I'm gonna give back to some sports media talk where Charles Barkley's taking exception to the amount of time ESPN spend's talking about the Lakers, the Warriors, and the Jordan versus Lebron debate. Here's what Barkley had to say on Inside the NBA last night. Check this out, y'all. The Lakers are having a great two weeks. Kendrick Perkins said, the Lakers saved the NBA season. That's all them fools on the other network, which we're going to be working
for next year, that's all they talk about. Let me tell y'all something. I want all the smoke between that and this lame ass Lebron Michael Jordan debate. I've said for years, the only people who talk about Lebron and Michael it's people on television who got no talent to talk about anything else. End quote. First of all, couple of things, my man, Kendrick Perkins was pretty upset at the way Charles Barkley was talking about him. Kendrick, stop,
Charles Barkley talks about everybody like this. If you get around Barkley for more than twenty four hours, he's gonna call you a four an idiot about something. That's number one. He means no harm. There's only one person in media, Charles Barkley hates it. We all know who that is, okay, you used to work at ESPN, anyone over the Fix. Everybody knows who he is, Okay, Charles Barkley can't stand Skipped Bayler's that's it. That's the only person outside of that.
Everybody else. He just says, you know, you're idiot, You're fool if he don't like something you did in the moment, that's all it is. Charles Barkley is one of the best people you could ever meet in your life. He's a beautiful person. You don't got an evil bone in his body. That's not who he is, Okay, So that's number one. Number two Charles Barkley is on television knowing television is something he leaves to Ernie as in The Great Ernie Johnson Chos Walker ain't got time for that.
Why do I bring that up? Because subject matters as it pretends to what you're talking about on television. You ever heard of Nielsen ratings. People pay attention to the stuff that they want to pay attention to. They turn the channel when you talk about stuff they don't care to hear about. I got news for TNT right now, Charles Barkley. Spend ten to fifteen minutes talking about Oklahoma City,
They're number one team in the West. Spend the same amount of time talking about the Cleveland Cavaliers, and then take a look at your ratings. If you ain't mentioned in Boston, you ain't mentioned in New York, you ain't mentioned in LA. You ain't mentioned in Lebron. You ain't mentioning Steph. You're not mentioned in Jimmy Butler. With Steph, you're not mentioning Luka Doncic with Lebron. You're not doing any of those things. Watch where get you ratings matter?
I would know I've been blessed and fortunate enough to win at them for the last thirteen years now. I'm not an Emmy Award winning show like Inside the NBA. But once again, Ernie handles a lot of that stuff. Those guys know their basketball and they come on to talk basketball. But in terms of the subject matters to be tackled, you pay attention to what resonates with the
audience and also what games you're featuring. Charles Barkley is the same person that says, literally, working for the network, I don't know why the hell anybody will watch this game if it's a particular game he's disgusted by, I don't know why anybody would pay attention to this subject that subject because he's talking, So everybody just relaxed. That's not who Charles Barkley is. But to get to a deeper point, when he brings up ESPN, ESPN is a
twenty four to seven network. We ain't playing NBA games, airing NBA games and airing a half hour pregame show and then an hour long postgame show and then before and after you got Law and Order episodes. That's not what we do at ESPN. We are twenty four to seven sports network. So you're gonna find yourself talking about things, even regurgitating things, getting into stuff, talking about things, giving
people ideas about narratives and all of that stuff. Why because the kind of thing people think about it happens. And by the way, while Charles Barkley was going off and calling us fools at ESPN, he acknowledged that he was about to be a fool because they were about to be over here and what you think Charles Barkley gonna be doing and what kind of narratives you think he's going to be created. Charles Walker ain't never created any narrative. Charles Walker ain't never opened his mouth and
say yo, blah blah blah. And that ended up being a story the next day, didn't Charles Barkley? You thought I got called out by Lebron? Did you see what Lebron did with Charles Barkley years ago? And Charles Barkley had to address it by saying he wasn't gonna get personal. It happens. How many people in Shaq got got into it with it happens. All all contributes to great television. And the best part about it is that it's not manufactured. It's what really our people are thinking about and talking
about and what's on their collective minds. It just so happens to be manufactured in a good television. Where's the crime? Barkley's gonna go off about that? He was disgusted that
Big Perks said the Lakers have saved the NBA. I didn't agree with perks take, but it wasn't like it should be summarily dismissed you're trying to tell me that Luka Dance being in the second largest market in the United States playing for maybe the second arguably the greatest sports franchise in NBA history, in the Los Angeles Lakers. You're trying to tell me that's not a good angle. You're trying to tell me that Luca and the Lakers
potentially making a championship run isn't a relevant storyline. Is that what you're trying to tell me. Of course it is. Of course it matters. That's how I go. Now, that doesn't mean Cleveland is not a great story. It doesn't mean Oklahoma City is not a great story. Let me tell you something right now, Oklahoma and Cleveland in the regular season maybe has been the best game of the year. That was a phenomenal game, and if they were to meet each other in the NBA Finals, it would be phenomenal.
But you're trying to tell me people don't want that, or people do want that more than they want Boston versus LA. How about LA going up against Cleveland? When Lebron going up against his old franchise in an effort to try and capture an NBA championship, which would give him five, which would tie him with Kobe Bryant, which would make people say there's nothing to discuss. Because he won a championship at the age of forty, he is officially the goat over Michael Jordan. You're trying to tell
me that nobody would care about those storylines. Maybe Barkley would say they don't, but that's because he does television as opposed to actually knowing it, meaning knowing what storylines resonate on a day to day basis. I'm not taking a shot of them. I'm just telling you the brothers we occupied. It's got golf, he's got gambles, got a whole bunch of stuff that he loves to do. He lives his best life. So my brother, I love Charles Barkley, love him to death. And guess what, It wouldn't have
surprised me at all. If tomorrow on TV I'm the idiot, or Tuesday or whenever he's back on because he ain't working every day, that's not what he does. And he'll tell you the heartbeat that fool, and I'll laugh because I love him because I know he means no harm. He's just expressing an opinion. Everybody needs to calm down. Everybody needs to calm down.