In recent years, Barkley has ruminated publicly about one day running for governor of his home state of Alabama. While others packaged themselves as though they were just another product to be hawked in America's ever-burgeoning commodity culture, Barkley eschewed marketing for authenticity, giving rise to a whole generation of athletes - the hip-hoppers - for whom the ethic of "keeping it real" has become a mantra. Off the court, where he spun quotes and welcomed controversy, Barkley was arguably the most interesting and influential athlete of his time - maybe since Ali. Always a braggart in the showy style of his hero, Muhammad Ali, it was the incongruity between his style of play and his height that once led Barkley to declare himself "the ninth wonder of the world." Though nearly a foot shorter than the bruising behemoths he battled under the boards, Barkley often dominated thanks to effort and will. What's so startling about the numbers is another number: his height of 6-foot-4. There, he was a perennial All-Star, a former league MVP, one of only four players (Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Karl Malone are the others) to have amassed more than 20,000 points, 10,000 rebounds and 4,000 assists. Over the years, he'd transcended sports in a way few others have part raconteur, part provocateur, the bigness of his persona often overshadowing just how singular a talent he was on the court. I've been all over the world and it's all because of basketball." He paused before finishing by reminding both the fans and his younger teammates to appreciate the moments of their shared passion, because, it turns out, they're fleeting.Īnd with that, after hearing himself praised by his coach as the bearer of a "heart of a champion," after being presented with a recliner by his teammates large enough to accommodate the girth of a rear end that his wife, Maureen, calls "the size of New Jersey," Barkley retired at age 37. "I owe everything in my life to basketball. "Basketball doesn't owe me anything," he said, voice quavering. And then he took the microphone, and the Charles Barkley I'd gotten to know a decade ago emerged, the one behind the macho pose. So he rehabbed the knee with an eye on the calendar and there he was on that April night, five months later, standing before a genuflecting Houston crowd that deafeningly chanted his name one final time after he'd plodded through the last seven minutes of professional basketball he'd ever play, making one of three shots. Still, his depression didn't keep him from quipping wiseass, as usual: "Now I'm just what America needs - another unemployed black man," he joked.īut, post-surgery, he still couldn't shake the vision of sports' hardest worker, a gallant overachiever, helpless. The injury cut short his farewell tour that night, the onetime bad boy of professional sports sobbed alone in his hotel room, so haunted was he by this final image of himself being carried off the court. Barkley had blown out a knee in December, playing for the Houston Rockets in Philadelphia, where his pro career began in 1984. It was a humbler, portlier, more emotional Charles Barkley who said goodbye to the sport of basketball April 19, the last day of the NBA regular season and the final night of his roundball career, which had spanned 16 riveting, often maddening, always dramatic years.
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