Charles Barkley Got Bizarre on OG Anunoby About His Real Name After Knicks Game 3 Win
Charles Barkley has been doing live television for more than two decades. He has the gift of being completely unfiltered, which makes for great TV, except for the moments when he embarrasses himself on a national broadcast. Saturday night gave us one of those moments.
After OG Anunoby led the Knicks to a 121-108 Game 3 win in Cleveland, the Inside the NBA crew brought him in for a postgame interview. Barkley, in his usual unscripted style, opened with what should have been a simple question.
“OG, can I ask you a question? What is your real name?”
Anunoby, slightly bemused, gave the answer he has given a thousand times before. “Ogugua.”
That should have been the end of it. Instead, Barkley tried to repeat it, butchered the pronunciation, and then had the audacity to tell Anunoby he was saying his own name wrong.
“You’re not saying it right?” Barkley said. “If you don’t say it right, we can’t say it right!”
The rest of the crew immediately jumped in to correct him. Kenny Smith, Shaq, and Ernie Johnson all started telling Barkley that Anunoby was, in fact, saying his own name correctly. The whole exchange devolved into Barkley insisting a Nigerian-British player was mispronouncing the name his own parents gave him.
“No, I am saying it right. What?” Anunoby fired back, completely baffled.
It was the kind of moment that made the Inside the NBA crew the most beloved studio show in sports. Awkward, hilarious, completely unscripted, and impossible to imagine on any other network. Most sports shows would have edited that exchange out. Inside the NBA leaned into it.
Anunoby took it all in stride. He just dropped 21 points on 6-of-10 shooting with 7 rebounds, 4 assists, and 3 threes in a road playoff win. He has been one of the most reliable two-way players in the playoffs and a major reason the Knicks are one win away from the NBA Finals. He can handle Chuck being Chuck for two minutes.
What made the whole thing extra funny was Barkley’s tone. He was so confident he was right. He was lecturing Anunoby on the correct pronunciation of Anunoby’s own name. That kind of unearned confidence is peak Barkley, and it is exactly why people tune in for the postgame show even more than they do for the games themselves.
Inside the NBA is heading to NBC starting next season as part of the league’s new media rights deal, and moments like this are why so many fans were worried about the show losing its identity in a new home. The free-flowing, unscripted, sometimes inappropriate energy of the TNT crew is what made it special. If Barkley can still ambush a 28-year-old wing with random questions about his name in the postseason, the show should be fine wherever it lives.
For Anunoby, this might end up being the most viral clip of his playoff run. He is putting up career-best numbers against one of the best defenses in the league, but he is going to be the guy who explained to Charles Barkley how to pronounce his own name on national television.
That is the Inside the NBA experience. Win a road playoff game, get interviewed by a Hall of Famer who insists you are wrong about your own identity, and somehow come out of it looking like the most patient person in basketball.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
