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Charles Barkley revealed he will continue his role with Inside the NBA on TNT until he's 60, citing "cancel culture" as the motive for a planned upcoming retirement from broadcasting.
Barkley, 58, said during a recent interview that Turner officials told him to stop his long-running joke targeting the women of San Antonio.
“If you crack a joke the wrong way, they’re like, ‘Oh, no, no, no, you crossed the line,’” Barkley said via AL.com. “I mean, they won’t even let me talk about San Antonio anymore when I’m always talking about their big ole women down in San Antonio. They’re like, ‘Charles, we got one lady (who) wrote an article.’ I’m like, ‘First of all, I didn’t call anybody personally fat in San Antonio; I was just joking around.’
“We’ve been having fun with this for probably 10–15 years. We go to San Antonio; the people are having a blast with it. The people in San Antonio had T-shirts made up.”
Barkley continued to reiterate his frustration with the changes.
“You can’t even have fun nowadays without these characters trying to get you canceled and things like that,” he said.
”I’m trying to hang on for another couple of years until I’m 60 and then they can kiss my ass. I’m only working until 60. I’ve already told them that. I’m not working until the day I die. That’s just stupid. And if I don’t have enough money by now, I’m an idiot, anyway. They should fire me, anyway.
“That’s all we ever talk about behind the scenes like, ‘Yo, man, be careful going in this direction.’ I’m like, ‘Yo, man, we can’t even have fun anymore.’ We’ve had fun all these years and now all of a sudden in the last year and a half, everybody is trying to get everybody fired and it really sucks.”
Barkley, a former NBA MVP and 11-time All-Star, was recently honored alongside his fellow Inside the NBA co-hosts with the Curt Gowdy Award, honoring outstanding basketball writers and broadcasters, making him a two-time Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame member as both a player and broadcaster.
Barkley joined TNT after announcing his retirement from playing basketball in 2000 and has won four Sports Emmy Awards for his contribution to the network's long-running NBA program.