Shaq, Chuck, Ernie, and Kenny: An appreciation

In sports, the game is usually the main event. The excitement begins at tip-off, kick-off, or first pitch.

But for the NBA, fans queue up TNT early for a show that’s equal parts analysis and comedy before the game, followed by the back-and-forth drudgery of the game’s first half, until more hilarity ensues at halftime. And after the final buzzer, “Inside the NBA” continues to offer more hijinks. In total, the cast — Charles Barkley, Ernie Johnson, Shaquille O’Neal, and Kenny Smith — spend as much time jawing on set than the stars do playing a basketball game.

And it’s a delight.

Many nights, clips from “Inside the NBA” are shared as widely as a highlight dunk or game-winning three-pointer. The show relies on an Abbott and Costello equation: two straight men, Johnson and Smith, and two jester-like foils, former NBA MVPs Shaq and Sir Charles.

You don’t see these antics on ESPN: A turban-clad Shaquille O’Neal (Shaqstradamus) reads a crystal ball, or, lacking the headgear, break dancing despite his lumbering frame. Barkley and O’Neal regularly sumo wrestle on the floor of the TNT studio. They have a basketball court on set where Shaq proves he still can’t make free throws and Smith proves he can shoot threes like any other middle-aged dad.

Johnson, the bow tie-clad diplomat and veteran sports journalist, runs the show, reining in the zaniness of his on-screen comrades.

Smith, the two-time NBA champion with the Houston Rockets, actually tries to analyze the basketball game as the Big Aristotle and the Round Mound of Rebound rib each other.

Smith and Johnson remain analysts in the classic and truest sense of the word. But they’d be much less effective (and watchable) without Barkley’s turn as basketball’s Yogi Berra, with such quips as “I might be mistaken, but I’m never wrong” and “The only difference between between a good shot and a bad shot is if it goes in or not.”

Barkley, the league MVP of 1993 and the MVP of the NBA on TNT crew, has kept in the public eye since he retired as one of the league’s best rebounders and scorers of all time. In the aughts, he became famous for his horrendous golf swing. Then for gaining weight and teaming up with Weight Watchers in 2011. Now, after almost two decades in broadcasting, most young NBA fans probably assume he is some sort of bald, baby-faced comedian.

But his comedy wouldn’t work without the others. The genius of “Inside the NBA” is that Ernie Johnson and the crew prepare and act as if this was some flavorless basketball commentary show peppered with aging stars and salted with sabermetric graphics.

That conceit allows the personalities of Barkley and O’Neal to shine.

Whenever Sir Charles cracks a joke, all eyes are on Shaq, who laughs quietly, raises his massive hand to his mouth, and guffaws into his giant coat sleeve. Barkley and Shaq offer the pure comedy and antics of NBA locker rooms. They wrestle, ride electronic bulls, and try on each other’s suits. In one segment, they threw large dead fish at each other.

The “Inside the NBA” team gives you not only the the players’ view coupled with specialized lingo and light chat about offensive schemes, it offers the same personality-driven entertainment that has made the NBA so successful.

Though the crew has finished for the season, and we will have to bear listening to lesser commentators opine on the battle between the Golden State Warriors and the Toronto Raptors in the NBA Finals for ABC, it’ll only make us appreciate it even more when the season returns next year, and the “Inside the NBA” crew returns with it.

Mark Naida is opinion editor at the Detroit News.

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