Charles Barkley Embarrassed Himself On-Air During an NBA Quiz. What Shaq Did Next Made It So Much Funnier.

Some sports analysts charm us with their quick wit. Others impress us with their thought-provoking analysis. And still others just ... exist.

Enter Charles Barkley. The beloved basketball TV icon was the star of the show during a particular faux-intellectual segment on Inside the NBA, ‘Who he play for?’ in which he was given a list of five less high-profile active players and had to place them on their current NBA teams. It’s a good bit (originally devised by TNT producers) for the newly relocated ESPN crew, and it was made even funnier by the amount of times that Barkley screwed up. Over and over again.

The segment starts fairly straightforward: Moe Wagner (Nets), Buddy Hield (Bulls), Taurean Prince (Pistons), Mo Bamba (Jazz) and Aaron Wiggins (Hawks), with a bonus question of Garrett Temple (Mavericks coach). Barkley went 0-for-6 and received only a pity kudo for knowing that Temple was coaching.

The combination of the loud buzzer sound, Barkley’s growing anxiety and frustration, and his teammates’ sassy commentary (“Almost, but the wrong conference” and “We saw them play the other night”) led to lots of laughs all around.

“I think the game is unfair to do it this early,” Barkley protested. “‘Cause I haven’t seen any of these teams. We’ve only played three nights.”

Then, the show kicks things up a few notches with Shaq’s seemingly improvised suggestion.

“Kenny, if we replay the game right now, how many would he get?” Shaq said, drawing audible laughs from the behind-the-cameras production crew.

Shaq’s on-the-fly request turned into a platinum hit for the Inside the NBA stars as viewers were immediately pulled into the raised stakes of Barkley’s redemption arc, waiting with bated breath to see if the NBA legend could retrieve some of his lost dignity.

He got two right.

And so they ran it back one more time.

Watch that hilarious segment unfold below:

Charles Barkley, Shaq and the Inside the NBA crew have outdone themselves with latest gag segment

Barkley’s history perhaps precedes him. He gets paid the big bucks to discuss basketball on one of the most renowned shows in sports television, yet he’s made a reputation for himself for his self-deprecating jokes, unfiltered humor and ruthless takes, rather than for his ball-knowing expertise. Last night’s show was the perfect example of that.

As one might imagine, Barkley has done before. Back in 2020, he also went 0-for-6 during the trivia quiz segment (Garrett Temple, a recurring player in the quiz’s iterations, was also on the list).

“Nobody actually knows these guys on bad teams. That’s not fair,” Barkley said. “You never ask me what team Giannis plays for or Kemba Walker.”

Barkley also once guessed a team that no longer exists (the New Jersey Nets), and was involved in perhaps the second-most hilarious “Who he play for?” skit, when he and Shaq had to guess what team Aaron Brooks was on during the 2011 NBA lockout.

“He’s either playing in China or Japan,” Barkley said.

“That’s not the name of the team,” Shaq said, before holding up his answer, written in Chinese, on a whiteboard. “Guangdong Tigers. Ni Hao!”

Why the Charles Barkley schtick will never get old

There are over 400 active players across 30 teams in NBA. The average fan probably couldn’t name many of the lesser-known ones, but one would expect an analyst getting paid millions to at the very least pass a random trivia quiz.

Even so, one could argue that’s not what Barkley is getting paid to do. He’s arguably more entertainer than analyst at this point in his career, and the comedic schtick he’s been doing works.

Take a look at his old SNL guest appearance featuring Andy Samberg as Danny Hoover, a young make-a-wish fan who gets his shot at broadcasting a basketball game. Barkley, who plays himself, for once plays the straight-laced analyst. Hoover, on the other hand, elicits barrels of laughter from his oft-repeated catchphrase, “Nothing but the bottom of the net!” and his terribly wrong play-by-play calls (he yells “Move the chains!” at one point).

Like a sports-ignorant Hoover, Barkley’s lack of ball knowledge, whether it’s intentional or has turned into a bit, is the joke that keeps paying off.

Human idiocy humor has been around for centuries, dating back to Plato and Aristotle’s “superiority theory” which proposes that humor is derived from the misfortunes of others. People laugh at someone making a fool of themselves because of a feeling of “superiority” or dominance—we don’t enjoy being the butt of a joke, but we certainly enjoy it when others are.

And that’s what Barkley, to his credit, does so well.