From SportsWritersDirect (formely known as Pro Sports XChange): ********** Clown Prince of NBA For a Guy Who Didn't Win Any Rings, Barkley Sure Is Unforgettable By ROLAND LAZENBY SportsWritersDirect April 17, 2000 From out of the cloud of steam came Charles Barkley. He was grinning and toting a stack of bath towels, the Phoenix Suns' entire allotment of bath towels. Alas, A.C. Green noticed this too late and was left stranded, buck naked in the shower without a towel, which was too bad, because the locker room was already filling with reporters, some of them women. For many NBA players, this would have been no problem. After all, they're athletically gifted and proud of it. But with his deep religious convictions and clearly defined notions about privacy, Green saw that famous Barkley grin and knew he was done for. Green stuck his head out of the shower and stared into a locker room full of amused faces. "Help!" Green called. "Help somebody!" It seemed impossible, but Barkley's grin grew even taller. "A.C." he yelled as he plunked the stack of towels down near his locker. "It's like Public Enemy says, 'Every brother needs a brother!'" It was six years ago during a road game in Washington that Sir Charles stranded proud and proper A.C. in his birthday suit, one of the zillion goofball antics that Barkley has perpetrated over the course of his 15 seasons in the NBA. And now, on Wednesday night, if the basketball gods are willing, he will come down to his final act, suiting up for the Houston Rockets' last home game of the season, against the lowly Vancouver Grizzlies. This season was supposed to be Barkley's victory tour, but fate played a cruel joke on him in December when he ruptured a leg tendon during a road game in his beloved Philadelphia. Barkley, of course, was man enough to accept the circumstances (after all, he's pulled enough cruel gags of his own over the years), except that now he wants one last game, if his doctors allow it. It will be our time -- writers, fans, teammates, opponents, ball boys and just about anybody else associated with the league -- to mourn the passing of the greatest of basketball wits. No, he never won anything. But he sure had fun, and most of the time we did, too. And, yes, he'll surely return to the game as yet another television analyst. But it won't be the same. Above all, Charles was a player, peering out into the world and needling somebody every step of the way, never stopping, never letting up. Even if he did, you couldn't be certain he wasn't just setting up the next gag, the next fusillade of blather and grins. As former Utah Jazz president Frank Layden once observed, "Sigmund Freud would jump out of the grave to examine Charles Barkley." Former teammate Dan Majerle was once asked what it was like to share a locker room with Charles. He rolled his eyes. "Oh, God," he said. "What's it like to share a locker room with Charles? Have you ever been around a parrot, a macaw, that knows just five or six sayings and says them over and over? The first five or six times you hear it, it sounds pretty funny. But it just keeps saying 'em over and over and over. After awhile you just want to strangle the bird." "But we love him," agreed Joe Kleine, another former teammate who used to spend days listening to a play-by-play from Barkley's Fantasyland. "He's a politician. He's gonna run for governor of Alabama. He's gonna be part- owner of a baseball team. He's running this team. He's gonna be on the Senior Tour in golf. There's a little bit of everything in Charles' world. "And," Kleine confided, "he has these sayings, these Barkleyisms, like, 'Even a blind acorn can find a nut,' or 'Water rises to its own level.' Those are some Barkleyisms. They're all upside down, and nobody's sure what they mean." Danny Manning, another of Barkley's onetime teammates, said he quickly figured out the secret to survival - never listen too closely to anything Barkley has to say. Despite 15 years of experience, the writers covering pro hoops never quite figured that one out. Barkley just kept making his outrageous utterances, and they just kept writing 'em down. Like some perpetual game of Simon Says. The main reason they did was that Barkley was a man's man, a throwback, a 6-foot-4 forward who excelled by virtue of his strength, his wits and an unequaled desire to put it down right in the faces of a lot of taller men. Yes, Scottie Pippen was probably right last summer when he said Barkley was too fat. Pippen's public mouthing was classless, but it was true. Sir Charles was too fat. But that only added to his charm, gave him a Babe Ruthian aura and made his hops all the more amazing. A few years back GQ magazine went so far as to include Barkley with that special club of superstars from the 1980s -- Magic, Bird and Jordan. They were people who really, really wanted to win. There was, however, one vast difference: The other members all claimed multiple NBA titles for their teams, then retired to other pursuits. Charles, on the other hand, was left to stalk the pro basketball circuit nightly, like some ghost consigned to a boyish purgatory, in search of that supposedly redemptive jewelry, a championship ring. Fortunately, Barkley was able to play out this role in Houston and Phoenix during later stages of his career. He worked his first eight seasons in Philadelphia, having been drafted out of Auburn by the 76ers with the fifth pick in the first round of the 1984 draft. Although Indiana coach Bobby Knight cut him from the 1984 Olympic squad, the "Round Mound of Rebound" made an immediate impact with the Sixers. He arrived at the close of Julius Erving's career, and although they had some good teams in their three seasons together, the pair never could lift Philly above the dominant Bird-led Celtics in the Eastern Conference. With Erving's retirement and Boston's demise, the Sixers annointed Barkley to return them to another period of greatness. The roster, however, was far too weak for him to mount a legitimate challenge to the Pistons or Bulls. Instead, Philadelphia became known for its inconsistent management and ownership, and Barkley's tenure there ended badly. One incident, when he spat at a heckling fan and instead hit a little girl nearby, will dog him to the grave. The matter infuriated commissioner David Stern, never much of a Barkley fan anyway. The Sixers, though, did have the decency in June 1992 to ship Sir Charles to Phoenix, where things instantly fell in place for him over the 1992-93 season. Like that, he was reborn, earning league MVP honors and leading the Suns to 62 wins and a spot in the championship series against Jordan and his Bulls. It was a memorable series, not so much for the basketball but because of the extracurricular activities, which included sightings between games of Barkley and Madonna at a Phoenix restaurant. The championship matchup proved to be Jordan's last go-round before his first retirement, and Barkley was a fitting opponent. It was Charles vs. Michael. Mano y mano. Shaved pate vs. shaved pate. Nike commercial vs. Nike commercial. In his shoe advertisement, Jordan pondered, "What if I were just a basketball player?" while Barkley in his spot declared, "I am not a role model." That stance only added to the controversy of Sir Charles' public image. Some critics saw him as another highly paid performer shirking his responsibility. Others, though, understood that Barkley's statement was intended as a reminder that pro athletes are merely media images and that the real responsibility for instilling values in young people belongs in the home. Barkley explained as much, but that did little to deter his critics. As it turned out, both he and Jordan were players, both role models, their determination showing the 1993 NBA Finals' worldwide audience real confidence, real energy. Having come into the league together in the fall of 1984, the two superstars had formed a solid friendship over the years. While Barkley had shown no forethought, no hesitation in trashing his own public image during his early NBA seasons, the more circumspect Jordan had proceeded cautiously, always saying and doing the correct corporate things while persistently building Chicago into a winner. At times, when Barkley's occasional barfights or misguided public statements boiled over into controversy, Jordan had even taken on the task of trying to explain his friend to writers and reporters, the primary message being that Charles may tend to run his mouth before thinking, but he's an honest, genuine person and a tough competitor. For these defenses and for Jordan's friendship, Barkley was grateful. In fact, some said he was too grateful to be successful in the 1993 championship series. Later, Pippen, then Jordan's teammate, would berate Barkley for "kissin' Michael's ass," an accusation that left Sir Charles bristling. But it would remain one of the great unanswered questions of his career. The Lakers' Magic Johnson and the Pistons' Isiah Thomas had formed a similar friendship in the 1980s, but that relationship fell apart when their teams met in the 1988 and 1989 Finals. There was no way, Johnson later admitted, that their intense competition could not get in the way of their friendship. Faced with the same tough choice of building and nurturing an intense dislike for his championship competition, Barkley had chosen to remain a good guy and Jordan's friend. The Suns, who had the homecourt advantage in the series, promptly lost the first two games at home, and the Bulls eventually won 4-2, sending Jordan off to savor his third straight championship and consigning Barkley to more seasons of dragging his chains around the NBA, looking for what he didn't have. He eventually wore out his welcome in Phoenix and moved on to Houston, where his coming was proclaimed as the addition that would make the Rockets "Dream Team South." It never happened. Still, he compiled an impressive list of accomplishments: -- Selected as one of the NBA's 50 Greatest Players. -- Played a key role in Dream Team I's gold medal run through the 1992 Olympics. -- Posted career averages of better 22.3 points, 11.7 rebounds and 3.9 assists. -- One of only a dozen players to amass 20,000 points and 10,000 rebounds. -- First-team All-NBA for five seasons. -- League MVP 1993. -- All-Star Game MVP 1991. -- The Sporting News Player of the Year in 1991 and 1993 (voted by NBA players). About the only present not under Barkley's tree as he leaves the game is the big one, and he's been careful not to dwell on that as much as the media would have liked. He always had a perverse love for reporters and the spotlight despite the pressure they wanted to put on him. He would be in the locker room early before games, willing to offer up choice quotes for anyone with a microphone or notebook. And once the game was over, he could usually be counted on to hang around to say blunt, funny, interesting things. One night he was talking late until a locker-room attendant walked up and ended the session by saying, "It's time, gentlemen." "Don't use that word 'gentlemen' so loosely," Barkley chided him. "After all, these are reporters." Roland Lazenby is the author of "Mad Game, The NBA Education of Kobe Bryant." ------------------ What do you expect from someone who beats up his fiancee?
And: * How About a Loooong Goodbye? Let's Have Charles Barkley Do Several Farewell Tours, Just to Liven Things Up By STEVE ASCHBURNER SportsWritersDirect April 18, 2000 The final day of the NBA regular season always is one of the league's most boring. A bunch of bad teams with nothing to play for go through the motions with one eye on their golf clubs, and the really good teams rest their stars and send in the scrubs. Sure, a few teams might jockey for final playoff positions but, really, how much lasting impact do those berths or those clubs have anyway? So thank goodness for Charles Barkley. Barkley, the former Houston Rockets forward, will change that adjective to "current" on Wednesday night when he makes a token appearance in his team's otherwise meaningless game against Vancouver. Barkley had hoped to turn this entire season -- his 16th in the NBA -- into a farewell tour, but that plan got ruptured along with the quadriceps tendon in his left leg at Philadelphia on Dec. 8. Barkley had surgery, did the rehab and found some symbolism in having his career end -- abruptly -- in the city where he had begun. But deep down, he felt cheated out of his last goodbyes. Now Barkley will get to say them, at least to the Rockets' fans. The Houston medical staff is expected to clear him to play, and Barkley -- even if he doesn't score a point -- will get to be the night's biggest star. One more time. "I'm looking forward to it," Houston coach Rudy Tomjanovich said. "Charles has done a lot for this organization, and if he wants to walk off the court instead of being carried off, I'm all for that. It also gives the people one last chance to pay a tribute to him." Best of all, it gives Barkley one more chance to get in front of microphones and notebooks, where he separated himself from most of the league's other superstars. Barkley with no game packs more entertainment value than a half-dozen of the new- breed stars. Compare him, say, to Shareef Abdur-Rahim, whom most fans never have heard utter a syllable. Not to pick on the young Vancouver forward but, let's face it, people aren't so keen about paying 1999-2000 ticket prices to simply gawk at his basketball skills. Fans want and need a little more personality than that, and Sir Charles packs more than 10 Abdur-Rahims. The same could be said of Penny Hardaway, Grant Hill, Tim Duncan, Ray Allen and bunch of other terrific athletes. Barkley is a ham and a celebrity who just happened to have a dynamite knack for basketball. That's what everyone will miss about him. Heck, the league basically legislated out his lone remaining skill -- pounding the ball, backing in, waiting either for a double team or a turnaround jumper -- with the new rules this season. But the NBA never has been able to shut Barkley's mouth. Not then, not now. So give him his night Wednesday, no matter how vain or superfluous it might seem. In fact, why stop at one game? The NBA could let Barkley make his farewell tour next season, suiting up for a couple of minutes in each of the other 27 buildings. The Rockets wouldn't even have to pay him -- just let him take home all the booty (rocking chairs, Harleys, snowmobiles) that he would score during halftime ceremonies. Better yet, the league might want to trot out Barkley every few years, whenever it starts craving some good, outrageous quotes. By playing Wednesday, Barkley will offically participate in three decades. Why not let him become the game's Minnie Minoso, making a token appearance for another decade or two, if only to liven things up? The bottom line is, the league, the fans and the media should be in no hurry to wave goodbye to Charles Barkley. But when we do, we need to do it right. Here's hoping the Rockets and Grizzlies make it right Wednesday night. Copyright (c) 2000 SportsWritersDirect All Rights Reserved. Reprints, duplication or redistribution is prohibited without written permission from SportsWritersDirect. 18.04.2000 19:28 Uhr ------------------ What do you expect from someone who beats up his fiancee?
