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Last July, the National Basketball Association announced a new eleven-year media-rights agreement with Amazon, NBC, and ESPN, set to take effect at the start of next season. Notably left out of the seventy-six-billion-dollar deal was Warner Bros. Discovery, the owner of TNT, which has held league-broadcasting rights since the late nineteen-eighties. The news alarmed many N.B.A. viewers: what would happen to the greatest studio sports show ever? It’s likely that “Inside the NBA,” on TNT, has surpassed the nineteen-nineties heyday of ESPN’s “SportsCenter,” John Madden’s mid-two-thousands years on “Monday Night Football,” and Michael Wilbon and Tony Kornheiser’s ongoing debate, “Pardon the Interruption.” It has done so by the steady accretion of talent and team chemistry. An affable former TV-news reporter named Ernie Johnson began hosting “Inside” in 1990, a year into the show’s existence, and the Hall of Famers Charles Barkley and Shaquille O’Neal came along in the new millennium. But it was the arrival of Kenny (The Jet) Smith, a two-time N.B.A. champ and former Basketball Times College Player of the Year, in 1998, that enabled the show to begin living up to its insider-y name.
During the regular season, Smith flies from his Los Angeles home to Atlanta, where the show is filmed, every Thursday and returns on Fridays. In the interim, he stays at his apartment in the Four Seasons—white-and-gold color scheme, books on European travel, a recently acquired virtual-reality headset on a shelf—and takes a car to the TNT studios on Thursdays for the weekly taping of “Inside.” Once, as Smith was running late to work, an escaped zebra appeared on an Atlanta highway, causing gridlock. There was no reason for Smith to be on this highway to get to the studio—as Barkley later pointed out, during the show—but Smith nonetheless blamed the wayward ungulate for his tardiness: a rare on-air fib, it seemed. “Inside” is beloved for many reasons, but perhaps especially for the candid and endearingly incautious opining of its Emmy Award-winning hosts. Smith, a former point guard, is always looking to “throw lobs,” as he says, to Barkley and O’Neal, from whom he often elicits memorable responses. Dunks and bricks, rhetorically speaking, are equally fun to watch.
Last November, fans of “Inside” got good news: TNT would continue to produce the show, licensing it to ESPN after the broadcasting rights change hands, and all four hosts would stay on. (Their contracts are reportedly worth millions annually.) Smith, for his part, plans to maintain his pre-show traditions, which include dancing with a makeup artist to “Before I Let Go,” by Frankie Beverly & Maze, before sitting down between Barkley and Johnson. Seven-foot-one O’Neal, the junior-most host, sits on the other side of Johnson, in a lowered chair, so that their heads are all on the same level. The foursome appears before, during, and after Thursday-night regular-season games, as well as post-season contests, leaving the studio around 2 A.M., often after doing something—Shaq face-planting, say, while racing to the show’s interactive digital screen—that goes viral.
A few hours before a recent taping of “Inside,” Smith, who is sixty years old, bearded, and a few inches over six feet tall, met me at his Four Seasons pied-à-terre. We sat at a table outside the hotel’s restaurant, where Smith spotted and briefly chatted with a former mayor of Atlanta. Smith wore pistachio-green Nike Moon Boots and a matching Air Jordan sweatsuit, which, he noted, he’d paid for (it was not given to him by Michael Jordan, his old friend and former teammate at the University of North Carolina). It was the hundred and first day of the second Trump Administration, which we discussed along with his basketball GOAT, the possibility of a four-point shot, why he calls Barkley “the A.T.M.,” and the similarities between “Inside” and “Seinfeld.” This conversation has been edited and condensed.
The show you’ve co-hosted for the past twenty-eight years is rather unusual. It’s featured a diaper-changing contest; Charles Barkley kissing the ass of an actual donkey; Barkley wrestling with your other co-host, Shaquille O’Neal; a hundred-yard dash, which you arguably won, against Barkley, O’Neal, and a few other large, aging athletes; discussions of police killings of unarmed Black men and athletes protesting during the national anthem; you flying into the studio with a jet pack; water-gun fights, underwater breath-holding, electric-bronco riding . . . and some of the best analysis of basketball games. What kind of show is this?
It’s an informative basketball show at its core, which demonstrates and exercises the ancillary culture of sports. We pay just as much attention to the peripheral as we do the game. There’s fashion, there’s political stances, there’s team chemistry, there’s parenting.
Are there other shows or entertainers that particularly help inform what “Inside” has become? I think of “S.N.L.,” “Punk’d,” “Letterman,” bits and pieces from sketch comedy.
All of that has probably been an influence, but I don’t think any of them kind of did it the way we do it. I think our uniqueness comes from the fact that we’re allowed to have a verbal freedom and a mental freedom, where it’s never rehearsed. We don’t go to production meetings. Charles is figuring out, What am I going to say? I have no idea what he’s going to say tonight. I have no clue.
Does he know?
I’ve learned over time that he knows what he’s going to say. But you really hear an unfiltered, unadulterated version of what each person believes in that moment. It’s never one, two, three. It’s always, Wait, wait, wait: What did you just say? And we’re not going to allow you to misinform us. We are listening. And I think that’s the biggest difference between our show and any other show. We’re the best listeners on television.
I’ve been brought to tears, laughing, as I’ve watched your show. What moments get you misty?
It’s the life moments. Charles has a grandchild, but he’s never changed a diaper. I was, like, “What?” So I’m, like, “Yo, Ernie, Charles has never changed a diaper.” He’s, like, “I can change that.” So, next week, we got diapers—it has to be all organic—and we put a melted Nutty Buddy candy bar in it. Charles freaked out. Then there was the time we were in the back. On the third screen, we’re watching David Blaine as the Lakers are playing. Blaine stayed underwater for seven minutes or ten minutes—something crazy. He broke the world record. So Charles was, like, “Oh, I could do at least four minutes.” I’m, like, “You can’t.” “All right, get a fish tank.” Boom. He lasts twenty-three seconds. It’s got nothing to do with basketball. It’s always something that we’re really talking about. It’s never contrived.
I feel like you’re the pot-stirrer in the group. How do you see your role?
I use a boxing analogy. Shaq is like George Foreman, a big hitter. But he might take some punches. Like, he’s going to trip on the floor running. He’s going to get pushed into the Christmas tree. Charles is more like Mike Tyson: knockout punch coming at you right from the door. He might never get touched. I’m like Floyd Mayweather or Sugar Ray Leonard: I’m going to jab you with information all night and then you might get knocked out by the end. Pop, pop, pop, pop. Ernie is Angelo Dundee—he’s the cut man. He’s making sure no one bleeds to death.
Who’s most likely to bleed?
Shaq. He’s slapstick—he’s O.K. with falling. Or being pushed. He’s O.K. with being made to look a certain way. He’s Benny Hill. I was a big Benny Hill fan.
Does he get that reference?
When I played the theme music for him, he thought it was a Globetrotters song.
What was it like bringing Shaq onto the show in 2011, a decade into your run with Charles and Ernie?
Shaq wasn’t accustomed to not being the most dominant player. On this team, he doesn’t have to be. That was an adjustment. When he first came, I always thought that he was leaving his best material in the greenroom. I was, like, “Shaq, man, the stories that you say here, why don’t you talk about this?” He would tell me about Kobe Bryant and Phil Jackson. They’d just lost a game. Phil and Shaq are talking and Shaq looks over and sees Kobe. He doesn’t have a basketball, but he’s miming every move. Phil is telling Shaq, “So down the stretch, if we get close, we’re going to throw you the ball.” Shaq is, like, “No, no, no. Throw it to the guy who’s back there dribbling without a basketball. The guy who’s imagining the game.” I told Shaq that’s what everyone wants to hear. I call it the Bull Durham Effect: when the managers go to the mound and talk to the pitchers, only those four people know what’s being said. Give us that. And when he started to do that more, things just became natural.
Pulling back the curtain. You’ve done that with Lebron James a few times.
He had his movie come out and they asked me to go to different cities to do a Q. & A. We were talking in the back at one point, in front of his friends and peers and his agents, and he’s, like, “What do you see?” They hadn’t won a championship yet. And I’m, like, “Well, you won the M.V.P. You got a movie made about your life. But I still think you have holes in your game.” And he said, “What do you mean?” I’m, like, “Well, I don’t know if your post-up is really where it could be.” He took it well. Then I told Kobe this story when he was on our show, and he’s, like, “What the fuck did you tell him that for? Why are you trying to get him better?” He wanted to always be on top of the mountain. Some people go to the top so everybody can see them. Some people go to the top so they can see the view. He was a see-the-view guy.
Was he the most competitive guy you played against?
No. I went to college with Michael Jordan.
Right. Jordan wanted you to come play with him at U.N.C., when he was a junior.
Yeah, I was on my recruiting visit. So he and Buzz Peterson were the guys who was taking me around and Mike was driving in his car. My dad used to always say, “To be a great player, you have to have the eye of the tiger.” Mike, he didn’t know this. But he’s looking at me and he goes, “Yeah, you’re going to come to North Carolina. You’re going to sign.” I’m, like, how does he know this? And he says, “You know why?” And he puts the song on, “Eye of the Tiger.”
What was he like then? In your 2023 memoir, “Talk of Champions,” you describe Jordan as a “country bumpkin” in skinny jeans and Converse sneakers.
A typical college student. Anyone in our era, that was a holy grail: to get to play college basketball. It was an end in and of itself. So we embraced being college students. No one thought they were going to only be there for five months and then leave. So I got to see someone who, as great as he was on the court, off the court he still had the insecurities of a college student.
It’s hard to imagine Michael as insecure, or normal, given his size and skill.
If you had to build your [basketball] Frankenstein, that would be it. He can be ten feet in the air. He can beat you down the court with his sprinting. He can defend the perimeter. He can defend the post. He had the quintessential basketball body.
You wouldn’t rather have Victor Wembanyama’s body? Seven-foot-three with handles?
No. I got to get in and out of a tight space to get the ball. I couldn’t do it.
Who’s the most Jordan-like guy in the league right now?
Zero.
Not Anthony Edwards?
Ant is a very good, talented player. But, O.K.: are you into music?
Yes.
Is there anyone who has touched the fibre of music the way Michael Jackson has?
Prince?
No, I’m talking about today. It’s not even close. Michael Jordan touched the fibre of basketball that no one will ever touch today. Larry Bird touched the fibre of basketball that no one’s touching today. Maybe LeBron. LeBron is touching the Larry Bird–Magic Johnson fibre. He’s not touching the Jordan fibre. The separating point from LeBron to Michael is defense. Michael was just as good defensively as he was offensively. He was like the Deion Sanders or Travis Hunter: you’re not throwing to his side. We’re not throwing to the Michael Jordan side of the field in a basketball game. That’s a separator.
Your co-hosts tease you about not having been as great as they were. Charles has said, “the older [Kenny] gets, the better he was.”
Same with him. I always say to him, I was good since I was sixteen, seventeen. You didn’t get good until you were twenty-four, in the N.B.A. You didn’t make High School All-American. You weren’t College Player of the Year. Those eight years in high school and college, when no one knew who you were, you knew who I was.
And then there’s Shaq: famous since he was a six-foot-ten sixteen-year-old. One of the things I find amusing and interesting about him is his simultaneous admiration for law enforcement—the badge in his wallet, the sirens on his cars—with his predilection for breaking rules.
Shaq is bigger than life. Physically, personality, his basketball game—everything is bigger. Your blessings can run over, but they also can spill—and that’s him.
Years ago, before you knew each other, he kind of kidnapped your son from the preschool where his daughter also went, right?
My son was, like, “Hey, I’ll go with you.” And Shaq took him to get a haircut. I didn’t know where he was!
Shaq likes to say that he has a “G-14 classification,” whatever that is.
That’s the fact that we are able to say things about players because we’ve done it. Diplomatic immunity. That comes from his military background—but he made it up.
Do you ever hear from players who you’ve criticized on air?
You’ll never hear me question your heart, your passion, or your enthusiasm, because I can’t measure that, but if you don’t get back on defense, I run to the board and say, “Here he is: he didn’t run back. That’s why they lost.” You can’t hide from me. One time, a player was talking about how “We got guys on our team who don’t care.” And he was a star player. But he wouldn’t name them. I’m, like, well, why don’t you just say it? That was the first time I got a call.
You’re just as tough on your co-hosts. You wrote an open letter to Charles Barkley in USA Today, a decade ago, after Charles referred to some of the people who were looting, in the wake of the killing of Michael Brown, as “scumbags.”
I called him first, and I said, “The world associates me with you. We’re joined by the hip.” And he starts laughing. I said, “I go to the bathroom and guys go: Where’s Chuck?” I’m, like, “He ain’t in here.” We start laughing. This is how I started the conversation. I said, “So I’m going to write something and I’m going to send it to you first.” And I sent it to him first, but I’m saying I’m doing it, and there it is. So I’m coming right at you if you don’t like it or if you do. It’s O.K. to disagree.
That wasn’t the first time you publicly criticized Barkley, or a situation that involved him. There was the Sports Illustrated cover back in 2002. . . .
They had him in a slave uniform, in chains. And it’s, like, “Charles Barkley unchained.” And so I said, Chuck, what I have a problem with is, like, ten people had to go, yeah, that’s O.K. Like, there had to be a meeting. One person doesn’t make that decision.
You wrote your memoir during the pandemic, which you described as “crazy and unstable years.” Yesterday was the hundredth day of Trump’s second Administration. How do you feel about where we are right now?
I think the undercurrent is always stronger than the wave. I said this yesterday: the wave hits you in your face. You could see it coming. You could prepare for it. You can hold your nose. The undercurrent drags you in and could kill you and you’re not realizing that you’re that far out. I think we have to be careful that we’re not in the undercurrent. Four years ago, there was a wave of people storming the Capitol. It was a wave: you could see it. Now you don’t see it as much, but I still feel the undercurrent. You have to pay attention to how far you are from shore, and start swimming in the right direction. As an African American, there’s always going to be a stronger feel because of the history of the country.
A history that’s increasingly politicized, and even omitted.
It’s like if I say the history of basketball and just talk about the N.B.A. and leave out the A.B.A. The A.B.A. is the reason why there’s a three-point line and the dunk contest. So if you don’t know those things and it’s just erased or not put as part of the history of the N.B.A., then you don’t know why basketball exists and what it does. It’s the same exact thing in society. We shouldn’t cut African American history out of American history.
You mentioned the three-point line. I once asked three of the great three-point specialists—Reggie Miller, Larry Bird, and Kyle Korver—whether they’d support the addition of a four-point shot. Bird and Korver were open to it. You?
I’m not a four-point fan. I think the three-point line was put in to make a smaller player more important. If you don’t have a three-point line, now I’m throwing everything inside. It doesn’t increase the value of anyone by making a four.
But what about from the fan’s point of view? People love half-court shots. It’d be exciting to watch.
I don’t know. I think the further you move the line out, the less strategy is in the game. Now I walk across half court and I don’t have to pass to shoot from that distance. So there’s no strategy in that.
It’s marksmanship.
We could do archery, right? We could just stop the game and put twelve minutes on the clock and everyone just gets a basketball and we just rotate. I think that the further you keep moving it out, the strategy starts to move away from it.
If you could change one thing about the N.B.A., what would it be?
When we get to the final four teams, I would re-seed them: one, two, three, four. No one would care if the Lakers played the Clippers in the finals. They want to see the best two teams. So, after we get to the final four, there’s no East and West. Right now, for example, I think from top to bottom, the West is better.
Speaking of great matchups: what would Shaq do against Nikola Jokić, if they were both in their primes?
Shaq, we’d never seen anything like it. In this era, he would average forty points. He’s just too dominant. His speed: we’d never seen a guy, three hundred pounds, break-dance on the floor. And actually, people forget, when he first came in, he could catch it off the rim and bring it up the floor. He had ball-handling. He had the little crossover when he was younger. He would be a nightmare. Shaq would have no trouble scoring the basketball in this era where you just pick and roll and just lob and roll. My God, he would dunk everything.
Jokić is crafty enough to score on anyone, though.
I watched the Olympics last year, and I was rooting for Jokić. I forgot he’s not American. I’m supposed to be for America.
Is Jokić a top-five center of all time?
I gotta count. [Pauses.] He’s No. 5.
Is there a player in today’s N.B.A. that reminds you of yourself?
I’d be like D’Aaron Fox. The way he shoots the three—he’s quick, slight build, still athletic. I had the best percentage, but I never would take more than four in a game. So to be able to take—with no remorse or no consequence—ten threes every game? This is the era I was born to really play in.
Some players, it seems like, get better in the post-season. Your career playoff three-point percentage—nearly forty-five per cent—is the highest among players with at least one hundred playoff three-point attempts.
How I measure shooting is: What do you do when the playoffs start? If you say, “Who is the best three-point shooter ever?” Most people will be, like, “Reggie Miller,” or “Ray Allen.” I’m, like, “No, you’re looking at him.”
You’ve mentioned Marv Albert, the famed Knicks play-by-play announcer, as an influence on your TV work. How so?
I grew up in New York City. Every game wasn’t on television. So you’d listen to the radio. He would paint the picture of what was happening. Just like my favorite rapper, Notorious B.I.G. So Marv, he wouldn’t just say, “Oh, the Knicks bring it up and he passes over.” He was, like, “Walt Frazier dribbles with his left hand. He brings the ball across the mid-court line. He goes to his left now, and there’s pressure on his right side.” I’m seeing everything that’s going on without hearing it. So when I analyze a game or I do a breakdown, I want you to see it. If you close your eyes, you could still understand what I was saying. Rick Barry was another one who did that. I loved the jovialness of Bill Russell on CBS. He laughed all the time. Snapper Jones on NBC: he was so in-depth and so articulate.
So you see yourself as an élite narrator.
The opinion is Charles’s superpower: he could formulate an opinion on anything, and he’s able to speak from the back of his brain constantly. Shaq is peripheral: he could see the big picture and he could take the side of the opponent. But my superpower is: you could close your eyes and listen to me and see what’s happening. And how it’s happening.
Speaking of Charles’s brain: one of the funniest stories I’ve ever heard on television is when he said that he used to wear his N.B.A. uniform into the shower—because that was the “easiest” way to wash it . . . or something.
He made that up, in my mind. That never would be a normal thing. But Charles was carrying Lysol wipes before COVID. He’s that guy.
How do you feel about the move to ESPN?
We have the same crew of people doing the show. But the timing: are we a half hour now? Are we forty-five minutes? Fifteen minutes? Those are the things that you can control when you own your I.P. But we don’t. That was the only part that made me uncomfortable and disheartened, because I felt that the four of us should have went into ABC to negotiate that deal. I’m not saying that our executives don’t know how to do that, but we are the I.P. now. Ultimately, it’s a classic show, like “Seinfeld,” so it will translate.
So who’s Kramer? And George? You’re all bald.
Shaq is Kramer. I think I’m probably George. I mean, Chuck has a lot of George in him, too. We’re both blended.
Your publicist just said that you guys are actually “Sex in the City.”
Samantha’s the head, right?
No, Carrie.
Could Carrie exist without the other ones? No, she can’t. It’s not even a show. So no matter how you put it, we really don’t exist without the other.
Your publicist says that you’re Charlotte, the one who married the lawyer in the end.
Oh, yeah. She’s the most straight, straight arrow. She’s having sex. But not every day.
I’d like to put something to rest. Did you use the appearance of a zebra on an Atlanta highway as an excuse for being late to the show once?
I plead the Fifth. [His publicist: “Be honest!”] I plead the Fifth. There was a zebra, and I was late.
Correlation is not causation.
We don’t know.
Fine. You’re a spokesperson for FanDuel, the online sports-gambling site. Why?
For a long time, I had been asked to do gambling sites, and then, when the N.B.A. said that gambling was legal and part of their thing, that’s when I said, “O.K. If you’re saying it’s O.K., then it’s O.K.”
You don’t feel a tension between being an N.B.A. analyst and a sports-wagering spokesperson?
I’ve never looked at a spread of a game in my life. Well, the only time I look at the spread of the game is when I’m sitting next to Charles during March Madness, because we bet on teams. We don’t know anything about Drexel versus Georgia State, so we do the line. Fifty a game.
Who wins more often?
Oh, man. There’s a guy, Jimmy, a cameraman who just retired. We call Charles “the A.T.M.” We need to go to the A.T.M. today. What’s the bet, Charles?
Will he bet on anything the way Jordan would bet on anything?
No, he’s not that. I read a study about video games. When you hear the ding ding, it hits an endorphin in your brain. That’s why he gambles, not the money. I tell people I don’t really gamble heavy because I already gambled and won. I’ve got seven figures, eight figures a year. But you want those endorphins: ding, ding, ding.
Right now, the first round of the playoffs is under way. Who would you bet on to win it all at this moment?
Celtics.
You’re famous for the “Gone Fishin’ ” segment on the show. Do you actually go fishing when the season is over?
My dad does, but not me.
How did that segment originate?
I was in the N.B.A. We were playing in Phoenix, against Charles, and their mascot is the gorilla. He comes out with a fishing pole, and on the pole it has these cards. He pulls each one down: the teams they’d just beat. We’re down three, and I’m in the huddle. I said, “We are not going fishing.” So when I got to TNT, I just kept saying, when teams were about to end their season, “They’re going fishing.” Then Alex [a broadcast designer on the show] said, “Hey, let’s do a boat.” Let’s do these images and these memes.
The show was early to meme culture.
I told Alex that. I said, we created memes on our show. Also, our show didn’t create the podcast, but it allowed what sports podcasts are today: opinionating about things that you typically don’t talk about in sports.
Do you want to be remembered as a player or a TV guy?
I want to be remembered as someone who influenced the culture of sport, and I think I’m doing that. I watched a soccer broadcast the other day and the guy ran to the board. In Europe! And I was, like, “Oh, that’s me.” And then they tried to go into the screen. “That’s me!” ♦
Sourse: newyorker.com
