Awards News

Here's how it all got started.

Several years ago, Alex Houvouras, an Atlanta-based freelance graphics designer, sat bored in the studios of TNT's "Inside the NBA," doodling away on a paint-box monitor as co-host Ernie Johnson, Kenny "The Jet" Smith and Charles Barkley dissected a just-completed pro basketball game.

Producer Tim Kiely happened to get a glimpse of Houvouras' grade-schoolesque doodles, which were augmenting the head of the oft-outrageous Barkley.

"Can I go on the air with that?" Kiely asked.

With that, a unique and inspired comedy formula was born, with former players Smith and Barkley hamming it up alongside straight-man broadcasting vet Johnson -- and all the while, the production staff of this loose affair doing their best to "kill" these bigger-than-life ex-jocks with funny graphics and gags.

Indeed, under Houvouras' graphic hand, the smiling heads of hosts and players, Barkley in particular, might wind up superimposed on anything, trophy-sized bass and trout included. (In the "Inside" lexicon, the oft-expressed "going fishing' is used for teams that have been eliminated from championship competition.)

Often a ratings smash, depending on the game the halftime and post show serves, "Inside" went zeitgeist in May, when the producers parodied a popular online video that featured Kobe Bryant jumping over a speeding Austin Martin with the help of new Nike sneakers and nifty visual effects.

In the "Inside the NBA" version, which originally aired during a post-game interview with Bryant in May, Smith gets all set to jump over Houvouras' Honda in his new sneakers, only to get abruptly run over by the car -- which, it's later revealed, is being driven by a smiling Ernie Johnson.

The gag was "Inside's" most popular to date, attracting an "I F'd Matt Damon"-level 2.5 million hits.

What made it work, according to Houvouras, is that "The Jett" didn't know the producers were going to, er, kill him.

"Kenny kept comgin up to us after that Kobe bit aired asking us, 'Can you make me do that?' I said sure, it's not that hard to do, and he was all excited, which I think came through in the performance. We didn't tell him what we were going to do with him. We never tell him what we're going to do with him."

In fact, neither Barkley or Smith are invited to the afternoon production meetings, during which these gags at their expense are often gestated.

What makes the gags work, according to Kiely, is the temperament of Smith and Barkley, who give and get with equal grace.

"Most of us know people who are needlers, and most needlers have the thinnest skin of all," he says. "But Charles actually has a very thick skin, and you can come after him as hard as he comes after you. It wouldn't' work otherwise."