as to the “opt-out” capabilities of Barkley’s Inside the NBA castmates, Ernie Johnson, Kenny “The Jet” Smith and Shaquille O’Neal. On Thursday, the Sports Business Journal's Tom Friend reported that Johnson, who also works Turner Networks' coverage of the NCAA Men's Basketball tournament, as well as play-by-play for Major League Baseball games, would stay behind in the event of an NBA exodus from WBD.
But Barkley seemed emphatic and enthusiastic about moving his TNT post- and pre-game studio show to Amazon if it comes to that.
“I love TNT, and they’ve been great to me,” Barkley said. “But it's like Neno Brown said in New Jack City, ‘It’s always business, never personal.’ ”
