Throughout the NBA media rights saga, Charles Barkley never shied from responding. He announced his retirement before the negotiations were up, he slammed the NBA for leaving out TNT before TNT themselves, and cancelled retirement just the same. The entire time what was going to happen to Inside the NBA after 2025 was up in the air. Now we know that it’s going to be licensed to ESPN. It took a while but half of the Inside Guys have responded, including the one person who has been silent about it the entire time.

Charles Barkley said on the Inside the NBA spinoff podcast, The Steam Room, “I don’t know what happened with this whole NBA-Inside the NBA thing. Number one, I’m just so excited for the people who work here.” Saving the jobs at Turner had been Chuck’s priority. But he was also not looking forward to the NBA without the Godfather.

Referring to Ernie Johnson, the face of TNT’s NBA coverage since 1989, Barkley said, “These people are my family.” 

With the show getting licensed to ESPN, they retain the original production crew and will continue to film at Studio J in Atlanta as usual next season. Charles Barkley used to talk a lot of smack about ESPN but he loves this move for that. Some of his colleagues behind the scenes were fresh out of college and Chuck has been involved in their personal lives over 25 years. So he’s happy to keep working with them.

He also acknowledged there’s some degree of uncertainty. “I’m looking forward to the future. I don’t know what the future entails,” Barkley said because TNT and ESPN have to iron out a lot of details to make this work. The talk about the future got a rare response from Ernie on this subject.

Ernie Johnson opens up for the first time

The entire year-long saga didn’t see a word from Ernie Johnson, who has been the OG of Inside the NBA through a rotation of analysts till the current one. Charles Barkley speculated that Ernie would retire if NBA left TNT and it would disband the Inside Guys. He didn’t comment on the situation or Chuck retiring, though Shaq and Kenny vaguely talked about it.

The Sports Broadcast Hall-of-Famer also broke his silence on The Steam Room tonight. Addressing all the noise on social media, Ernie said, “We don’t know exactly anything, what shape this is going to take right now. There are a lot of questions that need to be answered but we are glad that we are….” And Chuck completed the sentence, “keeping people employed….”

Retirement doesn’t seem to be on Ernie’s cards now because he claims he’s excited to see how this new deal works out. Even though Chuck joked the night before on Inside the NBA, “Times have changed, Kenny. We gotta go back to kissing a–,” he’s looking forward to working with ESPN.