Almost none of you, on either side of the issue, seem to have any grasp of Barkley in any real context. It's all emotion and picking a side. Also, it's possible to acknowledge he's a terrible basketball analyst and a rambling jackass without denigrating his standing as a player.
He's listed at 6'6. Over the years people claimed he actually measured 6'4 &3/4 but Barkley said that was a lie and he has been 6'6 since college. Others have him at 6'4 when he started Auburn. Regardless, he was undersized and hefty but uniquely athletic and explosive and put up numbers in the post that made absolutely no sense. He once shot 60% in a season. at (maybe) 6'6. That's astounding. Those are numbers for a center who exclusively catches oops and scores off putbacks. Or Shaq.
As for him being a winner in high school or college, it's just an inane, irrelevant talking point. Not every player wins state titles in high school. Most never win one at all. Also,
everything about high school. AAU, college, and recruiting in general in 2017 is completely different from what it was in 1980. I could spend 5 paragraphs explaining that, but no one with any knowledge of basketball should need it explained.
By the way, in high school Barkley was 5'10 & 220 and didn't play varsity until his senior year, when a growth spurt took him to 6'4. He immediately averaged 19 & 17, his team went 26-3, and he took them to the state semifinal. He went to Auburn because no one except local scouts ever saw him play. And Auburn sucked. He played center at Auburn, which is absurd. He led the SEC in rebounding every year. He hit 63% of his shots from the field for his career, which is still the auburn record. The team was untalented as fukk outside of Barkley, but they finally had a good season his junior year and made the tournament. They got bounced in the first round, a game in which Barkley scored 23 points on 80% from the field, with 17 rebounds, 4 assists, 2 steals and 2 blocks.
His rookie year he joined a team that had won the championship two seasons before, but they were aging. Dr. J and Moses Malone were on the backsides of their careers, not to mention the East back then, pre-expansion era, was full of teams stacked with talent. The season before Barkley was drafted they lost in the first round of the playoffs. Barkley put up 15 & 11 in the playoffs as a rookie, and the 76ers went back to the Eastern Conference Finals, where they lost to a better Celtics team.
The veterans fell off, retired, got traded. Barkley put up insane numbers and led the Sixers to very successful seasons despite serious holes in the roster. I know this because I watched the NBA all the time, followed it religiously. By his 5th season he narrowly finished 2nd to Magic in the MVP voting despite getting 11 more first place votes than Johnson. He was one of the most unique players the game ever saw, and immediately became one of its best. The man put up 25-28 points without needing a lot of shots. He got to the line at an uncanny rate. He pulled down 11-14.5 rebounds a season. He passed and handled the ball unusually well for his position. His shooting percentages, again, make no sense. By every measure- eye test, traditional stats, advanced measurements - he was an all time great in his prime.
But those Sixers teams sucked during his prime. I watched them. They had nothing. Did he have poor practice habits? Yep. Notoriously poor. And he drank too damn much. But he played nearly 40 minutes a game while barely missing any in Philly. He went hard every night. The front office failed him.
When he won the MVP with Phoenix he didn't have a remarkably better season than his best years in Philly. Not at all. Dude just had a better narrative, because his team was winning and was fun to watch. Jordan probably deserved MVP that year, just like Barkley probably deserved the one he lost to Magic. That's just how MVP voting often goes.
Along the way Barkley dominated All Star games, stood out many games as the best and most exciting player on the original '92 Dream Team (this is when he really entered the "super star" realm). He led the team with 18 points a game on 71% from the field. He played for the '96 Olympic team too, and led the team in points, rebounds, and fg%. The motherfukker shot
81.6% from the floor.
He's the shortest player to ever lead the league in rebounds (14.6 in his 3rd season) and he led the league in offensive rebounding for 3 straight years. At any height a remarkable achievement; at his height, an absurd one.
I can't stand Charles Barkley. This is how I feel about him as a human:
Will America ever tire of Charles Barkley’s clumsy act?
But that doesn't mean the motherfukker isn't one of the greatest players to ever set foot on the hardwood, man. And when he finally got a talented team around him, he made a finals run and came up short against arguably the greatest player to ever lace 'em up. No shame in that. That Phoenix team, by the way, wasn't some kind of monster squad. KJ could barely even stay on the damn court. He's one of the most injury-prone pedophile players of all time. Injuries plagued the Suns during Barkley's time there. Then they got bounced by Hakeem, who was in the midst of one the greatest runs anyone has seen. That Mario Elie series was one that really hurt. But Barkley's playoff numbers, as always, were amazing. By the time he got to the Rockets he was at the end of his career, with a bulky back, and he spent too much time on the perimeter when he wasn't backing down his defender in the post for 15 damn seconds. It was painful to watch. But his career spoke for itself by then.
All that said, fukk Charles Barkley for life. But at least pretend to assess his playing days with some sort of reason.
