Charles Barkley has no love for the Warriors. Furthermore, their slow start to the season has given the ex-Suns player plenty of reasons to go in hard on the perennial contenders. He did not pass up an opportunity to do this on a recent episode of Inside The NBA when he was joined by ex-Warriors GM and current ESPN analyst Bob Myers. “I wanna give you credit for jumping off the Titanic before it sunk,” Barkley told Myers. Myers took it all in stride, trying not to go in on his former team too much.
However, it's no secret that the Warriors are struggling this season. The team is currently 10-11, half a game back from the Play-In Tournament spots. Losing Draymond Green for five games certainly didn't help. However, head coach Steve Kerr also said that the optimal lineup is still alluding him. "The puzzle hasn't fit this year. We've had a lot of guys playing well, but we may have to think about moving the starting lineup around from game to game depending on who we are facing. I'd still prefer to get something solid, but we haven't established anything this year. We're a quarter of a way through so there is a lot of thought that has to go into this," Kerr said after a close win against Portland.
Charles Barkley Threatens Stephen A. Smith
Thursday was generally a wild one for Barkley as ESPN and TNT put on a joint programming block to celebrate the semifinals of the In-Season Tournament. This meant that Stephen A. Smith joined Inside the NBA and the ITN crew showed him no mercy. Less than a minute into the show, Barkley was already coming for Smith. He warned Smith that it wasn't First Take and he wouldn't stand for "all that yelling you do". Furthermore, Barkley said he's give Smith an "a-- whooping" if the ESPN personality tried anything. Of course, the whole thing was in good fun and Smith appeared to be having a blast. Later Shaq crashed ESPN's coverage, pretending to spill a drink on Smith.
As mentioned, the unique crossover event was down in service of ESPN and TNT each holding broadcasting rights for one of the In-Season Tournament semifinals. Pacers-Bucks was broadcast on ESPN while TNT showed Pelicans-Pacers. Saturday's tournament final will be broadcast on ABC and ESPN2.
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