Despite NBA television personality Charles Barkley’s claim that he was “not going to that rat-infested place out in San Francisco” for the NBA All-Star Game, he is very much here, and was quickly booed on-air Thursday as he gleefully antagonized local fans.

One of the sillier subplots to this weekend’s NBA All-Star Game happening right here in San Francisco is the ongoing rivalry between TNT’s Inside the NBA personality Charles Barkley and the city of San Francisco. Barkley has had some sort of joking beef with our fair city dating back to at least 2007. And in the lead-up to the All-Star Game last month, Barkley declared on-air that he would refuse to come to San Francisco for the game, saying “I’m not going to that rat-infested place out in San Francisco.”

This was of course bluster, as Inside the NBA is a sort of yuk-yuk “Morning Zoo” kind of program whose formula is based on the hosts joking around a lot. And under the new four-team All-Star Game format, one of the teams is literally named after Barkley (“Team Chuck”), so he was always going to be here for the game.

And now Barkley is already here, as last night’s postgame show was broadcast from the Chase Center. And Barkley wasted no time in annoying San Francisco fans and getting booed.

“You know what? I actually like San Francisco, I really do,” Berkeley declared in Thursday's broadcast. “Honestly, hey listen. We’ve got to do something about the homeless. They need their help. We’ve got to clean it up a little bit.”

At which point the crowd started booing him lustily. Barkley responded, “I said help the homeless,’ and some of these people are so stupid, they booed.”

Now clearly they booed because he had just ripped on San Francisco, and fans were waiting for any chance to boo Charles Barkley. This is, after all the same Charles Barkley who also said there were "a bunch of homeless crooks in San Francisco,” and once yelled at San Francisco fans, “I’m going to come to your house and fuck your mama!”

None of this is serious. Barkley simply picks these meaningless fights with individual cities for attention and social media engagement. Consider his above long-running feud with San Antonio over “them big-ass women in San Antonio.”

The tenor of Inside the NBA is so unserious that Barkley’s co-panelist Shaquille O’Neal said to host Ernie Johnson during Thursday night's broadcast, “We’re getting fired anyway, Ernie. Fuck it!” Yet just this morning, we learn that O’Neal signed a $15 million-per-year contract extension with TNT.

So you can expect more slapstick antagonism all weekend long from the Inside the NBA crew. It will resume at 6 pm Friday night for the Rising Stars Challenge, at 5 pm on Saturday for the Slam Dunk Contest and Three-Point Shooting Contest, and 5 pm Sunday for the All-Star Game itself, all on TNT.

Related: Charles Barkley Claims He Will Refuse to Attend NBA All-Star Game Because It’s in SF, Though He Absolutely Will Be Here [SFist]

Image: GLENDALE, ARIZONA - APRIL 08: Basketball analyst Charles Barkley on air before the National Championship game between the Purdue Boilermakers and the Connecticut Huskies at State Farm Stadium on April 08, 2024 in Glendale, Arizona. (Photo by Mitchell Layton/Getty Images)