Credit: © Jim Dedmon-Imagn Images / © Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images
By Sam Neumann on

Inside the NBA returned to ESPN on Saturday night after a month-long absence, and Charles Barkley wasted no time reminding everyone what they had — or had not — been missing.

While showing highlights from the Washington Wizards‘ 119-115 loss to the Charlotte Hornets, Barkley delivered his assessment of the crowd at the Spectrum Center.

“If you went to this game, you had nothing to do today,” he quipped.

The Wizards came in at 10-33, losers of eight straight and sitting at the bottom of the Eastern Conference. Charlotte was 17-28, fourth in the Southeast Division. The game had 15 lead changes and stayed competitive throughout, with Tre Johnson scoring a career-high 26 points for the Wizards and Alex Sarr adding 24. Brandon Miller led Charlotte with 21 points, while Miles Bridges and LaMelo Ball each contributed 20. The loss dropped Washington to 10-34 and extended their losing streak to nine games.

For fans watching young talent develop in a close game between rebuilding teams, it was probably worth the price of admission. For Barkley, it was two lottery teams playing on a Saturday afternoon.

The comment arrived less than a few hours after Barkley spent part of Saturday’s broadcast defending himself against Colin Cowherd’s theory that ESPN was burying Inside the NBA to appease Adam Silver and the league office.

“There’s some fools at home. Well, on the internet. They’re at home now,” Barkley said earlier in the show. “Saying that we were talking bad about the players, so they made us work less. Shut the hell up. This is already scheduled. This was already planned months and months ago. All I said was I would like to work more.”

The back-and-forth started earlier this month when Barkley complained on The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz about not working enough. “We’ve only been on ESPN four times in three months,” he said. “I don’t like that at all.”

Cowherd responded on his Fox Sports show by suggesting ESPN was intentionally limiting the show. “ESPN buried that show,” Cowherd said. “I know there were people upstairs in the NBA office that didn’t like how they lampooned the league and some of the players.”

Barkley pushed back on that Saturday, insisting the light schedule was always the plan to avoid competing with the NFL. Starting this week, Inside the NBA is scheduled 15 times through April 12, then every playoff night through the NBA Finals.

Then he went right back to doing what Cowherd was talking about.

So Inside the NBA came back after a month away, Barkley complained about not working enough, defended the show against accusations that it talks bad about the league, then immediately roasted fans for attending a Wizards-Hornets game. Some people loved it. Some people thought it proved Cowherd’s point. And some people realized they maybe didn’t miss the show as much as they thought they did.

About Sam Neumann

Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.

View all posts by Sam Neumann