The NBA season is inching closer, and that means there’s a lot of talk about what action will be happening on the court. But there’s also plenty of discussion about what’s going on off the court, and last month, former NBA star Charles Barkley said that the upcoming season of Inside the NBA will be his last one on the program.
So, Barkley says that he’s retiring after this season, but there’s a big “if” attached to that. In fact, NBA legend Shaquille O’Neal simply doesn’t believe it.
speaking with Front Office Sports Tonight’s Bridget Condon, O’Neal said what he really thinks about Barkley’s supposed retirement.
Shaquille O’Neal does think Charles Barkley is really retiring
“Once somebody taught Charles how to go viral, it was over,” O’Neal said. “So do I believe it? No, I don’t believe it. But if it happens, it was a great run, we had fun. But I don’t believe that.”
So, O’Neal thinks Barkley knows that pulling these kinds of stunts can make him go viral, and that’s why he can’t believe it in this case.
He’s done it before. The latest time he announced retirement plans before but came back to the show was during the 2024 NBA playoffs, when he announced that he would step down after the next season because of TNT losing its part of the NBA’s rights package and the messiness that was going on. But, as Front Office Sports points out, Barkley came back when TNT Sports came to an agreement to license the show to ESPN.
So, is Barkley really retiring? O’Neal says “no,” and there are likely quite a few who agree with him.
