While Charles Barkley’s surprise retirement announcement has been met with much skepticism, Dan Patrick seems like a believer.
Following Game 4 of the NBA Finals Friday night, Barkley shocked everyone by stating next season will be his last in sports media. The announcement came while the future of Inside the NBA is in doubt, with Warner Bros. Discovery appearing set to lose NBA game rights, subsequently ending TNT’s 35-year partnership with the league. With one season left on TNT’s current NBA rights deal, Barkley claimed, “No matter what happens, next year is going to be my last year on television.”
The seemingly out-of-nowhere announcement usurped every other conversation surrounding the NBA Finals on Friday night. While tributes poured in for Barkley, so did claims that he was full of it. If history is any indication, then Barkley isn’t going anywhere because he’s been forecasting his retirement for well over a decade, only to keep pushing the goalposts back. But according to Dan Patrick, this retirement announcement felt different.
“Charles says a lot of things, and there are times when I go, ‘I don’t believe that you believe that.’ This once felt like, maybe that is true,” Patrick said Monday morning on his Fox Sports Radio show.
“Now, I was a little disappointed that he was kind of taking a cue from me about announcing your retirement, and then all of a sudden, he’s going to do one more year, and then I’m doing three more years,” Patrick joked. Last year, Patrick casually revealed his plans to retire in Dec. 2027. “It just felt like this was a message sent directly to me.”
Patrick also reiterated a suggestion he made recently about keeping Inside the NBA together and outsourcing the show. Last month, Barkley acknowledged he was considering trying to keep the entire show together through his own production company. The problem, however, is that Barkley isn’t the only member of Inside the NBA with a production company. Shaquille O’Neal and Kenny Smith own production companies as well. How do they decide which one should take ownership of Inside the NBA and sell it to another network? That’s a massive asset to assume, one they should all be clamoring to add to their company’s catalog.
“Nobody is going to replace Charles Barkley,” Patrick added. “No one. He is John Madden to his sport. There will be somebody to sit in there. There will be somebody who is entertaining. But nobody is going to be Charles. He is the most valuable person in TV right now. I just don’t know if you walk away from that…But he seemed frustrated, angry. And I think I even asked, ‘It sounds like you’re angry.” And he said, ‘I am.’ But he was angry because he was trying to protect everybody at TNT and he’s not able to do that.”
Barkley has appeared frustrated and angry throughout this process of it seeming like the NBA on TNT is coming to an end. He appeared frustrated and angry again Friday night when he claimed he was done doing interviews before promptly announcing his retirement. And maybe in the moment, it was the best way for Barkley to express his frustrations with TNT’s parent company. But Barkley has never shown an ability or willingness to stay away from a microphone long enough for anyone to believe he’s capable of ever fully retiring, whether that’s next year or in 10 years.
About Brandon Contes
Brandon Contes is a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. He previously helped carve the sports vertical for Mediaite and spent more than three years with Barrett Sports Media. Send tips/comments/complaints to bcontes@thecomeback.com