Ernie Johnson has been a sports broadcaster for nearly four decades, covering everything from baseball to the World Cup. But he is best known for the show he has hosted since 1990, TNT’s Inside the NBA. For the past 15 years, he has been joined on the program by former NBA players Charles Barkley and Kenny Smith. Frequently hilarious, sometimes serious, and willing to broach issues such as race in sports, Inside has become one of the most revered postgame shows in all of sports. Johnson typically plays the straight man and has shown an ability to manage a number of big personalities, from Barkley to Shaquille O’Neal, who is now the fourth member of TNT’s team.
Johnson lives in Atlanta, where the show is filmed, but he was in Northern California this week because the network is airing the Western Conference Finals, in which the Golden State Warriors currently trail the Oklahoma City Thunder three games to one. Johnson and I spoke by phone about his first impressions of Charles Barkley, why retired players hate the Warriors, and the best team he has ever seen play. The conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Isaac Chotiner: What is the primary goal of your show? Are you aiming for sports analysis or is it purely entertainment?
Ernie Johnson: It’s a little bit of both. The show has progressed. Way back when I was doing it by myself, it was an information-highlight type of a show. There wasn’t analysis from former players on a nightly basis. That would happen during the playoffs, when we would bring players or coaches in. But during the regular season, there might be 10 or 11 games, so the halftime show was highlights and scores, highlights and scores, highlights and scores.
As it evolved, with me working with Cheryl Miller or Reggie Theus or Dick Versace, it got a little more driven by analysis. And then Chuck [Barkley] came on and he changed the landscape of the studio show, when he joined me and Kenny. He made it possible for you to not only talk about the games you were watching or basketball in general, but also whatever was going on in the world. That was a good thing because the Charles we had grown accustomed to as a player—who was always the most quotable guy out there, never afraid to speak his mind—that didn’t change when he took the television job.
What did you make of Barkley when you first met him?
I never knew him when he was in college. I knew of him, obviously, and we watched him get into the pros, and I went out and did a feature on him early in my career at Turner. He was engaging and just like you would think he was going to be. Very approachable and a lot of fun to be around. He was a guest in the studio one night while he was still playing. We had that kind of background going in. I think he saw our show—by then Kenny and I were having fun, it was a fun ride—and I think Charles saw that and said, “I’d rather be in a situation that was more freewheeling than a standard, scripted kind of a show.” So he jumped right in. I remember the first night we were on the air he asked Kenny what he was going to say, and Kenny said, “You’ll find out.” And that kinda set the tone for us to go about our business for 16 years.
Is that still true? How much are things planned now?
The planning in this comes in our production meeting where we kind of go over where we’d like to see the show go. “We’ll talk about this” or “we’ll do these highlights,” but they are not part of the meeting—Charles and Kenny and Shaq. We don’t want them knowing that they are going to do this and this and this. We like to spring some stuff on them. We like to get gut-level, genuine reactions. That I think is what makes the show resonate. No one is asking for permission to talk.
You mentioned Barkley’s penchant for talking about the world, and one of the things you discuss sometimes is race. Has that been an interesting education for you, as the only white guy on the show?
An education maybe a little bit. I can’t say I know what Charles’ life was like growing up in Alabama or Kenny’s in New York City, so you learn about what life was like and what they faced. I also tell them that I had a father playing Major League Baseball in a time when some of his teammates weren’t allowed to eat in the same restaurants he was. So I learned about the inequity and racism and prejudice that was prevalent at that time and how repugnant that was to my father. If something happens in the world, Charles likes to go off on that tangent, and that is how he has broken the mold. Charles loves to get into that. I think it’s great dialogue, and it shows this isn’t just about a half-court trap. We are comfortable going there.
What do you think is different about your show than other sports halftime shows?
One of the biggest things is that no one is screaming for airtime and no one wants the show to be about them. We just want the show to be good. Chemistry is the most unpredictable thing in our business. You can do all the studying you want, but you can’t really predict it. I had no idea that when Kenny and Charles and I started this run that it would last this long. You don’t know if someone is going to lose interest or the novelty is going to wear off. But we bring the same vibe to the air every night. We want to have fun, we want to talk basketball, and we want to go outside the court and some shows don’t want to do that.
It’s helpful that Barkley is impossible to offend.
I think that goes for the other guys too. This is not a show you want to work on if you have thin skin. Everyone is a target on a nightly basis. I grew up with two sisters and no brothers. This is as close as I have gotten, always jabbing. But brothers who would do anything for the other guy. If it looks like we genuinely get along, we do! These are all good friends. We realize how lucky we are to have a job that pays us to watch good basketball and laugh.
Has the rise of sports analytics changed the way you view sports? There is a lot of hostility to it from people like Barkley.
I think that analytics overall is something geared much more to teams and coaches and GMs than the average fan. I think the average fan still wants to be able to calculate something easily. I think when you get so deep into offensive efficiency or defensive efficiency you can lose people. I think you have to temper that on the air. It especially goes for when I am doing baseball play-by-play. Fans can get weary of stat after stat after stat.
Will the Warriors come back?
If anyone can, they can. They are going to try and be the 10th team to ever do this. They are going to have to tighten up a lot of things.
You have spent a lot of time with former NBA players. Why do so many players seem to harbor hostility toward the Warriors?
Well, I don’t know if it is hostility. I think Charles has been on the record in the past talking about teams that shoot jumpers, and that kind of thing. So I think that sticks with him, but you would have thought it would have died down after they won the championship last year.
Not just Barkley but Oscar Robertson and all these other guys. It does seem like the Warriors represent something new, which is somehow threatening. I worry that if they lose everyone will get to say, “I told you so.”
Oh, I don’t know about that. That’s been going on forever. The great players will regard their eras as better or underappreciated. That’s great watercooler stuff, but it’s totally unprovable. That’s all it is good for really—for guys sitting around talking around the game.
What’s the best team you have ever seen play?
I kinda think those mid-’90s Bulls. That to me is the benchmark. But there are special things you see all the time. You love those Celtics teams, you love the way this Golden State team shares the ball. I am sitting at home in Atlanta and any time a Golden State game was on League Pass, I would always check it out.
There is something other-worldly about Curry. He doesn’t look like LeBron or Jordan. He’s an average guy, and somehow he gets the ball to go in a hoop 35 feet away.
It’s the talent and the apparent ease. We are always saying that he makes it look Stephortless.
I won’t judge you for that.
We have been saying it on the air for a year and a half. It really is amazing to watch. My favorite player growing up was Pete [Maravich]. My dad took me up to Athens to watch LSU play Georgia when he was in college. When he was playing with the Hawks I got to watch him all the time. I was like the rest of the kids. You wanted to have your hair grow a little longer so it would bob a little when you went down the floor. You wanted to be him. I think Steph is probably having an influence on kids now, wanting to make the crowd oooh and ahhh not with some high-wire act, but with the fact that you can just shoot the rock.
