The cast of TNT’s Inside the NBA will begrudingly be on ESPN programming at the start of the 2025-26 season, finally completing a plan laid out by former ESPN President John Skipper years ago in attempting to acquire the likes of Charles Barkley and Shaquille O’Neal.
O’Neal and Barkley have both been incredibly candid about their respective distaste for ESPN in the past, blasting the network and throwing subtle jabs at numerous ESPN personalities on several occasions.
According to Skipper, he had previously tried to lure both Barkley and O’Neal away from Turner in the past, failing to do so because Turner largely paid both Barkley and O’Neal more than ESPN was willing to pay them for far less work.
“We didn’t want special contributors,” said Skipper during an appearance on Friday’s edition of the Pablo Torre Finds Out podcast. “We weren’t looking for headlines. We were looking for people to work. And it was frequently why I couldn’t get the best talent into ESPN. Mr. Barkley was the best in the business. But he just complained the other day. This was in the news the other day. Charles Barkley ‘Don’t think you’re going to get me into the ESPN carwash. I’m not doing that. I’m not doing SportsCenter. Nobody is gonna tell me what to do.’ Yes, we had lots of people we wanted to get that we couldn’t get. At the time, we were kind of cheap. We paid lower scale because we had a lot of people.
“I tried very hard to get Shaq when he was available. Tried to convince him that it could be his show on ESPN. He wouldn’t be the second fiddle to Charles Barkley. And David Levy, a good friend of mine, went to him and said ‘I’m going to pay you as much, probably more than John Skipper will. And you won’t have to do anything except show up, start talking, and that’s all you have to do.’ With Shaq, he was very funny about it. I ran into him one time and he said ‘I wasn’t gonna come over there. You were gonna put me up (on SportsCenter).’ And he was right. We gave him an offer, and it included SportsCenter appearances. It included whatever the early morning show was appearances. You know, postgame, pregame. You gotta show up and you gotta rehearse. He said, ‘Why would I do that?’ By the way, he was right.”
Former president of ESPN John Skipper explains why Shaq turned down an offer from ESPN for his own show. 👀
“I tried very hard to get Shaq when he was available — tried to convince him that it would be HIS show on ESPN; he wouldn’t be the second fiddle to Charles Barkley.” pic.twitter.com/jUgLUGwZdp
— Pablo Torre Finds Out (@pablofindsout) May 16, 2025
Knowing what we know about Barkley and O’Neal, it truly is hard to picture either one of them on a show like SportsCenter given the kind of comedic and free-flowing style that they thrive in on Inside the NBA. O’Neal largely said exactly that in the past when discussing his decision not to leave for ESPN, saying that his “worst day at Turner would be a good day”, while his “worst day at ESPN would cause me to get fired”.
Both Barkley and O’Neal have made it clear since news of the move to ESPN was made official that neither plans on appearing on ESPN programming outside of Inside the NBA, which will still be produced by TNT. So in a sense, Skipper still won’t exactly get to see exactly what he had envisioned for either Hall of Famer at his former network.