This past Thursday, Sports Media Watch traveled to Atlanta to chronicle a typical night on TNT’s NBA studio show. However, this night was anything but typical.
Due to the death of his grandmother, Charles Barkley was not on the set Thursday night, the first time this season that the popular NBA analyst has missed a broadcast. The show did go on, but viewers could be forgiven if they felt that it just wasn’t the same.
The chemistry between Barkley, host Ernie Johnson and fellow analyst Kenny Smith is what has made the TNT NBA studio show one of the most acclaimed sports shows in recent memory – and the principals involved with the show agree.
“It’s all chemistry,” producer Tim Kiely told SMW, “They like each other.”
Johnson, Barkley and Smith have been working together for nearly 10 years, making up one of the longest-tenured and most popular studio teams in sports. In that time, Inside the NBA has won multiple Emmys, and has been nominated as the best studio show eight years in a row.
“Chemistry is the key to the whole thing,” Johnson said, echoing Kiely’s sentiments, “I think we’re very fortunate to have the fact that our three personalities just sort of mesh, because we come at it from different angles, and nobody takes themselves too seriously.”
Case in point, the ability of the three to laugh off being the butt of jokes — from Smith being made fun of for a comment about Terrell Owens to Barkley mistakenly saying ‘I’m a dumbass’ on camera thanks to a rigged teleprompter.
“If anybody had a big ego problem, or was hard to get along with, or we had friction, it would never work.”
Nobody could have predicted how easily the trio would click, Johnson said. After all, Smith and Barkley did not have much of a relationship during their playing years. Smith, in fact, “didn’t really know” Barkley until they began working at TNT together.
The longevity of the show was also unexpected. Of the major studio shows, only ESPN’s College Gameday trio of Chris Fowler, Kirk Herbstreit and Lee Corso has been working together for longer than Johnson, Smith and Barkley.
When Barkley first joined TNT in 2000, there was concern on Johnson’s part that, once the novelty wore off, Barkley would “get tired of it a little bit, and say, ‘oh, I don’t know if this is what I want to do.'”
Smith, meanwhile, did not even view television as a career until about his “second or third year” at TNT, when Craig Sager told him how much potential both he and the show had.
Nearly ten years later, there may not be a more compatible group on television — sports or otherwise.
“I love those guys,” Johnson said, “I really do. And we just have such a great relationship. … Believe me, I’ve got the greatest job in the world.”
A typical NBA Thursday night on TNT starts during the afternoon for Tim Kiely, the veteran producer of the network’s NBA studio show. The day is filled with “a lot of logistical stuff,” including conference calls with the broadcast teams working the games and a late afternoon production meeting with “Ernie and a group of production people, associate producers and directors.”
“We just kind of talk in generalities about what we want to do that night,” Kiely said of the production meeting, “Some of it’s straight basketball, based on who’s playing, or what the latest news is, and then we start to look at some possibilities for fun with Chuck or Kenny.”
As an example, Kiely cited a recent sketch in which entertainer Wayne Newton threatened Barkley — referencing the highly-publicized but evidently false feud between Marv Albert and 50 Cent.
“There’s an understanding between me and Tim that we know what we have at our disposal that night, and things that might work, things that might be funny,” Johnson noted. “I don’t want anybody to feel like it’s just this random show, where everyone shows up five minutes before we get on the air and says, ‘what are we going to do.’ We’ve got a plan.”
Still, the show thrives on its spontaneity and a generally loose atmosphere. Many times, discussions emerge not from production meetings, but from what Charles or Kenny will say during the show.
“[Ernie] doesn’t know what I’m going to say,” Smith said in the green room, “Has no idea. He doesn’t know what I’m looking at in the game. … I say it when it comes. And they give us a great deal of trust on that. That’s great deal of trust when people feel their job is on the line if someone says something wrong.”
The freewheeling style of the studio show is unique — often imitated, but never quite matched.
“It’s not like another show, where a guy will make a comment, and they’re basically telling him, ‘look, you’ve got 17 seconds to make your point about why it’ll be a good game.’ That’s when it looks rehearsed, that’s when it looks like it’s been practiced to death,” Johnson said. “You don’t get that here. Tim, to his credit, if we’re rolling with something, he just lets it go.”
Smith and Barkley typically arrive closer to game time. During games, the two of them take up residence in the front row of Turner’s green room — which features an array of video screens that can display over a dozen television channels at the same time.
On a usual Thursday night, Smith said, Barkley would bring the same energy from the set back into the green room. “All the jokes, all the laughter, the energy and the high excitement, it never stops. It’s a four-hour ride. You get off the show, you’re exhausted, because it never stops. Two in the morning is like two in the afternoon to him.”
In Charles’ absence, the green room was a decidedly calm, quiet place to be. “This room is ridiculously quiet,” Johnson said at one point during the night. “Hey Kiely, where’s CSI?” he asked, imitating Charles.
Throughout the unusually quiet night, the talk remained generally limited to basketball. Smith offered his critique of the Celtics and Spurs (“great teams, but not fun to watch together”), and touched on Allen Iverson’s return to the 76ers (“they’ve got a real chance to make the playoffs this year”). Later in the night, Knicks beat writers Frank Isola and Alan Hahn dropped by, engaging in a conversation with Johnson about the moribund New York team.
Which isn’t to say that the night lacked the characteristic humor that viewers typically see on-air. Johnson teased Smith with a message from Twitter, which noted that Smith may have championship rings, but colleagues Reggie and Cheryl Miller would get picked first in a pickup game.
And at one point, the topic of conversation turned to which celebrity a Turner colleague resembled, with the eventual consensus being actor Gerard Butler.
The actual set for Turner’s studio show is much smaller than it appears on TV. Much of the set is made up of moving parts, from the NBA team logos that hang from the rafters to the actual desk where Johnson, Smith and Barkley sit — which rotates in front of various backgrounds.
On that set Thursday night, TNT’s studio show did have its moments — despite Barkley’s absence.
For example, when Smith said during halftime of the first game that he was a better three-point shooter than anyone in the NBA, TNT began airing a clip of Smith losing to Reggie Miller in a made-for-TV three point contest. (During the commercial break, he asked, “What am I supposed to say?” to which Johnson answered, “Ray Allen.”)
But overall, Thursday night, like those nights in January and February when Barkley was on a leave of absence, proved that while TNT’s studio show is still entertaining, it undeniably works best with all three of its stars.
Barkley will likely be back this coming Thursday. But that still leaves the question: if so much of the success for the NBA on TNT is tied to the chemistry between Johnson, Smith and Barkley, what happens when their ten-year run together finally comes to an end?
Barkley and Smith have both expressed interest in front office jobs. Barkley said before the start of the season that while he “[loves] his job,” the time had come for him to “take on another challenge as a man.”
Smith, meanwhile, said Thursday night that “the opportunity could come in 30 days or it could come in 3 years. … I think that I would be able to construct a pretty good team.”
If and when Smith or Barkley leaves, could a new studio crew live up to the standard they and Johnson have set? Would it even be smart to try?
“I think you get in trouble by trying to duplicate a show,” Johnson told me, using the example of TBS’ Inside MLB studio show, “[Y]ou can’t tell Cal Ripken, ‘hey, be more like Charles.’ Or tell [Dennis Eckersley], ‘you be the Charles, you say something outrageous.’ You just have to be who you are.”
Kiely suggested a couple of big names who could potentially serve as future analysts. One may not surprise — Shaquille O’Neal, the media friendly NBA star who was a guest on TNT’s studio show during the ’07 playoffs. The other may be unexpected.
“I’ll be honest with you, a guy I’d love to have on, but he’s hard to pin down, is Iverson. He’s great. We’ve interviewed him, he’s funny, he gets along with everybody, he’s wild, kind of off the cuff. I mean, today, he spent the whole day crying, and practice — that whole press conference was just riffing, so that’s kind of what he does.”
But, like Johnson, Kiely noted that “obviously, it’d be hard to duplicate” the success of the current group.
With that in mind, perhaps viewers should adapt Johnson’s outlook.
“We have had such a cool run. If you sat here ten years ago before Charles’ first show, and said, ‘how long do you think this is going to last?’ I would have said, ‘I have no idea, and I just want to see where it goes.’ I feel the same way now. It’s been ten years — we’ll see. If these guys have a chance to do something they really want to do, that’s great.
“This has just been a great ride, and so just enjoy it every night we’re together.”
