Charles Barkley accomplished plenty in his storied NBA career, with the only real shortcoming being he never won an NBA title.
The lack of a championship is often a go-to when people, including his Inside the NBA cohorts, want to try and talk smack about the Hall of Fame player. But Laurence Holmes of 670 the Score in Chicago says that there are only a few people who can actually get away with some of that kind of ribbing.
Holmes made that point on Wednesday when talking about a recent interaction Barkley had while he was a guest on the podcast The Pivot.
In the exchange, co-host Fred Taylor was trying to ask Barkley about whether he felt like he wasn’t getting the proper attention while playing on the 1992 Olympic basketball team commonly known as “The Dream Team.” The way Taylor phrased the question, Clark and Crowder jumped in trying to kid Barkley for not being as good as he actually was.
Holmes said it was just ridiculous for a broader swath of people to think Barkley never had much of a career.
“People need to start putting some respect back on Charles’s NBA career. Like, for real for real,” he said. “It’s alright for Shaq to joke about Charles not having rings…It’s not cool for the rest of us to act like Charles Barkley was trash.”
Holmes added that Crowder and Clark in that instance were out of line.
“This is not having context, and you feeling like you’re in on the joke,” he said. “You’re not in on the joke.”
The fact is, and Barkley says this in the clip, that Charles was likely the second-best player on that team behind Michael Jordan. By the time the Barcelona Olympics rolled around, Barkley was coming off an MVP season.
“Charles Barkley was not just some dude. He was THE dude for a while!” he said. “This is a league MVP. This is an 11 All-NBA. Not just the all-star game, All-NBA. And people get really comfortable jumping in on what are a lot of times like inside jokes about guys, and occasionally they have to be checked. I’m glad that Charles checked them.”