This is why most people love Chuck. Regardless of whether you agree with him or not on something, he's not gonna hold back and he'll always speak his mind.Tania Ganguli was getting shoo'd away by Kenny and Ernie
The future of “Inside the NBA” was already a sensitive topic when Charles Barkley stepped into an elevator in Minneapolis after Game 2 of the Western Conference finals late Friday night.
…When Barkley, who had already batted away several attempts by security and public relations officials to prevent him from doing an interview, ushered me into an elevator filled with his co-workers, not everyone was happy.
Kenny Smith, Barkley’s on-screen foil, voiced his irritation. But Barkley, as he has done throughout his decades in the public eye, made clear that he wouldn’t be muzzled.
“Hey, man, I can talk to who I want to,” Barkley said to Smith, using an expletive. Others in the elevator shifted uncomfortably.
“You should do that out there,” Smith said, suggesting the interview be done outside the elevator.
Barkley turned to me: “Don’t worry about him.”
“She should clear it through Turner,” Smith said. “She should do it the right way.”
…Approached for an interview, Johnson pointed me to the public relations team. TNT had declined to arrange interviews with its talent for this article. After the game, Johnson interrupted the interview with Barkley as he left the elevator to castigate me for approaching him without permission from the company.
Quite frankly, everybody involved with Turner should be supporting Barkley in speaking out like this because he's going to bat for everybody that works there and calling out their terrible upper management. Whatever happens will not affect Barkley's life or livelihood but it will to hundreds, maybe thousands of others. Losing the NBA will likely have a trickle down effect on the rest of the company.
DID YOU EVEN LOOK
