Shaq and Charles Barkley Continue to Punch Down in Beef With Kendrick Perkins

We're now in the second week of a media feud between the two 'Inside The NBA' personalities and Kendrick Perkins.

We are now entering the second week of a random media feud between ESPN's Kendrick Perkins and Turner's Inside The NBA crew.

At the end of Tuesday's edition of the show, they brought out a freestanding punching bag as part of a workout segment. The bag had Perkins' picture taped to it. Charles Barkley and Shaquille O'Neal proceeded to put on boxing gloves so they could hit the heavy bag adorned with Perkins' likeness. While doing this they repeatedly referenced killing roaches and told a roach to leave them alone. O'Neal also shot the picture with a water gun.

A short time later Perkins tweeted at them with a crying laughing emoji, possibly meaning that Perkins is in on the joke, but should he be? This was not the first time that Barkley and O'Neal have called Perkins a roach on-air following one single comment he made on a radio show early last week.

During an appearance on "The Michael Kay Show", Perkins was asked what Barkley and O'Neal were writing off the Knicks. Perkins' response sounded pretty reasonable considering Inside The NBA has a regular segment called "Who he play for?" that touts how little the co-hosts seem to know about the teams in the league.

"It’s obvious that they don’t watch basketball,” Perkins said. “I’m serious, they can’t watch basketball on a consistent basis. The only time they actually probably watch the Knicks are when they’re covering the Knicks on their game nights.”

The next night Barkley and O'Neal were taking shots at Perkins, showing a video of him getting dunked on and saying they had no love for someone who averaged five points a game.

Aside from that tweet, Perkins doesn't appear to have continued the beef from his end. So the only reason for Barkley, Shaq and their team to continue is to mine it for content. You might think that seems unnecessary during the actual NBA playoffs, but apparently disagreeing about how far the Knicks can go in the playoffs is an offense they cannot ignore.


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Stephen Douglas
STEPHEN DOUGLAS

Stephen Douglas is a Senior Writer on the Breaking & Trending News Team at Sports Illustrated. He has been in journalism and media since 2008, and now casts a wide net with coverage across all sports. Stephen spent more than a decade with The Big Lead and has previously written for Uproxx and The Sporting News. He has three children, two degrees and one now unverified Twitter account.