CBS Made Charles Barkley Interact With The Creepiest Talking Basketball Of All Time

Have you ever had one of those moments in which you see something and it makes you wonder if you're either hallucinating or in the midst of some bizarre fever dream?

Because I experienced this thanks to CBS uncorking a barrel of unleaded nightmare fuel in a segment with Charles Barkley and a talking basketball.

Nate Bureleson was leading the network's studio coverage after Michigan punched its ticket to the Sweet 16.

You could tell from the jump that Burleson was teeing up some kind of bit about what players were thinking when the ball was in their hands.

It was weird, and the premise is thin, but the premise doesn't matter when you see what Renee Montgomery and Barkley had to pick up and improv with.

Prepare — and I promise you, you can't — to meet "Old Ball."

But you can call him "OB."

Let's take a second to process this.

Yes, you were watching a talking basketball that was dropping lines that would be right at home in a Borscht Belt comic's act.

And what was wild was that this hit with practically no warning. It's not like the March Madness studio coverage is known for having splashes of Pee-wee's Playhouse.

So, picture, if you will, me coming downstairs about to sit down and get to work, only to walk past the TV in the living room and see my wife watching that.

What an absolute horror show of robotic, basketball puppet… thing.

I'm telling you, there will be parents around the nation who will have to spend part of their evening checking under beds and in closets to prove to their kids that OB is not, in fact, lying in wait to harvest their organs or tell jokes Shecky Greene didn't want anywhere near his act.

Hell, I'm a 30-year-old man, and I might have to give my closet a once-over this evening.