New network. Same old Chuck.
NBA Hall of Famer Charles Barkley and the rest of the Inside the NBA crew are back at it for the new NBA season, now on ESPN after moving over from TNT.
Two weeks into the new digs and they’re already settling into their usual groove, with conversations going off the rails and devolving into hilarious bickering between Barkley, Shaquille O’Neal and Kenny Smith, with Ernie Johnson in the middle of it all.
On Tuesday night, the topic of conversation that set it all off was none other than the Dallas Cowboys.
Cowboys
“This is our second week on ESPN,” Johnson said in Tuesday’s edition. “And we still haven’t talked about the Cowboys.”
This, of course, opened the door for frequent Cowboys-basher Barkley to get a few digs in.
“Well, you know, they have us contractually obligated to talk about the Cowboys every day,” Barkley said, a light-hearted jab at his new network’s reputation for over-analyzing America’s Team. “Even though their defense can’t stop a bloody nose.”
This riled up longtime Cowboys fan Shaq, but Barkley followed up with the line of the evening.
“Stop people from scoring!” Barkley exclaimed. “Don’t trade your best defensive player and then whine about [how] you can’t stop anybody.”
Even Shaq got a chuckle out of that one.
The Cowboys defense is indeed struggling without former star Micah Parsons, who, incidentally, was named Defensive Player of the Month for October with his new team, the Packers.
Depending on how far Micah and the first-place Packers go, this might not be the last time Barkley and O’Neal end up bickering about the subject.
See the full video below.
Find more Cowboys coverage from The Dallas Morning News here.