A weekly feature the first year was Barkley getting on a scale to see how much weight he had -- or had not -- lost. He took it all with good grace and laughter.
Kenny Smith said when he began on the show in 1998 he imagined it was something he would do for a year, maybe two.
"The second year started being something different. Charles took it and exploded it. It just escalated," he said. "Between Charles and I, there's nothing that's going to happen in a basketball game that we haven't seen or experienced. Once we started to trust one another, there was no looking back. We've become part of the game."
Players watch the show carefully. In interviews at halftimes of games, they complain about something said on "Inside" before the game started. You tell Charles and Kenny, they'll say. Or, What Charles said ain't right.
At the same time, the "Inside" cast has become guidance counselors, favored uncles, givers of grown-up advice. Their cellphones receive endless streams of text messages and calls from players around the league seeking advice, critiquing their critiques, angling for guest spots at the desk, complaining about playing time.
Johnson prepares for each show by studying clips and statistics and reading for five or six hours. He arrives at the studio by noon most days, a time at which Barkley is apt to be asleep. "I get up late. I'm in no hurry to get out of bed. I like having free time to do nothing," he says.
After Johnson's opening, Smith and Barkley and sometimes a fourth person, almost always a player or one not long retired, add a minute or two of commentary, then the game starts and they retreat to a viewing room equipped with a 20-foot tall wall of television monitors.
They go back on set to talk for a few minutes at halftime. On this night they get in an argument about proper punishment for players who aren't in the game but rush to the assistance of other players involved in confrontations on the floor.
As often happens, Johnson and Smith have one opinion, Barkley another. The argument outlasts the halftime; they go off-air, the game resumes, but the three of them stay there on the set arguing.
They retreat again to the viewing room until the game is over, when they come back out for the meat of the show, 30 minutes of commentary, highlights and often some bit the crew has cooked up to make one or more of them look foolish.
