ESPN knew what it was getting into when it took on the Inside the NBA licensing deal. It meant that the most unfiltered NBA analyst wasn’t going to spare them from his razor-sharp wit. Charles Barkley has settled into the Disney-owned network so comfortably that he has already begun nitpicking his new home just as much as he did during his decades at Turner Sports.

The hilarious TNT and ESPN rivalry was revived in real time when Shams Charania joined the Inside Guys during tipoff tonight. It’s difficult to say what the NBA insider’s objective was because the video stuttered, pixelated, and glitched a lot. Charania apparently didn’t realize there was a technical issue that made him inaudible, so he continued as usual.

It went on for a while before the feed went completely dark. The dead air in Studio J was as big as a brooding Shaquille O’Neal on the side. Ernie Johnson, with 35 years of unscripted experience, tried to fill the silence with a light-hearted, “It was fun while it lasted.”

That was Sir Charles’ cue to take a mighty shot at ESPN. “ESPN, pay your bills, man… I know times are tough,” Barkley said because only he can. You could tell by the smirk that he’d been waiting to say that for a long time.

In typical Shaq fashion, too, he said, “Your fault, Chuck,” blaming his big head for interrupting the signal and for putting ESPN in these dire straits. That is a deliberate reference to Chuck’s rant only a week ago.

Charles Barkley is here to make ESPN uncomfortable

The Inside Guys have not won over a dozen Emmy awards for their unscripted madness for nothing. It’s easy for them to fill the silence caused by an unexpected technical issue. To his credit, Kenny “The Jet” Smith really tried.

He was impressed with Shams’ “flex” of his personal study. Even with the sputtering video, we could see Charania’s Loyola degree among the Kobe Bryant memorabilia and a few awards. And the biggest flex, Charania’s luscious mane of hair that was more hair than the Inside quartet had combined.

Chuckster agreed, but “He just forgot to pay his phone bill.” There was no way Barkley would spare a single ESPN employee with the week he’s had. Don’t forget Charania’s sudden post-and-delete just a day earlier, which left Lakers fans with more questions than answers about Austin Reaves’ injury status. Chuck’s comments online just rub salt in those wounds.

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Just like many fans, Chuck and his buddies are just as upset about Inside the NBA’s sporadic schedule since its transition to ESPN. Only the unstoppable Round Mound of Rebound had the audacity to call them out on it.

“I love watching basketball, but I’m not going to do all these damn shows,” Barkley told former ESPN employee Dan Le Batard. “I wish we had been on more. We’ve complained because we’ve only been on ESPN four times in three months.”

When the show is on air, Chuckster pulls a Shaq by mistakenly unaliving Karl Malone on air. Or he’d reignite his rivalry with Kevin Durant. Worse, he had Ernie scrambling to diffuse the tension when he hit back at trolls.

Beyond the scheduling gripes, Barkley has spent the last week daring ESPN to silence him. “They can fire me. I got seven years on my contract. I’m 100 percent retired, but if I can do something just a little bit stupid so they have to fire me, they’ll have to pay me for the whole seven years.”

Charles Barkley is on a 10-year, $210 million contract. He walked away from an additional $100 million from Amazon and NBC to keep the Inside Crew together. But he won’t miss a single chance to dangle his big sacrifice and 9-figure payout over their heads.

Every time Charles Barkley does something against the unwritten Disney handbook, fans question how long the Inside the NBA crew remains an independent state governed only by Barkley’s bluntness.

But here’s a better question. What was Shams Charania trying to say? (It was on Giannis’ trade odds, he was back on the show to say.)