Charles Barkley is going to speak his truth.<\/p>\n
The NBA on TNT analyst basically dared ESPN to fire him<\/a>, even before the Worldwide Leader licenses Inside the NBA starting next season. And as he insists that men don\u2019t belong in women\u2019s sports<\/a>, he\u2019s also telling ESPN that it isn\u2019t going to tell him what to do or say.<\/p>\n He\u2019s also not going to spar with Stephen A. Smith on First Take \u2014 but that was probably pre-ordained before Smith started floating his presidential aspirations. Barkley doesn\u2019t want to go through the ESPN \u201ccar wash<\/a>,\u201d and he doesn\u2019t want to dilute his presence on the airwaves.<\/p>\n Smith might as well already be living there.<\/p>\n And as ESPN\u2019s $100 million man continues his tour of every cable news outlet on the dial, he\u2019s not exactly endearing himself to Barkley.<\/p>\n We already know how Barkley feels about Smith teasing a White House run.<\/p>\n He\u2019s a \u201chard no<\/a>\u201d on voting for Smith in 2028. In fact, he told Jimmy Traina<\/a> that he\u2019d only vote for Maryland Gov. Wes Moore or Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, and the party would lose his support as an Independent voter forever. Factor in Smith, and Barkley might not vote ever again.<\/p>\n \u201cStephen A.\u2019s a friend of mine, but he needs to stop right now,\u201d Barkley said on Outkick\u2019s Don\u2019t @ Me with Dan Dakich. \u201cMy friends close to me give me a lot of credit. And I\u2019m not blowing my own horn, I want to be on TV as less as possible, to be honest with you. That\u2019s why I only do a couple of commercials a year. I don\u2019t go on a bunch of shows. Less is more. Because the more you do, the less people take you serious. And I don\u2019t feel the need to grab every dime at my disposal. Like, I\u2019ve been arguing with my agent. He says, \u2018We can do five to seven commercials a year.\u2019 I said, \u2018We\u2019re going to do two commercials a year \u2014 that\u2019s it. I don\u2019t want to be on TV all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Stephen A. Smith does.<\/p>\n \u201cI get sick of seeing myself doing March Madness all the time,\u201d Barkley adds. \u201cBut, I don\u2019t want to be on TV all the time. I don\u2019t do a bunch of TV stuff\u2026 because people get sick of you. That\u2019s my No. 1 thing. People will get sick of you. So, I don\u2019t want to be on TV more. I want to be on TV less.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s not in Smith\u2019s nature.<\/p>\n \u201cAs a matter of fact, I was in the studio last night, and I see he\u2019s going to be on Law and Order<\/a> tonight,\u201d Barkley said. \u201cI mean, he\u2019s already on General Hospital<\/a>. Now, he\u2019s going to be on Law and Order tonight. I was just laughing. I\u2019m like, \u2018Yo, man, you\u2019re starting to be too much right now. You\u2019re going to be on CNN. You\u2019re going to be on Fox and Friends. Now, you\u2019re at the\u00a0General Hospital. Now, you\u2019re on\u00a0Law and Order.\u2019 I\u2019m like, \u2018Yo, man, knock it off. Stop being on every TV show.\u2019 Because at some point, people are going to get sick of you, and you\u2019re going to be like, \u2018Yeah, I probably did too much.\u2019 But once you do too much, it\u2019s too late. And then people don\u2019t take you seriously. And I think he\u2019s gotta be careful in that aspect.\u201d<\/p>\n If that\u2019s how Barkley feels about Stephen A., it\u2019s a miracle he hasn\u2019t broken his TV watching Shaq pitch everything from car insurance to Icy Hot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Charles Barkley is going to speak his truth. The NBA on TNT analyst basically dared ESPN to fire…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26072,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3724],"tags":[7,2001,2603],"class_list":{"0":"post-26071","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-charles-barkley","10":"tag-stephen-a-smith"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114491484681507031","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26071"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26071\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}