No lumber was safe on the set of TNT’s “Inside the NBA” this week. After Charles Barkley called for a “sweep” of the Los Angeles Lakers by the Portland Trail Blazers…and showed his feelings by using a real broom to sweep up the studio after game one of the series… Well, things went downhill for Chuck and the Blazers after that.
The Lakers put the finishing touches on the series with a closeout win against the Blazers Saturday night, rattling off their fourth straight win over Portland after dropping the opener of the series to advance to the second round.
Of course that had to get some attention from former Laker superstar and TNT co-host Shaquille O’Neal. Shaq was on Barkley’s case all week as the Lakers piled up the wins, and when it was all over, he had a special little show for Barkley, the rest of the TNT crew and of course all of us watching at home.
It all started after the Lakers got their first win in the series last week. Shaq snapped a broom over his knee then, saying there would be no sweep. At the time, there was some whispered accusations that the broom had been “tampered with.” In other words, someone made it a little easier to break before putting it into Shaq’s hands. If you saw it happen on TV, you saw that the Big Man broke the broom quite easily. No surprise to this reporter!
By Saturday, the series was over, and many brooms were sacrificed for the show. Several more were broken, including one over Shaq’s head! Shaq challenged Barkley to try it. Charles prayed to “not make a fool of himself on national TV,” and his prayers were answered – he broke the broom over his knee, just like Shaq.
Apparently that wasn’t good enough. Maybe somebody remembered Shaq is a student of martial arts. Brooms weren’t good enough any more! Somewhere, somehow, the studio crew produced a two-by-four section of lumber and Shaq broke that too, by way of a bigfoot-style stomp. Impressive! Check the video.
Guess the studio crew at TNT is going to have to invest in more brooms. Maybe other household tools, for that matter. Either way, it was a good investment and made for some high quality (at least highly entertaining) moments of live TV. Stay tuned to see what the TNT crew comes up with next!
Check out all the videos here: https://uproxx.com/dimemag/shaq-break-brooms-barkley-knee-inside-nba-video/
