Charles Barkley wants to enjoy some time between his television responsibilities and kicking the bucket.
Barkley, on a recent media conference call held by TNT, was asked by the site Sports Media Watch about his future with the company.
“It’s been a great, great thing. I love Ernie, Kenny, Shaq and everybody we work with. But I just don’t feel the need to work until the day I die. I don’t, man. I’ll be 61 years old if I finish out my contract,” Barkley answered, according to the Dallas Morning News.
“And I don’t want to die on TV. I want to die on the golf course or somewhere fishing. I don’t want to be sitting inside over [by] fat-ass Shaq [waiting] to drop dead.”
Barkley has been talking about how this contract – which is up in two years – would be his last on TV essentially since he signed it, but the media world has not accepted this as fact.
That includes said fat-ass, Shaq.
“He’s never gonna quit,” Shaq said on the NY Post and Sports Business Journal’s “Marchand and Ourand” sports media podcast in November. “Charles is gonna be here forever. We need him, and he needs us. I’m convinced that if I’m retired and I don’t do nothing, I will falter away. This is what we do and what we live for. It’s what we’ve been doing, and we need each other.
“We keep each other going. Look, I’ve been here 11 years. I’ve heard that spiel before, but he’s gonna be here till the wheels fall off.”
TNT’s parent media umbrella, WarnerMedia, is changing hands from AT&T to Discovery in the coming months. The new company will presumably go to great lengths to try to keep him.
TNT did recently sign Draymond Green with the idea of the current Warriors forward eventually being the heir apparent for Barkley, The Post’s Andrew Marchand reported last month.
Barkley has been on the program for about 20 years, and Ernie Johnson and Kenny Smith have been there even longer. It’s unfathomable to think about what life would be like without them at this point.
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