Over the last several years, TNT Sports studio host Adam Lefkoe has had the chance to work alongside basketball analysts and Hall of Fame players Charles Barkley and Shaquille O’Neal across various broadcasts. In fact, Lefkoe is the co-host of The Big Podcast with O’Neal, which releases new episodes on a weekly basis featuring an array of special guests. With his experience having collaborated with both personalities on various projects, Lefkoe was asked during an interview with Dan Patrick who was more interesting off the camera.
TNT Sports is currently in the midst of broadcasting the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament as it continues its final season with U.S. live game broadcasting rights to NBA games. Barkley has been part of studio coverage surrounding the tournament featuring host Ernie Johnson and analysts Kenny “The Jet” Smith and Clark Kellogg. On the contrary, O’Neal has remained focused on NBA coverage at the network, working with Lefkoe, Candace Parker and Vince Carter in the studios on Tuesday night games. In his reply to Patrick, Lefkoe contended that Barkley and O’Neal are “interesting in different ways” and contrasted their public demeanors.
“Shaq is like, ‘We’re going to go in a private room by ourselves,’ and Shaq is going to tell you business stories about how he walked into a board room and he was like, ‘I’m Shaq,’ whereas Chuck is going to tell you a story about Barcelona in ‘92,” Lefkoe said. “Very different people, but they’re the best when they’re together. They’re like peanut butter and jelly.”
When Patrick recalled that O’Neal wanted an equity stake in a company rather than money, Lefkoe acknowledged that Barkley was starting to take a similar route as well. From there though, he turned the conversation around and started questioning Patrick about certain aspects of how he goes about interviewing.
“There’s a chill that goes through the halls of TNT when we get an alert that says, ‘Charles Barkley on the Dan Patrick Show today,’ and I just want to know, ‘Is this like ‘The Manchurian Candidate’?,’” Lefkoe queried. “Do you have a little node in the back of his brain where you get him to say anything? What have you done to this man? How have you controlled his brain?”
Barkley tends to be candid in his interviews with Patrick on discussing a variety of topics, including the NBA media rights negotiations before a formal resolution had been announced. Earlier in the week, he appeared on the show and talked about the situation between Los Angeles Lakers forward LeBron James and ESPN commentator Stephen A. Smith. Patrick recalled that one of the first times he met Barkley was for a ‘Sunday Conversation’ on ESPN and explained that they stayed in touch from there.
“It always feels like – like that’s our normal conversation,” Patrick said. “If I’m around Reggie Miller, that’d be a normal conversation; around Charles, normal conversation. So all I try to do is bring normalcy to something that isn’t normal, and that’s an interview over Zoom, and Charles falls for it every time.”
Lefkoe elaborated by articulating that Barkley and O’Neal have earned the license to be themselves and are the top two people in terms of loving being themselves on the airwaves. After Lefkoe recently hit his second parlay on the NBA on TNT before Barkley hit his first, he thought it would be funny to FaceTime the former NBA forward on the airwaves and surmised that he would understand being live on television.
“He picked it up, and I knew I was in trouble, Dan, when he had his clear glasses and they were towards the edge of his nose because as Chuck is out, they get further and further down and then the talking gets louder and louder, and so I tried and he got me,” Lefkoe said.
“And then I FaceTimed him afterwards, and all I heard was like 10 dudes laughing, and I was like, ‘Where are you?’ He was like, ‘Oh, I’m out with the fellas. We were watching you, and when I saw you FaceTime me.’ I was like, ‘You knew, and you still tried to end my life,’ and he was like, ‘Yeah,’ but that’s Chuck, man. He’s the G.O.A.T.”
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