Watch: Shaq and Barkley get intensely personal over how to win a title
A big reason TNT’s “Inside the NBA” show has garnered nine Emmy Awards is the chemistry that the co-hosts have.
Ernie Johnson plays the straight man, often calling out his fellow hosts or reigning them in when things get out of hand. Kenny “The Jet” Smith offers uniquely grounded insight for a player who has two championship rings and a gold medal.
Johnson and Smith often have to balance the antics of Shaquille O’Neal and Charles Barkley.
Since joining the show in 2001, Barkley has become a reliable source of both hilarity and the absurd. Despite his boisterous personality, Johnson and Smith could reliably reel in Barkley when necessary.
The task of keeping Sir Charles in check became much more difficult in 2011 when O’Neal joined the show, as the two could bicker about virtually anything. The rather checkered history between O’Neal and Barkley speaks for itself.
And while the two are still very clearly friends today, there has always remained an undercurrent of tension between them. Aside from their infamous fight, the other contentious issue between the two involves winning NBA championships.
O’Neal has four championship wins. Barkley has zero. And the two have very different ideas on how to approach winning.
All of this came to a head on Tuesday night, when O’Neal and Barkley had an uncomfortably personal fight on-air. Sans Johnson, Smith was unable to reel in his cohorts until the viral moment had already hit every corner of the internet.
The ordeal started as the panel was discussing the freshly eliminated Toronto Raptors.
Barkley posited that one of the reasons the No. 1-seeded Raptors played like such dogs (they were swept by the Cleveland Cavaliers and outscored by 35 points in the clinching game) was because of a fractured relationship between Toronto’s star and best player, DeMar DeRozan, and head coach Dwayne Casey. In Game 3 of an agonizingly close loss, Casey had benched an ineffective DeRozan.
“[Casey] needs to repair his relationship with DeMar DeRozan,” Barkley said, before both he and O’Neal channeled their inner fifth-graders.
“No, he don’t,” O’Neal responded.
“Uh, yes he does,” Barkley retorted.
“No, he doesn’t,” O’Neal reiterated.
Things only escalated from there, as the two started taking personal shots against each others’ legacies.
“Me and Pat Riley never saw eye to eye, and what happened?” O’Neal said as his voice began to rise. He was referring to former Miami Heat coach Pat Riley, whom he played for after being traded from the Lakers. The two, along with NBA superstar Dwyane Wade, won a championship together in 2006.
From there, O’Neal resorted to one of his favorite pastimes — reminding Barkley of his lack of championships.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about when it comes to championships. Stop babying these players, you got babied and that’s why you ain’t win,” Shaq snapped.
Barkley responded with one of his favorite digs against O’Neal.
“I didn’t have Dwyane Wade and [Lakers teammate] Kobe Bryant carrying me up and down the court,” Barkley said.
This time, however, O’Neal seemed genuinely upset with that line despite Sir Charles having used the criticism before.
“I’ve got three finals MVPs, Google me, Chuck. Google me,” O’Neal fired back. “You see that [pointing to his championship ring]? Google me.”
It was finally at that point in which Smith stepped in and tried to get cooler heads to prevail. Unfortunately for fans of train wreck television, Smith seemed to cool things off.
For now.
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