Charles Barkley hosted "Saturday Night Live" over the weekend, and stuck on a couch and with nobody in the room with me, I found his turn to be pretty funny. I agree with Splitsider that the ubiquity of the sports-based humor probably wore a little thin on the common viewer (much less comedy nerd), but there's only so much you can do with a 6-6 former professional athlete as host. Variety just isn't going to be in the offing.
The best of the bunch, to this nerd, had to be the expected "Inside the NBA" takeoff, complete with Barkley riffing on Shaquille O'Neal's one-note style with one note of his own:
("We're all black friends." Brilliant.)