Charles Barkley’s best comments on Jason Kelce’s new show didn’t make it onto ESPN
Barkley was happy to talk about Saquon Barkley and the Eagles, but his best remarks were about the Sixers and Joel Embiid.
Former Eagles star Jason Kelce wanted authenticity for his new late-night show on ESPN and got it in spades by booking Charles Barkley as one of his first guests.
Kelce’s show is obviously focused on football, and the former Sixers star and Hall of Famer agreed with the Eagles’ decision to rest Saquon Barkley and questioned why most NFL teams waste so much money on mediocre quarterbacks. But some of Barkley’s best moments during Kelce’s first episode were left on the cutting-room floor.
During a commercial break, Kelce turned the show over to his Philly audience to question Barkley and his other two guests, NFL Network analyst and former NFL lineman Brian Baldinger and rapper Lil Dicky, whose real name is Dave Burd.
“Dave, not only are you a big Eagles fans, I know you’re a die-hard Sixers basketball fan,” Kelce said to Burd.
“Well, you’re gonna die,” Barkley interjected, causing Kelce to nearly keel over in laughter. “You’re going to die. It’s not even going to be that hard.”
Burd tried to present an optimistic case for the Sixers, who are currently in 11th place in the Eastern Conference and coming off a 30-point rout by the Golden State Warriors. But Barkley wasn’t buying it.
“Embiid has never been healthy in the playoffs … but when he’s healthy, he’s truly the best player in the NBA,” Burd said. “I think if he has the right runway and the cards fall the right way, I don’t know.”
“That’s a lot of ifs,” Barkley shot back.
Barkley also took a shot at Sixers star Joel Embiid, who said at the start of the season he would likely no longer play in back-to-back games before walking his remarks back a bit after his season debut in November. Embiid has played in six of the Sixers’ past eight games, with his only two absences coming during back-to-backs.
“I have no problem with him resting. You don’t say that s— before the season,” Barkley said. “I’ve never heard any jock, especially a great player, say, ‘Hey, you know what? I’m just gonna not play back-to-backs before the season starts.”
“That was handled really poorly,” Kelce added.
» READ MORE: Inside Sixers: Big rookie moments, a Buddy Hield reunion, and more from an inconsistent road trip
Barkley also went off on Embiid and other highly paid NBA players, who he views as being soft and lazy despite making “more money in a week than most people going to make their entire lifetime.”
“I don’t like the current landscape at all,” Barkley said. “In my day, I made $5 million, which is a ton of money. Now these guys are making fifty, sixty million dollars. And I’m like, ‘Are y’all serious right now? Y’all can’t play basketball two days in a row for $60 million?
“They talk about [New Orleans Pelicans star Zion Williamson]’s weight. He’s making like $40 million. I’d be anorexic for $40 million,” Barkley added. “They’d be like, “Charles is too skinny.”
Barkley also spent time explaining the background of his long-standing feud with the water in Galveston, Texas, (”There’s no sense in having a beach if you can’t go in the water.”) and complained about being forced to leave his winter home in Scottsdale, Ariz., to tape the show in frigid Philadelphia.
“You owe me,” Barkley said to Kelce. “When I got off the plane today, the lady said, ‘Where’s you coat?’ I said, ‘I don’t have no coat. I live in Arizona.’”
For Barkley, appearing on Kelce’s show was a preview of what’s to come, when the outspoken sports talker will appear on ESPN as part of a deal with TNT’s parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery.
With the NBA moving to NBC and Amazon’s Prime Video next season, TNT will no longer broadcast NBA games. So Barkley and his longtime Inside the NBA cohosts — Shaquille O’Neal, Kenny Smith, and Ernie Johnson — will host the show on ESPN during high-profile events, such as the NBA Finals and Christmas Day. But it remains unclear if it will stay the same show on ESPN, which has struggled at times with its NBA shoulder programming.
“Johnson, Smith, and O’Neal are terrific, and Barkley is sui generis. He’s that funny, that self-aware and self-deprecating, that raw and real. He’s the primary reason people dig the show,” Inquirer columnist Mike Sielski wrote back in May. “But any change to Inside the NBA’s winning formula threatens to dilute the product, and assuming the show survives and its cast remains intact, those in charge of it should understand all the elements that have gone into making it so magical.”