As always, I think Charles Barkley has a point here…
The NBA playoffs are in full swing, and if you’ve been tuning into the exciting matchups so far, you might’ve seen (0r fallen asleep before) the late starts to some of the west coast playoff games.
Charles Barkley certainly noticed the late tips for some of the series, and as he often does, he dropped everything and spoke his truth on TNT’s Inside the NBA.
The broadcast was discussing some of the starting times for the day’s playoff games when Barkley openly voiced his disgust.
“Chuck” might have some time-zone-Bias, but he powered through anyways with his take:
“I have a problem with that game starting at 10:30, I do have a problem with that.”
The rest of the studio crew was a little taken back by the comment from Barkley, with Ernie Johnson (often Barkley’s kryptonite) quickly responding:
“It’s not going to be starting at 10:30 in Denver.”
Fair point Ernie, fair point.
If you do the math, yes, the game is starting at 8:30 Mountain Standard Time, and that isn’t terribly late for fans in local time.
However, if you bring in the East Coast bias (like Barkley is), those in the EST are watching the ball tip off at 10:30 their time, with the game most likely finishing around 1 in the morning.
Not a lot of people are staying up for that.
Charles was met with some rebuttals, but continued on with his stance:
“We had the whole day to ourselves. We should’ve played at 1 o’clock, 3 o’clock.
To have that last game at 10:30 Eastern is just wrong.
I don’t care what anybody says. It should not be starting that game at 8:30 Denver time.”
Hell, I’ve lived in the central time zone my entire life and even a 9:30 start is hard to stick around for sometimes. But should the United State’s entire sports scheduling revolve around the time zones in the eastern part of the country?
Selfishly, I say yes.
Logistically, and keeping in mind other time zones (and TV contracts), it’s probably a no.
However, Charles didn’t stop there, adding:
“I’m excited for the game, but I just don’t think it’s fair to have them playing that late. It’s just wrong. We gotta have some respect for the fans at some point.
It ain’t fair for the people in Denver to be playing at 8:30 at night and they gotta go to school tomorrow, so stop it.
We want kids to watch the game, don’t we?”
Ooh, the classic “think of the children” perspective. Try arguing against that!
The sports scheduling could move things around to appease the masses, but I also understand that it would be tough to start a game in California at 4:30 in the afternoon just so people on the other side of the country don’t have to throw back countless cups of recovery coffee the next morning.
“Chuck’s” entire rant can be seen below:
Talking time zones can be pretty divisive, but we can all come together and enjoy a meme pointed toward Barkley regarding his “too late” argument:
