Charles Barkley is a larger-than-life figure around TNT, and he has a green light to speak his mind on Inside the NBA. That’s led to some wildly entertaining TV moments. But TNT Sports studio host Adam Lefkoe said Tuesday that everyone at TNT holds their breath when Barkley makes one of his frequent appearances on The Dan Patrick Show. In a strange twist, Lefkoe shared this news on Wednesday on Patrick’s show. “There’s a chill that goes through the halls of TNT when we get an alert that says, ‘Charles Barkley on The Dan Patrick Show today.’ And I just want to know, ‘Is this like The Manchurian Candidate?’” Lefkoe said. “Do you have a little node in the back of his brain where you get him to say anything? What have you done to this man? How have you controlled his brain?”
You can never be sure what Barkley will say when Patrick is tossing him questions. Just last week, he spoke out on the feud between LeBron James and Stephen A. Smith, saying, “I’ve always liked LeBron, but him being a bully, it turned me off. But I will say this, Stephen A., the way he reacted was so lame and weak.” Earlier this year, Barkley revealed to Patrick inside details of TNT’s failed bid to maintain NBA broadcast rights. Patrick explained he’d known Barkley for years, since interviewing him at ESPN, and the two had stayed in touch.
“It always feels like—that’s our normal conversation,” Patrick told Lefkoe. “If I’m around Reggie Miller, that’d be a normal conversation; around Charles, normal conversation. So all I try to do is bring normalcy to something that isn’t normal, and that’s an interview over Zoom, and Charles falls for it every time.”
Patrick asked Lefkoe whether Barkley or their fellow TNT colleague Shaquille O’Neal was more interesting off-camera. Lefkoe is also co-host of The Big Podcast with Shaq. “Interesting in different ways,” Lefkoe said. “So Chuck will go out in public and will interact with everybody, which I find endearing, but also wildly annoying, because you’re never going to get the story. Shaq is like, ‘We’re going to go in a private room by ourselves,’ and Shaq is going to tell you business stories about how he walked into a board room and he was like, ‘I’m Shaq,’ whereas Chuck is going to tell you a story about Barcelona in ’92. Very different people, but they’re the best when they’re together. They’re like peanut butter and jelly.”
