Remember last year when Charles Barkley torched TNT higher-ups for keeping his future in the dark? At the time, it was unclear if Inside the NBA was coming back after the new media rights deal. The 11-year contract had Disney (ABC/ESPN), Amazon, and NBC, worth a total of $75 billion, as new partners. Months later, ESPN stepped up to license the show, as TNT lost the deal. However, until now, Chuck’s concern still remains; this time, the question is how the show will work. And he or the fans of the Emmy-award winning show won’t like the answer.

The league announced opening day fixtures. NBC will kick off the doubleheader on the opening night. The next day, ESPN gets its bite of the cherry with a doubleheader of its own. Yet, the fans won’t get to see the usual quartet for the desired time. Meaning? According to a report by Jon Lewis of Sports Media Watch “The show would run from 12:05 – 12:35 a.m. ET, leading into a Bristol-based SportsCenter at 12:35.” That’s right, just 30 minutes instead of the usual 50-minute show.

During the live stream of MLB games between the Mets and the Braves, Charles Barkley expressed his frustration. “You know, Jamal, I could make up some crazy stuff. I have no idea. We are nervous, We’re nervous. We’re concerned.” The TNT analyst continued. “Because, you know, Jamal, you’ve done our show 100 times. Right. You know, probably our best stuff is after the game, when we can go from five minutes to an hour. One of our concerns is, are they going to say, like, you guys got 15 minutes before we got to go to SportsCenter? So we don’t know.” But now we know, at least for the opening day, the show will run for 30 minutes.

Another kicker being, after the Opening Week of the season, TNT’s NBA studio show is not guaranteed to take place again until Christmas Day. So Chuck’s concerns became real.

Inside the NBA has 30 minutes before ESPN starts its next program —SportsCenter. The 76ers legend expressed, “honor and a privilege to work for ESPN“. But that doesn’t mean he is happy being kept in the dark. He concluded on the stream, “like I say, I wish I could give you an honest answer, but I have zero idea what’s going to happen.”

Charles Barkley was not happy about the pilot

On one hand, fans are happy that Charles Barkley, Shaquille O’Neal, Kenny Smith, and Ernie Johnson will remain together. But on the other hand, the question hovers, will ESPN change the essence of the show? For context, ESPN is only licensing the show, and TNT still has the creative control. Yet, the future remains unclear. In fact, to mark the new beginning, a concept was planned and shot, and to put it bluntly, Chuck called it a “s— pilot”.

He has had his reasons. ” They’re trying to do something. We don’t know what it is yet. We taped a pilot, and it was a s— pilot,” In a brutally honest interview on the Pardon My Take podcast, Barkley spilled the beans on what was shot, which left him unimpressed. “So, we did like four segments. One segment was Kenny doing fashion—One segment was like Shaq doing Shaq, he funniest section you do. One we did axe throwing, and then we did finger painting.” It was not just Sir Charles who was disappointed.

“And when we walked out the studio that night, we’re like, ‘That’s the stupidest s— we’ve ever done,’” Barkley recalled. Thankfully, the executives listened, and TNT eventually agreed the pilot was awful and mercifully shelved it. So, we won’t see the pilot, but now the question is what plans they have for the future.