Steve Kerr had a great line while appearing on Tom Waddle and Marc Silverman’s show on WMVP-AM 1000 yesterday.

When asked about tonight’s Oklahoma City-Golden State game on TNT (10:30 ET), which won’t feature a traditional play-by-play man calling the action, Kerr said: “We told them it was time to get rid of Marv Albert.”

Kerr, of course, was joking. After tonight, he likely will have greater appreciation for Albert, Jim Nantz, Kevin Harlan and other play-by-play voices.

In an interesting experiment, TNT is using Kerr, Reggie Miller, and Chris Webber for tonight’s game. Kerr said he will serve as the traffic conductor, but he won’t be doing play-by-play.

USA Today’s Reid Cherner reports:

The idea for the new booth came from a conversation between Turner Sports COO Lenny Daniels and Senior VP Craig Barry.

“Lenny and I are

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Turner Broadcasting spent nearly $200 million to purchase Bleacher Report last summer. With that kind of investment, you definitely want to get your money’s worth.

Hence today’s announcement, outlining a new initiative. To me, the most interesting part will be the sports presence on CNN.

From Turner:

Turner Sports and CNN will partner to produce Bleacher Report branded sports programming including long-form specials and daily sports updates that will air on CNN and HLN, it was announced today by Lenny Daniels, executive vice president/chief operating officer for Turner Sports, and Ken Jautz, executive vice president, CNN/U.S.  
  The first of the programming collaborations will be Kickoff in New Orleans: A CNN-Bleacher Report Special, a live one-hour show on CNN to be televised Saturday, Feb. 2, at 4 p.m. ET. And, beginning Tuesday, Feb. 5, CNN will air Bleacher Report sports updates

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The interesting part of this move is that CNN is going to launch a sports show. At least on the weekends.

Clearly, the chance to host a show was a main why Nichols left ESPN. That and a lot of cash.

From CNN/Turner:

CNN and Turner Sports have hired veteran ESPN reporter Rachel Nichols, it was announced today by Jeff Zucker, President, CNN Worldwide, and David Levy, President, Sales, Distribution & Sports, Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.

Nichols will serve as a sports reporter for CNN and Turner Sports and will anchor a new weekend sports program on CNN/U.S. beginning later this year. Her CNN program will focus on the most interesting stories and personalities in the world of sports.

In her role with Turner Sports, Nichols will handle a wide variety of assignments across the division’s vast sports properties including

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For some strange reason, Charles Barkley has something against San Antonio. Not the team, but the town.

Last night, he went off again after the game, and the bit went way too long. It wasn’t that funny.

San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro has responded with an entertaining and cleaver video that probably will keep him in office for life. Well played, Mr. Mayor.

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I had hoped to ask some questions of Shaquille O’Neal this week, but the big man was a no-show for a TNT-NBA Network conference call. I wanted his evaluation of his first year as a studio analyst. Maybe another day.

Brian Lowry of Foxsports.com provided his answer: An emphatic thumbs down for O’Neal. He writes.

The former All-Star center might be a jolly giant to have around, but in terms of basketball analysis, all he proves is that the bigger they are, the harder they can be to listen to — and that star players, for whatever reason, generally have a hard time graduating from playing the game to talking about it.

Later, Lowry says.

TNT certainly didn’t need to shake things up, but the powers that be couldn’t resist enlisting O’Neal, an attention-getting hire who won championships with the Lakers and Miami

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