Charles Barkley - I may be wrong but I doubt it

Contents

Acknowledgments

I want to thank all of my family and friends who have supported me and helped me to achieve great things. I also want to thank my enemies for keeping me motivated. Ive had a wonderful life and I thank God every day.

Introduction
Michael Wilbon

The trouble is, the greatest athletes in these times usually arent all that interested in expression, and the ones who have so much to say arent the ones we want to hear. But Charles Barkley has always been both: compelling on the court and fascinating when holding court. Basketball has always been just the half of it with Barkley, which is why two years into athletic retirement he is still irresistible.

What professional athlete in the last twenty years participated more fully, peeled back all the layers, and loved it any more than Barkley? The games, the riches, the teammates, the foes, the confrontations, the adoration, the climb, the fall, the verbal sparring, the needling, the provoking, the joking, the challenging, the indulging; we cant imagine Barkley without all of it, all of the time.

We marveled when a man his height scored 40 points and grabbed 20 rebounds in a game. We laughed when he asked the devoutly religious A. C. Green, If Gods so good, how come he didnt give you a jump shot? We cringed when he said an Angolan Olympic basketball player might have been carrying a spear. We wondered if he was serious when he said he would consider a career in politics, as a Republican. Usually, we were unaware when he stuffed wads of bills in the bag of a homeless woman in Spain, or gave a million bucks to his high school, or changed a strangers tire, drove him home, then waited until the guys kids arrived from school so they would believe it really was Charles Barkley who changed their daddys tire.

Some folks loved it, some hated it when he said parents shouldnt depend on athletes to be their kids role models. The folks at PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) gritted their teeth when Barkley went on TV, eating an all-beef hamburger, and said the only thing animals were good for was eating and wearing.

Hes never been one for political correctness. He has carried a gun for protection, but never run with a posse. During the Gulf War, when most of the players tended to keep their views to themselves, Barkley came to the NBA All-Star interview room wearing a cap that said, Fuck Iraq. He is not for the easily offended, those stuck in neutral, and certainly those without a generous sense of humor.

One day last spring, while Barkley and I were talking for the purposes of writing this book, a woman walked into an upscale and very adult restaurant in the ultra-fashionable section of Atlanta known as Buckhead. With her were a dozen twelve- and thirteen-year-old girls, their heads newly coiffed and braided and teased to the tune of $50 a head from a group trip to the salon. As she greeted Barkley and told of her daughters group birthday present, he said, Whatever happened to Chuck E. Cheese? Aint no Dairy Queens in Atlanta? Everybody sitting within earshot smiled appreciatively, wishing they could have expressed exactly that, so casually and innocently but still right to the point. The woman blushed and said, Oh, Charles, not the least offended that she had been the prop for a dead-on Barkley commentary on parental misjudgment. It was the perfect thing to say, and I dont know anyone else who would have said it.

Years ago, Michael Jordan observed that we all want to say the stuff Barkley says, but we dont dare. And particularly, most athletes dont dare. I dont enjoy going into locker rooms as much as I used to, not because there arent plenty of smart and observant guysthere are. Its that guys with commentary in their souls are afraid to say what theyre really thinking, particularly on sensitive issues. Sadly, its understandable. The league might be offended, and if not the league then the shoe sponsor that is shelling out three mil a year or whatever it is for the athlete to appeal to customers, not potentially offend them. And if not the corporate sponsor, then the women or the gays or the blacks or the whites or the Hispanics or... somebody. And rather than take that public beating or risk losing that endorsement income, or sound like an uninformed fool, most guys just say the safe thing, or clam up altogether and put on headphones to shut out the noise of the world. Ive never seen Barkley wearing headphones in public. Never.

Early on, Barkley made his peace with mixing it up, and decided the consequences were very much worth it to him. And that makes him as radically different in these modern celebrity times as a 6-foot-4-inch power forward. And most days it makes him a compelling figure in the world of sports and entertainment. When I was approached about editing his words I was excited because I knew from seventeen years of hanging around him that Barkley had things to say, things worth writing and hearing and debating, some of it about touchy and even volatile subjects of which most celebrities are deathly afraid. Not sound bites, not thirty-second commercial clips that have at times gotten him into swirling controversy, but fully developed thoughts hes been mulling and shaping for years. I may have edited this book, but it was written by Charles Barkley.

The first time I ever saw Charles was November 5, 1983, in Auburn, Alabama, on the campus. I was the beat writer covering college sports for the Washington Post, and I was there to see Maryland play Auburn in football. The football game would be memorable enough since Maryland was led by a young quarterback named Boomer Esiason and Auburn that day would unleash a third-string running back named Vincent (Bo) Jackson on the college football world.

But while Ive covered football, Im a basketball junkie. My friend, mentor and columnist colleague Ken Denlingeran even bigger basketball junkiemade the trip as well. He knew the Auburn basketball coach, Sonny Smith, and had arranged for us to go watch the basketball team scrimmage that Saturday morning before the football game.

College basketball was a regional pleasure back then; you pretty much only watched the teams where you lived. You didnt get to see North Carolina and Duke if you lived in Chicago; you got DePaul and Notre Dame and Marquette. ESPN was only about three years old, so there was no Big Monday. There also was never any Big West game starting at midnight Eastern Time. So Id heard a little bit about Charles Barkley, but Id certainly never seen him play.

We went to the gym, and there was Barkley, 280 pounds or thereabouts, stuffed into those Daisy Duke shorts that were still fashionable in the early 1980s. I didnt want to say anything out loud to embarrass myself. So I just thought, Thats Barkley? This is the guy people are raving about? I was stunned. At a shade under 6-foot-5, he wasnt much taller than me, and he looked more like a defensive tackle than a basketball player. But when the game started, he was a force of nature, rebounding and leading the break and dunking. Bodies bounced off him. He played taller and more confidently and with greater passion than anybody on the court. A future NBA player named Chuck Person was on the court that day, but I dont remember anything about him. I just remember Barkley, and feeling like the handful of us at that scrimmage had discovered something delicious, some sweet new secret.

Every ballplayer who has come along since 1984 has wanted to be like Mike. Nobody wants to be like Charles for the simple reason that its too hard, its too physically exacting, too punishing. People fantasize about soaring over the competition; nobody dreams of the alternative, the hand-to-hand combat and mauling in the lane. For most of his career, Barkley was listed as 6-foot-6, which is nonsense. Hes 6-foot-434 inches. Thats at least eight inches shorter than Wilt Chamberlain, the only man to finish a professional basketball career with more points, rebounds and assists than Barkley. Barkley stands 10 inches shorter than Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, yet averaged more rebounds per season in the NBA. Barkley never picked on anybody his own size; usually it was 6-11 Kevin McHale, 6-11 Bill Laimbeer, 6-10 Karl Malone, 6-9 Charles Oakley, 6-10 Horace Grant, 6-10 Rick Mahorn, or 6-8 Buck Williams.