Charles Barkley has been a mainstay on television for over two decades now, but he nearly left for a front-office role in the NBA some years ago. Barkley appeared on The Dan Patrick Show recently where he revealed he interviewed for the role of GM on three separate occasions in the last five to seven years.
“I’ve interviewed for three front office jobs,” Barkley said. “… It’s been probably about five or seven years. But I wanted complete control because as a general manager or president of basketball operations, you get to fire like four guys before people realize you’re the problem. I do.
“I think being the president or the GM is the best job,” Barkley continued. “Because you’re the one picking the players and you’re the one who’s making trades but I think you get to scapegoat at least three more like the four coaches because people never say who put this crappy ass team together. It’s easier to fire the coach and you get to hide out behind closed doors.”
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Barkley refused to reveal which teams he interviewed for and I must say this is the first time I’ve even heard about this. The fact that this was kept under wraps is quite impressive. When asked if he would be interested in getting a front office role now, the 61-year-old stated it was probably a bit too late. The Hall of Famer wanted to do that job when he was in his 50s.
It would have been quite interesting to see Barkley as a GM or as a president of basketball operations. We have seen over the years that great players almost never turn out to be great executives, but maybe the 11-time All-Star would have been one of the exceptions.
Charles Barkley Blasted His Bosses At TNT For Losing The NBA’s Media Rights
Dan Patrick joked during that interview that Barkley would soon have a lot of free time to be an executive, as Inside the NBA looks set to end after the 2024-25 season. It has been reported that TNT has lost the media rights for the NBA and Barkley blasted his bosses over that.
“Morale sucks, plain and simple. I just feel so bad for the people I work with,” said Barkley on the Dan Patrick Show. “These people I work with, they’ve screwed this thing up clearly and we have zero ideas what’s gonna happen. I don’t feel good, I’m not gonna lie, especially when they came out yesterday and said, ‘We bought college football.’ I was like, ‘Well damn they could have used that money to buy the NBA!’ It’s funny because we just won the best studio show and these clowns, these fools I work with, turned us from Inglenook and Opus into Ripple and Boone’s Farm and Thunderbird.”
TNT’s Inside the NBA premiered back in 1989 and the current crew of Barkley, Ernie Johnson, Shaquille O’Neal, and Kenny Smith has been together since the 2011-12 season. It is going to be a sad day when the show goes off-air, but Barkley did state that they’ve all talked about joining his production company.
It will be interesting to see how this situation pans out. I, for one, hope that these four stay together, as it’s been a joy to watch them over the years.
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