Beware professional athletes in suits telling jokes. They are rarely funny.

Why would they be? Spending your careers spouting cliches in interviews is poor training for broadcasting when suddenly you’re expected to say something spontaneous, fresh and provocative. As anyone who has endured the comedy of Terry Bradshaw knows, the result is often stilted jocularity with a rigid towel snap. But there is one notable exception.

Sometime in the last decade or so, “Inside the NBA,” the in-studio program that introduces and concludes basketball doubleheaders on TNT, mainly on Thursdays, stopped being just a basketball show and transformed into one of the most freewheeling, unpredictable and funny talk shows on television.

To be sure, its panelists — the former star players Charles Barkley, Kenny Smith and Shaquille O’Neal, working with the host, Ernie Johnson — still comment on highlights, make predictions and conduct postgame interviews just as other talking heads on sports shows do. But they treat these conventions as jumping-off points to a very refined brand of goofing around.

Take their recent discussion about who is the best shooting guard in the NBA, one of those mostly meaningless debates that are the meat and potatoes of such shows.

Typically, pundits stake out a position, cite a few statistics, then raise the volume. “Inside the NBA” started the discussion in that vein, with Barkley picking Klay Thompson from the Golden State Warriors and Smith going with the Houston Rockets’ James Harden. But instead of moving into the substance of the matter, the conversation immediately pivoted to wonderful nonsense.

“We can disagree,” Barkley bellowed in his gruff Alabama accent, pretending to avoid one battle while starting another by pointing at Smith as if he were a piece of evidence: “I wouldn’t have worn that suit.” Without a pause, Smith shot back at Barkley’s new eyewear: “I wouldn’t have worn them glasses.”

Soon they spun into absurdist Abbott and Costello territory. Smith tentatively tried to change the subject by saying, “Who’s arguing?” and Barkley dug in theatrically: “You just did.”

Smith gamely put on a serious face: “I gave my opinion. That’s not an argument.”

Instead of steering the conversation back to basketball, the unflappable Johnson looked delighted.

“You guys are arguing over what is an argument,” he said, the perfect closer to this scene.

Shot on a gaudy studio lit up like a video game, “Inside the NBA” begins with a pregame show at 8 p.m. Eastern time, then returns during halftime of each game and finishes with an hour after midnight. It’s a long haul, but this team is good company, in part because the panelists seem so comfortable with one another. They talk into the commercials, blurring the difference between on- and offstage.

The clear standout is Barkley, a curmudgeonly controversialist with a needling wit and the shamelessness of a Catskills hack. (“With the weapons the Lakers got, they can’t even beat Guam in a war.”) He’s not afraid to look silly or harshly criticize his friends, including Michael Jordan, a stance Barkley says has caused a rift in their relationship.

Barkley has said he may leave when his contract is up in two years. He will be hard to replace, since the show has in some ways evolved into the perfect vehicle for his trash talk. His longtime sparring partner has been the steady Smith, a straight man with a sneaky dry wit. Their Ping-Pong-like exchanges are the heart of the show, and their chemistry is such that as soon as they start to clash, they charge into tangents simultaneously.

Describing the flaws of the talented but disappointing Los Angeles Clippers recently, Smith likened the team to an action-film hero barely holding onto a rope. Not to be undone Barkley interjected another metaphor that revealed little outside of a joke.

“The Clippers are like a really pretty girl,” he said. “Then you realize she’s dumb, and you’re like, ‘uh oh.’”

O’Neal is the weak link, even though he is probably the most committed to silliness. His jokes are blunter, in the usual locker-room style of a network football show. (His blooper segment, “Shaqtin’ a Fool,” is standard fare.) His analysis is delivered in a low, flat voice, telegraphing a seriousness that takes away from the casual spirit of the rest of the show that feels like guys in their living room.

At the same time, O’Neal, one of the most commanding players in the history of the game, has enough star power to provide a counterweight to Barkley, challenging him in terms that only a four-time champion could pull off.

The other major basketball pregame shows don’t generate anything close to their drama. If Smith and Barkley can seem like an old married couple, O’Neal and Barkley come off like aging rivals who spar for nostalgic kicks.