Posted in: NBA, Sports, streaming, TNT, TV | Tagged: Charles Barkley, David Zaslav, nba, warner bros discovery

Charles Barkley: WBD Doing "S****y Job" Offering Updates on NBA Talks

NBA Legend & TNT's Inside The NBA co-host Charles Barkley still isn't impressed with how Warner Bros. Discovery is handling the NBA talks.

If he hadn't made his point crystal clear before, NBA Legend & TNT's Inside The NBA co-host Charles Barkley didn't mince words a few weeks back about his feelings toward Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) CEO David Zaslav and Zaslav's leadership team regarding how they've been handling (or mishandling, as Barkley sees it) negotiations with the NBA. Reports are that WBD is inching closer to losing its NBA broadcasting rights for the 2025-2026 season – with NBC, ESPN, and Amazon seen to be the major players now. But WBD won't just be losing the NBA games – it will also be saying goodbye to one of the best coverage shows in all of professional sports – TNT's Inside The NBA with Barkley, Ernie Johnson, Shaquille O'Neal, and Kenny Smith. On the same day that Zaslav offered an update on negotiations (more on that below), Barkley was checking in with SI Media with Jimmy Traina to let folks know how things are looking on his end – and they're still not looking good.

"They've done a really shitty job of keeping us abreast. Just say, 'Hey, guys, we're in the middle of negotiations. It's 50-50.' Just say something. We have not discussed it. And I don't mean for me. The people who work there. They're the ones on pins and needles. Just say something to let the people be able to breathe a little bit. I can't imagine having a family and bills. Realistically, you probably gotta start looking for another job. You're not gonna wait a year and get fired," Barkley shared with host Jimmy Traina.

Barkley also brought up the matter of there still being bad blood between WBD and NBA commissioner Adam Silver over Zaslav's comment from 2022 about WBD not needing the NBA to still be successful with sports. "I think this is our third negotiations and we've always signed during the exclusive window. It's never come up for bidding. Clearly, Adam [Silver] is upset. I'm assuming he's upset. Something is going on, to be honest with you, because if we have the right to match, it would be a simple – 'Yeah, we're gonna match' or 'We're not gonna match.' That's the thing that's got us disturbed the most," he explained.

As for WBD's CEO, Barkley shared that he doesn't have a relationship with Zaslav other than meeting him twice – with the second time happening this past May for Disney's Upfronts. "I met him twice. I saw him last week at the upfronts. He said hello, and that was it. I thought he should've said something to us when he had us there, to be honest with you, and he didn't," Barkley revealed. And if you were expecting him to hear about it from WBD leadership over his recent comments, Barkley makes it clear that "they know better."

Earlier this week, Zaslav attended Bernstein's Strategic Decisions Conference, where he offered an update on how things were going with NBA negotiations and the company's overall sports offerings. "I was just down in Atlanta. We've got a great team down there, and we love our experience with the NBA," Zaslav shared, noting that the company is continuing talks with the professional basketball league. But Zaslav also wanted to make it clear that WBD's "robust" sports offerings extend beyond the NBA.

"In general, we're a leader in sports around the world. We have the Olympics in Europe … a full buffet of content around the world. We have football in a number of markets in Europe and Latin America. This is what we do for a living. We're in the business of sport, and in sport, deals come up, and you look at those deals, and you make a decision about the overall quality of the full menu of content you have for each of your platforms," Zaslav added – and for TNT, that means looking at NHL, NASCAR, and college football rights.

"When you put that together with March Madness and baseball playoffs and the U.S. soccer that we have, it's a very robust offering for consumers that they can watch on TNT in the U.S. all year round. That is our job, to continue to look at how do we continue to nourish an audience that loves sports on TNT," the WBD CEO continued. That's what we've been doing. We've been very strategic about adding sport to TNT over the last several years, and we feel very good about where we are."

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