Timothy Bella - Barkley: A Biography

A biography like Timothy Bellas Barkley is a validation of Charless journey so far. Charles is a population of onehes that unique. You have got to read the book.

Julius Erving

Timothy Bella explores everything thats made Barkley, Barkley, a guy who lives his life just like he played basketball: brilliant, unapologetic and like nobody else out there. Get the book, salute the man.

Chuck D, rapper and frontman of Public Enemy

An authentic look into one of sports most iconic figures. We all know the outspoken Charles Barkley; but Timothy Bellas biography takes us on a transparent journey into his entire life.

Dawn Staley

Charles tells us...that when you love what youre doing its not work. Reading Barkley wasnt work either. I loved it!

Reverend Jesse Jackson

Barkley is a vivid, mesmerizing portrait worthy of Sir Charles, arguably the most colorfu and one of the most controversial figures in sport. We double dare you to put it down.

Jeff Benedict and Armen Keteyian, #1 New York Times bestselling authors of Tiger Woods

Charles Barkley had athleticism, grit, and force. A true leader and someone I have looked up to for quite some time, he is fully captured in this book.

Kevin Garnett

Thanks to Timothy Bella, an outstanding journalist, for giving new life to a true American Original.

Jack McCallum, New York Times bestselling author of Dream Team

A wonderfully entertaining and fulfilling biography of Sir Charles. Barkley may have never won an NBA championship, but he somehow managed towin other big things, mainly the hearts of the basketball public.

Roland Lazenby, author of Michael Jordan: The Life

[Charles Barkleys] larger-than-life persona shines through in Timothy Bellas writing and I know this biography of one of the worlds most entertaining people will be enjoyed by many.

Shaquille ONeal

TIMOTHY BELLA is a staff writer and editor at the Washington Post. His work has been published in the New York Times, Esquire, The Atlantic, New York Magazine, Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, CNN.com, VICE, ESPNs Andscape (formerly The Undefeated), and other outlets. Bella was also the lead researcher for the New York Times bestsellers Tiger Woods and The System, both by Jeff Benedict and Armen Keteyian. Bella has a masters from Columbia Journalism School, where he was a Stabile fellow. He lives with his family in Northern Virginia.

Barkley

A BIOGRAPHY

Timothy Bella

To Betsy and Teddy.

You cant start a fire without a spark.

Table of Contents

Looking down from the roof of his housing project, Charles Barkley believed he could fly. Wearing a homemade Superman cape made from one of the familys bathroom towels, the seven-year-old launched himself from twenty feet off the ground, knowing in his heart he could match the majestic superpower of televisions George Reeves.

He felt like he could do just about anything, grandmother Johnnie Mae Edwards said.

On this day, Charless plan was inevitably derailed by gravity. When his mother, Charcey Glenn, ran outside, she thought Charles was dead. He was unconscious, bleeding profusely, and suffered a mild concussion.

When I found out he was all right... I could have killed him myself, she said.

Barkley chalked up the near-death experience as another afternoon in the life of a wild child in Leeds, Alabama.

When youre a poor kid in the projects, youll do anything for excitement, he said.

It was part of the blessing of Barkley.

Charles Wade Barkley is as transcendent as he is irreverent, a foul-mouthed, bald Peter Pan in Nikes who never grew up. His basketball legacy is as close as someone without a championship can get to being unassailable. He was an eleven-time All-Star, selected to every game from 1987 to 1997. He was an All-NBA selection for eleven years. He earned two Olympic gold medalsincluding one in 1992 as part of the Dream Team, considered by many as the most dominant assembly of basketball talent ever. He was the 1993 MVP and finished in the top ten in voting nine times. He has enough nicknames to make Apollo Creed blush. The six-foot-six player weve known as the Round Mound of Rebound, Sir Charles, the Incredible Bulk, the Leaning Tower of Pizza, or just Chuck remains the shortest player to ever win a rebounding title. He was named as one of the greatest players in NBA history as part of the leagues fiftieth and seventy-fifth anniversaries. By the time he retired in 2000, he was only the fourth player in league history to score 20,000 points, grab 10,000 rebounds and dish out 4,000 assists.

These new generations dont understand because they cant believe it, said Chuck D, the legendary lyricist and leader of Public Enemy, but Charles Barkley was the biggest problem.

He has been inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame an unprecedented three separate timesone for his career, one for his role with the Dream Team, and one for winning the Curt Gowdy Media Award as part of Inside the NBA , the first award of its kind for a studio show. His games were must-see TV for fans, and networks benefited from the bump in ratings that came with his unpredictability.

He helped change not just how fans watched the game but also how they talked about it. When he isnt discussing race or politics on the basketball show, Charles, who isnt on social media, regularly goes viral for sound bite after sound bitesuggesting former Vice President Mike Pence shut the hell up, joking about Draymond Green being the worst member of a boy band, admitting that he mistook symptoms of a prolonged hangover for signs that he might have the coronavirus. He can befriend anyone anywherefrom Ric Flair and Guy Fieri to Ryan Smith, a college basketball player who valiantly fought against leukemia, and Lin Wang, the cat-litter scientist in Iowa who reminded us that the unlikeliest of bonds are just as special as those we see on TV every Thursday.

His place in basketball lore will forever be linked to Michael Jordan, the best player the game has ever seen and a contemporary that both he and his peers could never topple. Whether its fair, theres a question to his basketball story that gets brought up repeatedly: Is he the greatest player to never win a ring? Possibly. Tune in on any given Thursday to Inside the NBA , and youll hear Shaquille ONeal mention it unmercifully if he feels like hes losing an argument against his friend.

Whenever Chucks asked how much better he could have been if he dedicated himself to conditioning for the entirety of his career, like he had during the 92 Dream Team and his subsequent MVP season, he laughs at the notion that avoiding the extra Reeses Pieces would have done him any good.

What the fuck else could I have done if only four guys did the shit I did? he asked Sports Illustrated s Jack McCallum in 2012.

At the height of his career, he was treated more like a rock star than a basketball player. A pitchman for two of the biggest brands in the world, Nike and McDonalds, Charles appeared in movies and iconic TV commercials, and graced magazine covers that became collectors items. Everyone wanted a piece of him: presidents and pundits, actors and activists, even Madonna. Images of him getting mobbed by fans in Spain during the Dream Teams 1992 Summer Olympics drew comparisons to Beatlemania. Hes hosted Saturday Night Live the most times of any athlete in the shows history. And he says he makes tens of millions of dollars annually between his job at TNT and endorsements for brands like Subway and Capital One.