Inside the NBA host Ernie Johnson was forced to apologize on behalf of the show this week after Shaquille O’Neal incorrectly reported former player Billy Ray Bates is dead.
During Sunday’s broadcast on TNT, the panel were looking at NBA statistics which showed the players who scored the most ever points off the bench in playoffs debuts.
Bates – who spent time with the Los Angeles Lakers, Portland Trail Blazers and formerly-named Washington Bullets in his 13-year basketball career – was third in the list after scoring 29 on his debut back in 1980.
In an awkward moment, long-time analyst Charles Barkley said to the rest of the panel about Billy: ‘I wonder if he’s still alive.’
Johnson and Kenny Smith immediately scolded Barkley for asking such a question on live television, before the latter argued: ‘It’s a fair question!’
‘Not unless you know the answer,’ Johnson replied.
However, the bizarre exchange eventually took a turn for the worse when Shaq wrongly confirmed to Barkley that Bates, who is still alive at the age of 68, is in fact dead.
‘He passed away, Chuck,’ O’Neal told his fellow pundit. ‘He passed away.’
At the time of writing, there have been no reports of Bates passing away, nor has it been announced that he is battling any major health problems.
The following day, Johnson began TNT’s broadcast of the show by issuing an on-air apology to the former shooting guard and his family.
‘We would like to issue a correction and an apology for something that happened last night on Inside the NBA,’ he said directly to the camera.
‘We were talking about Billy Ray Bates, who back in 1980, had one of the NBA’s best playoff debuts coming off the bench with 29 points.
‘In the course of our discussion, we passed on some bad information that Billy Ray Bates had passed away. While it was inadvertent, it was also inaccurate, and insensitive, and inexcusable. In short, we screwed up.
‘And we apologize to Billy Ray Bates and his family.’
