Remember when Charles Barkley said in June he was going to retire after next season? Yeah … not so much.
Amid Warner Bros. Discovery announcing that it has begun “legal action to enforce our rights” after the NBA rejected its matching offer for the new Amazon rights package, Barkley told The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand that WBD has to guarantee it will honor his 10-year, $210 million contract or he’ll listen to other offers.
Barkley told Marchand in a phone interview, “Turner has to come to me ASAP and they have to guarantee my whole thing or they can offer me a pay cut, which there is no chance of that happening and I’ll be (a) free agent.”
Earlier on Friday, Barkley released a statement through Bleacher Report which seemed to be more in line with WBD sentiment, claiming the NBA always wanted to break up with TNT and expressing disappointment that the league chose money over the fans’ best interests.
Despite all that, Barkley told Marchand that he wouldn’t want to sue the league if he were leading WBD saying, “The NBA clearly wanted to break up with us. I don’t want to be in a relationship where I have to sue somebody to be in it. That makes zero sense.”
So just when it seems like we’re reaching the light at the end of the tunnel when it comes to the drama surrounding the NBA’s new rights packages, we encounter another twist. And let’s not forget, as David Samson told Dan Le Batard a few months ago, Inside The NBA could always live on as part of another network, with or without Ernie Johnson.
NBA media drama, it’s FANTASTIC!
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