Charles Barkley believes David Zaslav's 'We don't have to have the NBA' pissed off Adam Silver

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“The first thing is they came out and said, ‘We didn’t need the NBA.’ So, I think that probably pissed Adam [Silver] off,” Barkley admitted. “I don’t know that. But when we merged, that’s the first thing our boss said, ‘We don’t need the NBA.’ Well, he don’t need it. But me, Kenny, Shaq, Ernie and the rest of the people who work there, we need it. It just sucks right now.”

Early in his tenure as Warner Bros. Discovery president and CEO, David Zaslav said “We don’t have to have the NBA.” Less than two years later, Zaslav is rapidly approaching life without the NBA on TNT as NBA commissioner Adam Silver seems hellbent on moving the league’s “B” package of games to NBC. Zaslav is scrambling to retain the NBA by using the network’s “matching rights” clause, but as Barkley notes, they may have screwed these negotiations up beyond repair.