The Inside the NBA crew is the best in the business in large part because the format of the show allows them to go off on tangents and dive deep on topics and conversations that are interesting to them — sometimes basketball related and sometimes not.
We saw that earlier this week when Charles Barkley and Kenny Smith got in a two-minute long argument over how teams should defend Stephen Curry when he’s coming off screens, which mostly showed how difficult it is to come up with a successful defensive gameplan against the Warriors. On Thursday night, the fellas were back for another Warriors-Nuggets game, and this time Charles Barkley wanted to talk about Nikola Jokic dealing with Draymond Green’s physicality in the post and why it’s so difficult to deal with despite having a height advantage.
This time there wouldn’t be any back-and-forth because Shaq, Ernie, and Kenny were too busy trying to stifle laughter because Chuck’s choice of wording included “when a guy’s banging you,” and shortly after a “you can feel his body” which left Shaq unable to keep quiet and caused the rest of the desk to break as well.
Shaq, Kenny, and Ernie didn't have anything to add to Chuck's analysis here.😂😂😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/Lq6RTvZ5LL
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) April 22, 2022
Sometimes I think Chuck does this purposefully to mess with Shaq and get him to laugh, because this felt almost deliberate with his choice of phrasing. When Kenny, also doubled over in laughter at this point, calls out Shaq, he tries to play innocent by noting he “didn’t say anything,” to which Ernie quickly retorts “you didn’t have to.” Despite their best efforts to remain adults, the Inside crew couldn’t help but turn into a bunch of giggling teenage boys at Chuck’s phrasing and even Barkley lost his train of thought and it all fizzled out.
