Craig Sager is starting to feel more like a mannequin than a sideline reporter these days. But there was a time when he did real reporting and by that I mean celebrity slam dunk competitions in the 80s.

The NBA playoffs — henceforth known as the NBA Finals — will be switching to ABC for the next four to seven games, meaning TNT and its fantastic Inside The NBA show is done for the season. So it was only fitting that Charles Barkley went out in a fit of insult glory. Frankly, he just went off last night.

A free-throw-shooting contest likely would have yielded different results.

We love JaVale McGee – few players in the NBA provide the same kind of entertainment for such a wide variety of reasons, and he put a few of those reasons on full display last night both during his Nuggets’ game against the Clippers, and after.

Well, if Charles Barkley truly is in danger of tiring of the Inside the NBA routine, he’s sure doing an admirable job not letting it show on the air. But how could he get bored, when he has a gig where he can let jokes like this fly?

Brilliant. Although Lee doesn’t show up in Chris Webber’s “Similarity Scores” section on Basketball-Reference.com, which measures the statistical similarity between players, they do have a pretty even stat line in year eight of their NBA careers (Lee is in his eighth year right now). The one major difference, though? Points per game. In Webber’s eighth full season — by far his best — he averaged 27.1 points per game, compared to Lee’s 17.4 so far this season. In that 2000-01 campaign, Webber finished 4th in MVP voting, so WCW has a ways to go before his is truly the White Chris Webber. [@cjzero]

Most people probably could have predicted during his playing days that Charles Barkley might have a successful future in broadcasting in front of him, quotable as he always was. But few people probably envisioned him being this successful, helping form the backbone of one of the most successful sports studio shows of all time, TNT’s Inside the NBA. So why’s Barkley sound so ready to give it all up?

Jason Whitlock, brotein consumer and provocateur extraordinaire, took a shot at Shaq during last night’s opening episode of TNT’s Inside The NBA. So Inside The NBA took the opportunity to make fun of a fat and sleeping Jason Whitlock. Some more context, after the jump.

Shaq didn’t necessarily earn rave reviews for his work as an NBA analyst this past season (although he certainly made strides later on in the year). But regardless of how you feel about Diesel’s inaugural run on Inside the NBA, I think we can all get behind his impromptu invasion of ESPN’s NBA post-game show. It’s just like the old WCW/WWF war, but with more pocket squares.

Thunder point guard Russell Westbrook has been one of the most recognizable stars of the NBA postseason… thanks in large part to his shirts. And now, there’s a way to make the Westbrook wardrobe experience even trippier.