this was my initial thought as well. but then another possibility came to mind. any team barkley played for likely knows a lot more about him than he would like to be made public. who knows what he did/does off camera. blackmail can be a very useful tool, and we all know already that morey is a stoic assassin behind that innocuous calculator :grin:
Something like this. You really can't have an active controversy between an ex-player media member and active members of a teams front office. When Barkley was yelling at them to "tweet me tonight!!!" In response to the inappropriate tweet that Brown had given, something had to be done. It was escalating out of control. That's the "it got personal" they're referring to. Barkley is not apologizing for calling out the Rockets. He's not apologizing for saying they were doing "fake hustle". None of this will absolve him from continuing to look at the Rockets skeptically till they prove him wrong... But it will (should) stop both parties from acting like whiny girls, on a national stage. That's all this was. I expect nothing less from CF with conspiracy theories about blackmail, class action lawsuits, or even threatening to get fired from TNT! (Which would literally be the end of the popularity of that show).
The fact that he mentioned Les makes me think either Les paid him or Les made a phone call to Ted Turner
so then pressure from an nba owner or tnt = full-fledged conspiracy theory however, pressure from the league = obvious fact is this your final answer?
Morey has said before that they've contacted TNT on several occasions about Barkley slandering he organization. So it's not some conspiracy theory to think maybe this time it was the NBA who contacted TNT and said we can't have a business partner smearing our owners.
I don't believe that Barkley's injury had anything to do with it. Barkley took a paycut to $1M so that we'd have the ability to acquire Pippen. Barkely played that next season ('98-'99) at the $1M salary and then told the Rockets that he was only going to play 1 more season before retiring. The Rockets offered Barkely a 1 year $9M contract. Apparently Barkeley was expecting a one year$14M offer instead. Regardless of Barkley's expectations, he ended up signing the 1 year $9m contract. Barkley hurt his knee the following December, came back to play that one final game and then retired as planned. Barkley's issue with the Rockets was in regards to the contract that he signed with Houston in the summer of '99. His knee injury occurred months later (Dec '99). With or without injury, Barkley was planning to retire after the '99-'00 season. https://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-57046513.html My guess is that it was never any specific amount promised. More likely it was something along the lines of "since you helped us out then we'll make it up to when you resign next season". Barkley's expectations and the Rockets idea of what was a fair amount were likely different. That would explain Barkley quoting different amounts at different times. There probably wasn't a specific amount promised but Barkley definitely thought $9M was too little. Bottom line though was that Barkley ended up signing the 1 year $9m deal. So if he thought that amount was unfair then the summer of '99 was the time to negotiate that. Once he signed the contract then he guaranteed that he would only receive $9m (the amount of the contract). Barkley didn't have to sign the $9M contract (the largest single season salary of his career) , he was a FA and able to negotiate with any team in the league.
100% agree. You don't apologize and then have eager Ernie saying "Well said" unless there was some pressure from above. DD
Pressure is one thing... threatenings of lawsuits, firings, and blackmail is a conspiracy theory. Of course he was told to do this by *someone*... just like *someone* has likely told Tad Brown and Morey not to engage media members on social media as well. Barkley will continue to call out the Rockets for poor play... he will continue to be slow to give them full praise when things seem to be going really well (which I guess will have to wait till next year)... this apology won't change any of that. What Morey and co. were complaining before to TNT was mostly petty stuff about Charles not paying attention to the stats and going out of his way to try and pain the Rockets in a negative light... it was the contract/twitter stuff that was over the line, but I do expect plenty more negative media coverage of this team (along with CF going up in arms and needing a hug when it happens).
