This week on the SNL Hall of Fame podcast we're joined by Mike Murray from the SNN to discuss the career and Hall of Fame candidacy of 4-time host Sir Charles Barkley.

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[0:40 ] Thank you so much, Doug DeNance. It is a thrill to be back here at the SNL Hall of Fame on the SNL Hall of Fame podcast. My name is JD and it is a absolute wreck outside. Let me fold up this umbrella. My feet are dirty. Follow my lead. I'm going to wipe them. You know what I'm saying? Let's go inside. But before we do, the SNL Hall of Fame podcast is a weekly affair where each Each episode, we take a deep dive into the career of a former cast member, host, musical guest, or writer, and add them to the ballot for your consideration. Once the nominees have been announced, we turn to you, the listener, to vote for the most deserving and help determine who will be enshrined for perpetuity in the hall. And that's how we play the game. It's just that simple. We have a Barnburner of a show this week, Thomas is going to be joined by stat guru from the SNN, Mike Murray, to discuss the career of four-time host Charles Barkley. This should be a good one, folks. But before we get into that conversation, why don't we visit our friend Matt Ardill in his trivia corner?

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[2:02 ] Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, I give you the Trivia Meister, Matt Ardell. Matt, how are you doing? I'm good, thanks, JD. And yourself? You know what? Any day that I get to sit here and listen to you tell me some of my favorite actor, actresses, or pop culture figures' height, then I am in a good place. Hey, it's the facts that everybody wants to know. That's right.

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[2:27 ] Well, I've got a very tall tale for you today. Um charles sparkly uh six six uh february 20th 1963 is his birth date um he was born in leeds alabama and nicknamed sir charles the bread truck and round mound off of rebound uh he is was the first african-american born in a segregated hospital in his all-white town and one of the the first group of black kids to attend his elementary school um in high school he actually didn't make the varsity basketball team at first yeah out of here no yeah it's true he was named uh as a reserve um but he grew from five foot ten to six foot four over the summer And then he was put in a starting position the next year And he averaged 19 points and 17 rebounds per game in high school.

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[3:33 ] He then went on to play for the Auburn Tigers in college, where he would become known for his talent of blocking shots and then dunking, often getting possession of the ball and running the full length of the court to dunk instead of pass.

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[3:50 ] Drafted to the NBA during his final year of college, he dropped out of school to join the 76ers and was best friends with Michael Jordan. They were born three days apart with and he is also friends with Magic Johnson, who, when Magic had to retire due to his HIV diagnosis, Charles changed his number from his college number of 34 to Johnson's 32 to pay tribute to him during his last year in the NBA. He is actually the shortest player in nba history to lead the league rebounding from 86 to 87 as well as being a basketball player and tnt sports commentator he is an actor with 30 film credits produced three and was one of the writers for inside the nba he has been on shows including including the Goldberg, Modern Family, and The Simpsons, and even the Clerks TV show appearing in an animated form as himself.

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[4:56 ] Huh. Very cool. You know, I never watched the Clerks cartoon. It's very Clerks-y. Yeah, yes. It's definitely got that Kevin Smith vibe. Well, this is very Barkley of you. So, nicely done. let's go downstairs with thomas and mike murray as they discuss more about our nominee this week charles barkley, All right.

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[5:52 ] Matt and JD, thank you so much and welcome to another discussion about a great nominee here at the SNL Hall of Fame. A fun one, an interesting one, I would say an unorthodox nominee for the SNL Hall of Fame. Of course, we were talking about the one and only Sir Charles, Charles Barkley, today for the host category. And with me, a repeat guest, I had to bring him back, Mike Murray from the Saturday Night Network, a stats guru for Saturday Night Live. Not just a stats guru, like, I don't wanna pigeonhole Mike as just a stats guy, Because, Mike, your knowledge of SNL goes beyond stats. I think you need to get more credit. You have insights that a lot of people don't have. So it's not just in the lab and the numbers, that's a lot of it. But you have genuine, awesome knowledge and insights about the show. So I'm so happy to have you back here on the SNL Hall of Fame. Thanks, Thomas. I mean, great intro right there. What do I say?

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[6:54 ] I'm happy to be on this show with you. I think you're one of the best SNL podcast hosts out there. So for me to be with you talking shop about basketball about snl what could be better than this so thanks for having me back yeah absolutely i hope brad and gary from the not ready for prime primetime podcast heard you just say that so we need to cut them down the pegs no they're great too my first appearance on snl hall of fame was with uh brad yeah they're no they're they're fun guys i actually got to meet them uh in person this past weekend in philadelphia oh so yeah so But I appreciate that, man. It's so good to have you back. Before we get started, we like to do the plugs up top. Why don't you tell people what you're up to this season on the Saturday Night Network? Well, big one coming up, Season 5-0. So, late September, we're going to have a new season of the show. So, that means the SNN, the Saturday Night Network, will be back in full force. So, we do three shows a week. We do a hot take show at 1 a.m. Following the broadcast. We do a Monday roundtable, and on Wednesday nights, that's my show. It's the stat show. It's called By the Numbers.

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[8:06 ] And if you've ever been interested in the analytics side of SNL, which is a hard pitch at times, but people gravitate towards it, and it was just something that I started doing, just kind of making my own sports world about my favorite show, because my number one love in life is sports and I'm always on the reference sites and like to do comparisons and I figured why not do that for the institution that is SNL so I started doing appearances and then I started doing screen time I made an algorithm to get an output number for each person who appears on the show called the power ranking and so we covered those three numbers every week on the show and And just kind of get into like a sports radio talk show about SNL every week. So following a new episode every Wednesday, 8 p.m. Eastern, you can hear that show on the SNN. That's awesome. And the thing with analytics on your show is it leads to discussions. So it leads to insights about that week's episode or the season as a whole. So you get really just neat discussions like sports radio and I'm the same way like I always watched SNL like it was sports I'm really into like the stats part of it I was perusing like.

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[9:30 ] Pro football reference basketball reference and baseball reference just today for one reason or another so i'm always on those sites yeah that's a normal day for me as well yeah absolutely i subscribe monthly to basketball reference so i don't get the ads so i do the football yeah.

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[9:45 ] That's awesome so those are great sites i've been working on a uh entire history of nfl game log yeah last year i have excel spreadsheets that people would just that would blow their mind about how much of a sports nerd that i am so so we're on the we're on the same wavelength mike yeah that's why we get along so well and for sure i'm glad you mentioned that because i do even as a kid thought snl was like a sport because it's live so you know i've said before that yeah it is cool to know how much screen time like chewbacca got and star wars but like it's edited like this is live things are being cut at dress things are being cut for time live during the the show so if you don't make it on that night like that's a zero but like if you you know what if all three of your showcases make it like wouldn't you want to look back i mean this is the snl hall of fame and say those are your hall of fame episodes just like games or seasons yeah precisely and we didn't do this on purpose by the way but this is the most seamless uh.

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[10:46 ] Segue i think that i've had in a long time uh comparing snl to sports because today's nominee charles barkley of course uh former nba player uh current well i guess that's maybe a little up in the air but he was on inside the nba for uh 24 years um but i guess now that's that's we'll see what happens heading into next season um but charles barkley known as one of the great characters in nba history even while he was still playing he was known as kind of an off the wall character um he's pretty Pretty short for his position.

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[11:21 ] They called him the round mound of rebound. Played an aggressive style, outspoken guy.

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[11:27 ] So people knew all about Charles Barkley. So I'm wondering, Mike, when did you take notice of Charles Barkley? And what's your basketball fandom like? Well, for me, I'm a big basketball fan, huge Celtics fan. So just got banner 18. So I have to shout that out. I think this team is going to be good for a while. But I am a Boston sports fan. so I know that things come and thank you very much and I know that these things come and they don't always work out. I have had a lot of heartbreak and a lot of triumph s