If Charles Barkley, Shaquille O’Neal, Ernie Johnson, and Kenny Smith were The Golden Girls, which golden girl would they be?
Everyone is professing their love for Inside the NBA in the wake of news that Warner Bros. Discovery appears on the verge of losing NBA media rights for TNT. But only one person professed their love for Inside the NBA by comparing them to The Golden Girls, and that person is their NBA on TNT colleague Jamal Crawford.
Crawford joined The Pat McAfee Show Wednesday afternoon to discuss the NBA playoffs. And during the interview, McAfee asked Crawford about the future of Inside the NBA being up in the air, along with the legacy the show has already left on the league.
“There’s some people that say, ‘I don’t even watch the game, I tune in for pregame and after the game to see what they’re going to say.’ So they’ve always had the pulse,” Crawford said. “And for them, hopefully this whole thing shakes out…but they transcend sports. They’re almost like The Golden Girls. Like, they got their own sitcom.
“They’re bigger than just the sport because we all want to know what Shaq or Charles or Kenny are going to say and Ernie’s the godfather, so he’s going to set the stage perfectly. We have to have them because they’ve been the backdrop and the soundtrack of basketball for the last 25-plus years.”
Even Colin Cowherd couldn’t have crafted an Inside the NBA/Golden Girls analogy. It’s an amazing one, and credit Crawford for dropping it off the top of his head.
Inside the NBA has surpassed every other studio sports show. It’s not worth comparing them to NBA Countdown, The NFL Today or the MLB on Fox. Inside the NBA can only be judged alongside TV royalty like The Golden Girls. If and when Inside the NBA ends or gets a new format, people will remember it as a treasured TV show 30 years from now, just as they do with The Golden Girls today.
But it does beg the question; if Charles Barkley, Shaquille O’Neal, Ernie Johnson, and Kenny Smith were The Golden Girls, which golden girl would they be? Barkley is Blanche, Shaq is Dorothy, Kenny is Rose and Ernie is Sofia.
