Charles (Barkley)

"I'm no one, I'm just a basketball player," Charles Barkley often said. And what a basketball player was ... So strong and dominant on the field.

One of those who could do it all alone. Charles was too low for his position, with an eternal excess of pounds, but he made a chaos in the racket ... He scored, jumped and assisted, simply carrying his opponents on his shoulders.

The younger ones know him as a witty TNT commentator, for my generation was the definition of a toy beast.

Magic had a smile. A man with such a smile simply can not be bad. Michael Jordan was a perfect basketball and marketing machine, which never gave a controversial statement. Larry Bird was always on the side, as did Moses Malone. Dr. J was smooth and spoke as if he was the head of a diplomatic mission. Karl Malone was a cowboy. Stockton was from Vienna's boys' choir. Only Charles Barkley was his own and he was not afraid to show it ... At any time.

I loved and loved to watch a lot of players, but only three of them loved me. Malone, Stockton and Barkley. "Tempo" and "Basket" were bought for NBA statistics, as well as sporadic reports from America, where very often referred to as a frozen muzzle from Philadelphia, which was brilliant on the field, but also fired at the time the craziest statements an athlete could to launch.

"I had a divine gift in the jump, the other segments of my game were not good to me, I was hoping to be able to have 10 jumps per game and after 10 years I would earn $ 1 million in the NBA and secure my family," thought Barkley .

In the third, he was 110 kg at 178 cm high. Of course he did not fall among the top 12. He grew up to 193 cm during the summer, but his weight went unbearably to 140 kg. Even with these dimensions, he was unrealistically jumping and moving, and he received a scholarship from a university known exclusively for American football. Auburn's coach, Sonny Smith, wrote in his notes: "He has one fat man, but on the ground as a wind ... he wears everything in front of him" ...

At Auburn, basketball mostly illiterate crowds came to see as a circus attraction of 193 cm high Barkley, who played at the wings of the center and center and banged the lunatic bananas to 30 cm higher players, and after a defensive jump - with obligatory dribbling behind his back - struck from the basket to a basket with brutal ducking with two hands, which almost moved the construction. (On his 22nd birthday, Charles Barkley played for 76ers so hard that he shifted the complete construction of the half-meter basket. The match was interrupted for 25 minutes while the workers were trained and returned to the basket in the foreseen position. Yes, he was so strong).

The South Africans wondered, "Where does this fat, such a force and jump from a body resembling anything but an athlete" ... Mama offered the explanation in the form of a blood transfusion that baby Charles had received at birth, when he suffered from a severe form of anemia, which It almost cost him his life.

Barkley never managed to lower his weight during college. He did not even try too hard. Sonny Smith had a helper who walked with Charles all day, sat with him in lectures, and watched the prescribed child adhere to. Barkley would have eaten one prescribed sandwich after the game, then threw three family pizzas into his room and left only cardboard packages until morning ...

The best example of Charles's inability to move away from the table came during camps for the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.

Barkley looked great during the first mini-camp, and Bobby Knight was delighted with his game, but asked to prepare and remove at least five pounds from the next campsite. Barkley not only did not touch the ball at the prescribed time, but added 15 kg to the existing weight. Knight first cut him out of the list, which Charles never forgave him: "Today I hate it white to .... e, I wish I had played against Indiana for the rest of my life."

He came to the NBA in 1984, as the fifth choice in the strongest draft of the class in basketball history. He went to Philadelphia, where fans love to criticize and where only a few of the chosen ones enjoy unconditional love. Barkley came to the team that won the championship title and the dressing room was held by veterans - Dr J, Moses Malone, Mo Cheeks (for whom Charles joked like to say that he had only one good eye and that he only saw it in the contrary Dr. Ja) and Andrew Toney.

Young Barkley took Moses Malone under his wing, who did not talk much but each one listened to him.

He recognized Prince Charles in a lost guy from the south, as he was at the beginning ... "He said that I could skip a meal. He taught me what it means to be a professional and be ready for every match."

Barkley gradually assumed the position of the main player in view of the years of the 76ers' championship quartet. There was total terror in the jump. The 193-cm man in 1987 was the NBA's best jumper with almost 15 jumps per game, of which some six incredibly incredible in the attack !!

Barkley is nhe's a player in the history of the league who won the title of the best NBA jumper.

"He often said to me: 'Just shoot me, I'll catch your every failure and get it back to the basket.' It was basically the same." His desire to catch a refracting ball was the greatest one I've ever seen in my life, "said is a great shooter of Hersey Hawkins, who for four seasons was Charles's teammate.

His game did not require any system or special action. Barkley created everything himself, using his incredible strength and sense of jumping. When he got the ball on the low post, the defense was almost gone. Barkley combined his huge butt with stunning explosiveness and scored almost without a mistake against players who were in turn higher than him. If doubled, Barkley would always find a teammate himself (a very often undervalued segment was his review of the game.) After all, look at his dog for Mike Gminsky vs. Knicks, one of the best additions ever seen in basketball)

Dueli Barkley and Carla Malone were in the game where they literally shot everything in contact. For me, without any dilemma, the two best two-wing hatching center I've watched. Two players that you could only once set yourself up for a foul attack during a match ...

"My philosophy was that you can set me up for a foul in the attack during the game, but only once, because while I'm making this foul, I really try to kill you, so no one has set me up twice." (His counter-attacks and drama was perpetuated by the legendary republic of Public Enemy in the song "Rebel Without a Pause", verses uttered by Chuck D: "Simple and plain, give me the lane, I'll throw it down your throat like Barkley!")

Barkley broke out of the field. He gave statements that often caused negative connotations in public. Given that Charles was moving mostly alone, without bodyguards or any escorts, one person appeared to be confronting each other, and Barkley did not escape, on the contrary.

His eight years in Philadelphia took place in great individual seasons and with little success during the play-off. Barkley had about 60% of the game's shot, 25 points and 12 rebounds an average year on year, but Phila did not have a team-level quality to counter Pistons, Celtics, Bulls and Knicks.

Barkley was extremely nervous about the lack of quality reinforcements, so he openly criticized the team's owner and management, just as he only knows. The start of his end in Philadelphia was an incident at a New Jersey match, where Chuck attempted to spit fans under a basket that insulted him all over the match, and instead hit him with a girl who was sitting nearby. The incident was broadcast in all news and the event got national publicity.

"It's something that I will regret for the rest of my life. I did a very stupid thing, but she and her parents gave me a chance to make a profit, and I did it myself."

In the sea of ​​incidents that were very often tainted, a drop of a glass was blamed at a bar in Milwaukee, prompting an indictment against him. The team changed him to Phoenix as long as the trial was in progress. When he received an agent's call and learned that he was no longer a member of Phile, Barkley paid tours of drinks to all passengers on board on a journey home.

"The owner Katz never wanted to win the championship title, I really believe that. He was enough to fill the hall and play in the play-off, for more than that, he did not care to spend." I asked Shaq, and I got Charles Shackelforda ".

Before coming to Phoenix, Barkley brought his body in the best shape ever. At the OI in Barcelona, ​​as a member of Dream Teama, he was the best scorer and player of the American national team, along with the usual dose of silly statements and moves. The striking of Angola's elbow in the chest is highlighted, and the statement after that: "How I know, he could have a spear behind his back".

The Phoenix season played phenomenally, as well as most of the years in the 76ers, but for the first time in his career, he had a quality teammate's collection to flush him out. Suns made the best league in the league and then set off on the play-off. In the first round they lost to Lakers with 2: 0, with two defeats on the home court, turning to 3: 2. In the semifinals, Spurs were set up, so in the fantastic finals of the Sonicse West with 4: 3, where Barkley had three-double effects in the fifth and seventh games.

The Bulls final was a pure anthology (one of the best ever, be sure to watch each match. Impossible good basketball was played).

Chicago won the first two in Phoenix, Suns won the third after three extra time, where Dan Majerle scored three from the record. In the fourth, Michael Jordan scored 55 points for Bulls' tight victory, so that Phoenix, along with Barkley's great match and cocaine addict Richard Dumas, sent a series back to Arizona. In the sixth, the Suns had two differences 15 seconds to finish, but then John Paxson appeared and the rest is history.

Barkleya defeated Bullsa dotukao. An empty look at the press conference after finishing the finale spoke all. Suns had two great seasons, but two times against the later champions of Houston Rockets lost the lead of 2: 0 and 3: 1. Barkley had a fight with Kevin Johnson and this fight was broken by the team of Suns, one of the best who failed to win the title (Barkley once told Johnson: "If you go to the strip club with me, I will go with you to the church." Kevin went to the strip club, Barkley did not show up in the church.)

Early he wound up with a gold medal in Atlanta, where he again was the top scorer of the US Olympic team, kicking out a staggering 82% of the game. Barkley was soon switched to Houston to try something with Drexler and Olayawon, but the trio who was no longer in power could not go far. He did not help Scottie Pippen's arrival, with whom Barkley fought hard when he demolished it to Portland after only a year.

Fate wanted Barkley to play his last real NBA match right in Philadelphia. Quadriceps's Rupture separated him from the field for four months, but Charles returned because he wanted to leave the pitch on both legs. He dropped the last basket in his career after an offensive rebound against Vancouver Grizzlies, then left the court and finally said "goodbye" basketball players.

For all these years with Barkley, never, but never, it was not boring. He collected jokes at the expense of journalists, fans and teammates, but he often joked on his own. He lost over $ 10 million in cubes, but he also divested more of it for humanitarian purposes. He threw people through the cafes, broke their nose, went to the courts, and at the same time paid for treatment for sick children and bought apartments and houses for the poor without any pomp or media exposure. He often liked to wear a bad guy's image, and in essence he rarely was a good man.

Even now, Barkley is the soul of a TV studio that is considered the best in any American sport for almost a decade. "Inside the NBA" is a polygon where Emmy's award-winning Charles can not say half the names of players, nor recognize those who play a little. Again, the man who watches a few minutes of most of the games he is talking about, succeeds with his sincerity and humor to keep the viewers screen-shacky.

Charles I had the chance to meet in Dallas a few years ago. There were at least 30 current and former NBA players in the lobby of the hotel and you know who was the biggest crowd? Barkley held the speech to all who wanted to listen, joked and joked with complete strangers ... He photographed with anyone who wanted it. For a moment, he did not look as though he was bored or as though he was beneath his honor because he was not in the company of "straightforward ones". Charles was always comfortable in his own skin. The peak was when he honored everyone in his vicinity of a drink at the hotel bar, such people simply do not appear in top sports ...

"Titles? The basketball basket does not owe anything to me ... I owe everything to my basketball players, if it was not, I would stay poor from Alabama, and this way I went around the whole world. I met an incredible number of people, I met the presidents of states, princes, people I have never even dreamed of meeting, let alone to meet. I have earned money that I can take care of my daughter and her children when they come to the world, all because of this sport, I owe basket players all ... "