Charles Barkley spent an entire year warning ESPN against trying to work him too much, but he never thought about the potential other end of the spectrum.
When ESPN announced their deal to save Inside the NBA by licensing the show from TNT Sports, Barkley was publicly reluctant to confirm whether he was willing to follow his co-hosts to their new network. Barkley’s biggest hangup was not wanting to go to ESPN with the expectation that he was willing to work more than he had been at TNT. But apparently, Barkley forgot to mention he doesn’t want to work less either.
Barkley appeared on The Dan Le Batard Show this week where he admitted the transition from TNT to ESPN “has been great,” but did lament having too light of a workload.
“We’ve complained, we’ve only been on ESPN four times in three months,” Barkley told Le Batard. “I don’t like that at all. What I was talking about working all the time, because I love watching basketball – I’m not going to do all these damn shows. I’m not gonna be on ESPN One, Two, Three, Deportes, Nacho, Echo, whatever they call it. I’m not gonna be doing all that, but I wish we had been on more during the first half of the season.”
Barkley should start to get his fix beginning this week, when Inside the NBA is scheduled to air Saturday, next Wednesday and Saturday.
“They’re gonna start making up some of the days,” Barkley said. “But we only worked one day in December, that was Christmas Day. And we’re only working one day in January, basically…I wish we had worked more.”
Of all the potential issues forecasted by Barkley, who could have guessed he would have been upset about not working enough? But if Barkley really did want to work more, he could have just offered his services to NBA Countdown like Kenny Smith did. Predictably, Barkley didn’t do that, implying he may not have minded the light workload after all.
Barkley’s desire to work is about to be tested. After working just a few nights during the first half of the season, Inside the NBA is on the schedule 15 times from this Saturday through Apr. 12. And once the regular season is over, Inside the NBA is slated to work every night for ESPN during the playoffs through the NBA Finals. It seems unlikely that Barkley will be begging for more work come June.
