Barring something happening in the last seconds of the negotiations surrounding the league’s next media rights deal, 2024-25 is slated to be the final year that Turner gets to broadcast NBA games. As a result, legendary broadcaster Charles Barkley recently announced that he plans on retiring at the end of next year — Chuck has long said he doesn’t want to be in broadcasting forever, but he now has an end date in mind, even if Turner can pull off a miracle.
Of course, Barkley has always stuck around whenever he’s mentioned wanting to get out of the broadcasting game, so there are plenty of people who think he’s going to change his mind. And as it turns out, a Turner colleague agrees with that sentiment, as Draymond Green said on the latest episode of his podcast that he doesn’t think Barkley is going to walk away from television any time soon.
“I just think Chuck’s being very emotional,” Green said at the 32:35 mark of the above video. “I don’t think Chuck’s about to retire, I think Chuck’s in a very emotional state right now and he’s processing those emotions, and you know, one day you may wake up and be like, ‘You know what? I’m done with this stuff. I’m outta here’ while you’re processing those emotions.
“And then you go a couple of days, maybe a couple of weeks, maybe even a couple of months because this decision doesn’t have to be made today, tomorrow, or the next day,” he continued. “And then you’ll probably come to your senses and be like, ‘I’m not retiring, what was I thinking about?’ But you never really come back and tell people I don’t know what the hell I was thinking. You kind of go along with it and move on to the next thing, and that is what I expect from Chuck. I expect Chuck to never come back and tell us, ‘Ah, I was trippin’, I’m not retiring. I’m moving on to the next thing.’ But we will all watch him gracefully move on to the next thing.”
I think I speak for everyone when I say that Charles Barkley sticking around would be a pretty good thing. As for whether or not that happens is a completely different thing.