“The Indiana Pacers will win the Eastern Conference,” said a straight-faced Charles Barkley on last Wednesday’s edition of “Inside the NBA” on TNT. Bold statements such as these by Sir Charles have made me laugh, and at the same time I asked myself if the former “Round Mound of Rebound” and future Hall-of-Famer actually has a conscience.

Let’s give Barkley some credit though for his honest and unfettered commentary about a league that has as many shady characters and situations surrounding it as it does good basketball teams this year.

“The Boston Celtics are so brutal,” Barkley said in his analysis of the NBA’s playoff race. “That team’s a twosome,” he said of Boston’s Paul Pierce and Antoine Walker.

These are honest and no-nonsense statements that NBA Commissioner David Stern certainly can’t appreciate coming from the mouth of one of the league’s former superstars. Yet this type of commentary is exactly what viewers get when they tune in as the show’s producers have allowed Sir Charles the freedom to say just about anything that’s on his mind [as if they could stop him], be it basketball-related or not.

As a viewer, one has to appreciate Barkley’s sense of humor in his approach to doing a job that is designed to be a public relations platform for the NBA. Barkley doesn’t show any signs of caring about whom he offends, he simply tells it like it is and offers viewers a prospective contrary to what the NBA’s executives want NBA fans to hear.

He demonstrates that he is much more suited for the role of TV commentator than he is governor of his home state Alabama. And his improv and flamboyance have given TNT’s production of the NBA a much-needed shot in the arm, as Sir Charles takes shots at everyone from Detroit’s Ben Wallace to Orlando’s Tracy McGrady.

Barkley may just be the best addition to a supporting cast of any prime time television show this year -better than Charlie Sheen on “Spin City,” and Robert Downey Jr. on “Ally McBeal.”

“Tiger Woods will win The Masters,” Barkley said last week.

He was right about that one, but the Pacers? I guess we’ll just have to wait and see if Sir Charles knows as much about basketball as he does about golf.

Jordan Gizzarelli is a sophomore in journalism and mass communication from Davenport.