He shoots from the lip and scores

Smith preens. Barkley yells a sarcastic thanks. Smith tells Miller it's too bad he's stuck in Cleveland.

"Hey," Miller says, "we got drunk girls pounding on the door asking if we're coming back for the conference finals."

What's most notable about this small episode is that you could imagine it occurring on the air without the slightest change. It's Kiely's dream come true.

"People say, 'Y'all make me laugh every night.' That's what's important," Barkley says. "This is basketball. We're not going to save the world. When I go on the air, I want people to know I have fun. We got a great job. We get paid to watch sports."

Barkley in his playing days seemed always to be in hot water for something he said or did. Most notably, he vigorously complained that it was worse than ridiculous -- actually harmful -- for black athletes to be proclaimed role models for black youth. It fostered a false sense of opportunity, he said, leading kids to think they could find prosperity on an athletic field, a high-risk strategy at best. That view is now widely shared, but Barkley was pilloried for it at the time.

He traveled by himself, hung out with ordinary people, drank at the bar and would talk to anyone who approached him. He paid a price for his openness. Sometimes arguments ensued. Some of these arguments escalated into physical fights, one of which concluded when Barkley threw a man through a bar-room window. He commented later his only regret was that it hadn't been on a higher floor.

Barkley has a straightforward view of most things: Teams lose games because they miss shots, have bad players or just generally stink; African American kids get into trouble because they go to bad schools in bad neighborhoods and their families have been crushed by centuries of racism.

Barkley escaped similar circumstances and has given millions to schools in Alabama, where he was born, and Phoenix, where he played for years. He splits his time between homes in Phoenix and Philadelphia, but has purchased a house in Alabama to establish residency there (which takes seven years) in preparation for a gubernatorial campaign he says he'll conduct as a Democrat.

It used to be written frequently that he was a conservative Republican. The misunderstanding occurred, he says, because once in conversation with his mother and a reporter, his mother said Republicans were only for the rich folks. To which Barkley replied: "Mom, we are rich folks."