TNT Employee Admits Ignoring Company’s Demand for Charles Barkley & Shaquille O’Neal’s Sake

The TNT hosts like Ernie Johnson and Adam Lefkoe have the most important jobs in mid-game shows – rein in Shaquille O’Neal and Charles Barkley. If they had a creative license, Inside the NBA would go in triple overtime. Shaquille O’Neal and Charles Barkley’s unscripted madness has made this show an Emmy-winning cultural reset. But producers have to curb it a bit. It falls on Johnson and Lefkoe to do the dirty job. In the season finale of The Big Podcast, Lefkoe exposes just how difficult that task is.

George Wallace was on the show explaining how he’s a continued comedy industrial complex at any time, especially watching Shaq and Chuck on Inside the NBA. Lefkoe not only agreed, but he also revealed what goes down when he had to fill in for The Godfather on Thursdays. “I have filled in for Ernie a few times and, and there have been moments where Chuck and him are going back and forth and I am sitting back laughing so hard and the producer is in my ear being like toss it to commercial.”

You can’t blame Lefkoe for getting lost in the live entertainment. He tames Shaq alone reasonably on TNT Tuesdays. He’s usually watching Inside the NBA on Thursdays like the rest of us. When he’s subbing in Ernie, he gets mad that producers want to cut Shaq and Chuck’s antics short.

“I would get upset and so I would be like ‘no’ and I would let it go for like 30 seconds longer. I’m having such a good time and I forget and then I go, ‘okay, we got to go to break,’ and then I toss it, but it’s perfect.” Not all heroes wear capes. Sometimes, they’re dudes named Adam who keep the laughter going.

Wallace completely agreed. The veteran comic declared Shaq and Chuck as bona fide comedians and credited them with the show’s success. With the status of Inside the NBA in limbo, since the NBA rejected TNT’s matching offer, Wallace stated that the Inside Guys’ chemistry cannot be replicated anywhere. Shaq didn’t comment on it but he’s empathized with the TNT producers before.

When commercials cut the Shaq-Chuck show

Big Diesel is the instigator 90% of the time. But sometimes Chuck gets the upper hand. Most recently, he went on a rant defending Caitlin Clark during the Western Conference Finals. O’Neal was on The Big Podcast soon after complaining to Adam Lefkoe that Barkley got him in trouble.

Angel Reese called her uncle out for not defending her from Chuck’s slander. “Cause Charles does what he always does; he takes up the segment and by the time he’s done talking, we got to get to commercial,” he told Lefkoe. Adam was not there, so it fell on Ernie that day to cut to commercial without giving Shaq a chance to talk.

As hilarious as it is, fans feel a fair degree of anxiety that we might not get Shaq and Chuck’s comedy after the next season. We’d have to wait and see what the future holds for Inside the NBA.

Stay tuned for more such updates and join us in the exciting pilot episode of the “Dual Threat Show” as our host BG12 sits down with Georgia Bulldogs star and SEC All-Freshman Team Selection, Silas Demary Jr.