Chi Trib: Barkley appears to be in charge on television scene

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Charles Barkley appears to be in charge on television scene

BY TERRY ARMOUR
Chicago Tribune

ATLANTA - (KRT) - Charles Barkley has plopped himself in front of a bank of TV monitors in the TNT Sports studios. As he devours a steak almost as big as his head, he stares intently at one of the screens.

But Charles Barkley isn't watching the first half of the playoff game between the Boston Celtics and New Jersey Nets - a game he will be analyzing in a few minutes on TNT's halftime show. "I already know what's going on," he explains as he gnaws on a slice of beef. "You can tell by the score."

Barkley is engrossed in "Dateline NBC," which is featuring a story about an arsonist with some sort of political cause, who has the state of Arizona on alert.

"This is some wild (stuff)," he says to nobody in particular. "This guy is burning people's dream houses. He's up to 10 now. It's been the biggest thing in Phoenix. I have to see how this turns out. He says he's trying to save the environment. How? These people aren't doing anything wrong. These are multimillion-dollar homes, man."

This is the world of Sir Charles Barkley, who has successfully used his basketball career, which effectively ended in his 16th season with a leg injury in December 1999 (he came off the bench to score two points and grab one rebound in his final game for the Houston Rockets in April 2000), to build a virtual podium for himself from which he comments on just about anything that crosses his active mind.

Is Michael Jackson really that bad of a dad? Ask Charles. Are Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden still alive? What does Charles think? Who can give us a colorful sound bite about the Georgia state flag flap? Get Barkley on the line.

"He's been like that his whole career, not just here," says former NBA player Kenny Smith, who along with Ernie Johnson joins Barkley as part of TNT's in-studio team. "Charles has found a forum of media that reaches beyond the sport he knows about. Even when he was playing, after the game, he wasn't confined to simply talking about the game. He uses every opportunity as a forum to say the things that he feels comfortable about and that he's read about during the day."

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Flaunting his opinions

Sometimes Barkley's thoughts can make the TNT brass squirm. Right after the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals said the NBA and NCAA should consider discontinuing the use of leather basketballs, which is highly unlikely, Barkley showed up on the air eating a hamburger. Then, to run up the score, Barkley said the only thing animals were good for was "eating and testing."

After the Supreme Court ruled that the government can ban cross-burning when intended to intimidate others, but added that the 1st Amendment protects the action as a form of expression, Barkley during an on-air rant suggested viewers shoot anybody who burns a cross on their property.

And, again during the TNT's NBA show, as the Iraqi conflict wound down, Barkley appeared to be searching for something on the set. Johnson asked Barkley what he was doing and Barkley, without missing a beat, said he was searching for those "weapons of mass destruction."

"What you have to do is let it be known when you agree and don't agree with what he says," Johnson says. "At that point you're like, `I know where you're coming from on that. I'm not going to condone it, and I'm not going to condemn you for it, but thanks for the entertainment.'"

According to Tim Brooks, author of "The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network & Cable TV Shows," the 40-year-old Barkley fits perfectly into what he calls TV's "golden age for loud people."

"For the loudmouths today, all the walls are down," Brooks says. "With cable, there are over 100 networks and a lot more places for people to be. People who never got on the air can be heard now. And people who cultivate a reputation for outrageous statements have more places to be heard. You have shows like Bill Maher's, that regularly assemble groups of people to talk about subjects, whether they have qualifications or not. And there is a segment of the population that likes to hear opinions, and they don't care where they come from. This feeds into that."

That's fine with Barkley, who thoroughly enjoys his place on the airwaves.

"Sports Illustrated said I'm the only black guy on TV that can say what he wants," he says proudly as he props his massive legs on the table in front him. "I don't know if that's true, but I do take great responsibility in saying what I want. If I see something happen, especially if it's racial, I'm going to hammer it."

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Nothing new

This isn't a new thing for Barkley, who caught some flak in the black community when he posed shirtless and in chains last year on the cover of Sports Illustrated. He says he spoke his mind from the first day he entered the NBA after being drafted by the Philadelphia 76ers as the "Round Mound of Rebound" out of Auburn in 1984. Barkley was approachable and quotable. The tough Philadelphia media loved him. But it was teammates Julius "Dr. J" Erving and Moses Malone who cautioned Barkley that the same media would hammer him any chance it got.

"They said, `Everybody tells you that they love you, but they don't love you - it's strictly business for them,'" Barkley says. "So I just decided I'm going to be honest and straightforward, and that's it."

Barkley pauses to take a bite from his second steak as he scans the bank of monitors in TNT's green room. He glances back at the Nets-Celtics game, which is now a blowout. "I don't think everybody likes me," he continues. "Being black, you make them nervous when you stand up and say stuff. That's why you can't worry about it."

Which made him a go-to guy in the pre- and post-game locker rooms. He regularly berated his Philadelphia coaches and his teammates. Once after a bad game, he suggested he might go home and beat his wife and kids, sparking protests from women's groups and a spot in the ACLU (Always Causing Legal Unrest) Web site's Hall of Shame. During one tirade - before being traded to the Phoenix Suns - Barkley said the Sixers wouldn't tolerate having an all-black team in "The City of Brotherly Love." When he was lambasted by the league and the media for spitting on a little girl in New Jersey during a game, he apologized but said he meant to spit on the guy behind her.

While a member of that first gold medal-winning Dream Team during the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, Barkley elbowed a skinny Angolan player, then joked that the guy "probably hadn't eaten in a few weeks." All the publicity led the U.S. Olympic Committee to practically beg Barkley to tone down his comments. He never did as he led the team - including Michael Jordan, Larry Bird and Karl Malone - in scoring.

And he's still not toning down his comments.

"That's my boy," says his mother, Charcie Glenn, who with the help of Barkley's grandmother raised him and his two younger brothers. "He calls them like he sees them. People used to say, `You need to talk to that boy.' Hold it - in the first place, he's a man. He's taking care of himself, and he's taking care of his family. He has an opinion, and whether you agree or disagree, he has a right to that opinion.

"When you get to know him, he's easygoing. He talks tough, but in the world that he is a part of, he has to show some toughness because if he didn't, people would run over him."

Though Glenn raised an easygoing child in the projects of Leeds, Ala. - she says at times she had to push the chubby Barkley to defend himself against bullies - he had added that toughness to his persona by the time he entered the NBA. He was once fined for punching Detroit's Bill Laimbeer in the face. That nastiness spilled over to his personal life: He was arrested for carrying a gun, breaking a guy's nose at a Milwaukee bar and throwing another guy through the window of an Orlando bar in three highly publicized incidents.

"I don't ever go out looking for trouble, but I will defend myself," he says. "I never worry about `image' or `reputation' or anything like that. I'm not going to let somebody slug me because I don't want to be in the headlines."

Barkley, who lives with his wife, Maureen, and 13-year-old daughter, Christiana, in Phoenix, is quick to point out that more often than not, he gets along with people when he's out in public.

"You always meet one guy who's a jerk who has had too much to drink," he says. "But nobody ever mentions that you meet 100 great people a day and five or six bad people a year. Think about it, I got arrested maybe five or six times, but I've met hundreds of thousands of people. Controversy sells. The media never says, `Hey, people are really nice to you' because that doesn't sell."

Barkley, whose biography, "I May Be Wrong but I Doubt It," edited by Washington Post columnist Michael Wilbon, has sold close to 200,000 copies (the paperback version, with new material, comes out in October), has a following. During a trip to a popular Atlanta nightclub, Barkley, nattily dressed in a casual suit, is greeted with shouts of "Charles" as he enters the bar. As the crowd parts to accommodate his huge frame (Barkley's weight ballooned to more than 300 pounds since he retired, though he has dropped some of the weight in recent months), women try to kiss him and guys try to shake his hand. As the music pounds in the background, Barkley casually jokes with people and, without much prompting, offers his thoughts on anything that's going on in the world.

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Regular occurrence

Smith says this is a regular occurrence when Barkley is out in public.

"There are certain people who are known and that command attention," Smith says. "Charles creates attention. There's a difference. It's 5 in the morning, and we have a 6 o'clock flight. We're on the plane and he's got the whole first class of the plane going crazy."

TNT, whose playoff ratings for the "Inside the NBA" postgame show are up 36 percent from last season, has picked up on Barkley's popularity. The network just extended his multiyear deal, which includes Barkley's other show, "Listen Up." Guests have included Ray Liotta, Denzel Washington and Bernie Mac. And Barkley's growing popularity has crossed so many lines, he's toying with the idea of venturing into politics.

"I don't know what I'm going to do yet," Barkley says. "As a black man from Alabama who has reached a certain level, I feel like I can say certain things. But I understand that I have a great responsibility being black and being on television because there aren't that many blacks on television."

Barkley perks up, realizing he's also playing to his regular audience of TNT staffers in the green room.

"The only black people on TV are athletes and crooks - that's it," he says with a wicked laugh.

For all his bluster over the years, Barkley has turned out to be quite a role model, in his own way. He has donated $1 million to his high school in Leeds and another inner-city school in Birmingham. Barkley says he is about to purchase 10 homes in his hometown and have them remodeled. He's also looking into what he can do to keep historically black universities thriving.

"I understand that people are listening to me, and that's a great responsibility," Barkley says. "I understand that the things I say have a powerful influence. I take great responsibility for that, especially being black."

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© 2003, Chicago Tribune.