This week, while CNN C.E.O. Chris Licht was trying to bring a modicum of closure to the enduring Don Lemon “women-in-their-prime” fiasco, a national media micro-imbroglio that has become a microcosm of the network’s various challenges—tighter budgets, falling ratings, more fragile egos, ever newer data sets that a bygone era keeps ending—Charles Barkley decided to weigh in. The ever-candid Hall of Fame basketball player and star analyst of The NBA on TNT, who also happens to be up for a role on CNN, offered his own candid assessment of the news network’s current predicament in an interview with the New York Post.

As I reported earlier this month, Barkley is one of a handful of marquee talents that Licht is trying to bring in to revitalize CNN’s prime-time lineup, albeit in a part-time capacity. In the Post interview, Barkley confirmed that Licht was courting both him and Gayle King, as I’d also reported last month. He then revealed that Licht was trying to get the two stars to co-host a weekly show together. (They would both keep their day jobs on TNT and CBS, respectively.) Sir Charles equivocated. “We don’t have anything set in stone,” Barkley said. “I’m only considering it because of my respect for Gayle.”