In this article, we are going to look at the phenomenon of Charles Barkley, Hall of Famer, former MVP and current consultant on TNT. During his career, Charles Barkley was as much a special character as an exceptional player. Known as the king of trash-talking, lord of shock phrases and the master of escapades of all kinds, “Chuck” was totally apart. This article is fun to read as his life and story are both interesting and unknown. So let’s explore where nicknames like ‘The Spherical Recoil Mound’ and ‘Sir’ came from, and lots more fun facts!
Charles Barkley: 20 Funny, Scary, Rare Facts That Add To The Uniqueness Of “Sir” Barkley!
1. Known for getting fined:
During Barkley’s eight seasons in a downtown area, he became a household name and was one of the few NBA players to have a figure published by Kenner’s Starter Series toy series. Along with Nike, he had his own signature shoe line. However, his outspoken and aggressive play resulted in some on-court incidents, with a feud with Detroit Pistons center Bill Laimbeer in 1990, resulting in a total fine of $162,500.
Another incident points to March 26, 1991, when Barkley was playing for the 76ers against the New Jersey Networks (now the Brooklyn Nets) in New Jersey, where an audience member began heckling him with racial slurs.
In response, Barkley tried to spit on the person but landed on a little girl. He was later suspended without paying for a game and fined $10,000. Barkley reached out to the girl and apologized to her family. The little girl’s family and Barkley eventually made peace and as their friend, Charles would often send them tickets to the games.
In February 2009, Barkley was sentenced to ten days in prison and fined $2,000 for two issues related to DUI.
2. From Charles Wade Barkley to “Sir”:
Besides being known as “Chuck”, Charles was dubbed “Sir”. The nickname of this basketball player, makes people wonder how the royal nickname came to be. The story goes that Charles Barkley on the defensive end, would play the passing lane for a block or steal to awe-inspiring lengths which demanded full respect and earned him a new nickname: Sir Charles.
3. He is a very outspoken and physical athlete who fought with many:
Shaquille O’Neal and Charles Barkley have been colleagues on TNT for over a decade now, and they never fail to grab attention with their exchanges. Both known to be big troublemakers, they never hesitate to troll each other when the opportunity arises. But hearing them discuss is just as interesting when it comes to tackling serious subjects, around the orange ball. After all, we are talking about two league monuments.
To add to this, Charles Barkley’s career was full of fights: he had a fight with Bill Laimbeer and fell to the ground from the blows he received.
He also had a fight with Shaquille O’Neal, who was close to retirement, and managed to knock him down; He also had a fight with Manute Bol.
4. Born in 1963 to a dad who abandoned him:
Barkley was born and raised in Leeds, Alabama, ten miles from Birmingham. He was the first black baby born in an all-white, isolated city hospital, and was among the first batch of black students at his elementary school. His parents divorced when he was a baby and his father abandoned the family. His mother remarried and had two more sons, Darryl and John Glenn, with his stepfather, who was killed in an accident when Charles was 11.
5. He is one of the best rebounding players in NBA history, despite his short stature of 1.98m:
Despite his 113-pound body, he slammed two-handed dunks to make all dunking experts jealous of his short stature.
He delighted a beloved crowd even back in college, thrilling fans with dunks and hurdles that made him believe he was tall and not overweight. It wasn’t uncommon to visualize heavy Barkley catching a defensive rebound and, instead of passing, swaying the entire length of the court and finishing with a two-handed dunk on the alternate end. His physical size and skills eventually earned him the nickname ‘The Spherical Recoil Mound’.
Throughout his career, he struggles in the middle position despite being shorter than the common center. He became a member of Achromatic’s All-Century team and still has an Auburn record career field goal rate of sixty-two%.
6. Contrary to his custom, he only played basketball for 2 years in high school:
Barkley attended Leeds High School. As a junior, he couldn’t find a spot on the varsity team and was selected into the reserve, partly because of his height (he stood at 5 ft. 10 inches and weighed 220 pounds). However, he grew six inches over the course of one summer and got a start on the varsity team in his senior year. As a senior, he averaged 19.1 points and 17.9 rebounds per game, leading his team to the state semifinals.
Despite his significant improvements, he failed to attract the attention of any scouts. That changed after the state high school semifinals, where he scored 26 points against Butler High’s Bobby Lee Hurt. One of Auburn University head coach Sonny Smith’s assistants was at the game. Deeply impressed, he responded by calling Barkley “a fat man who can play with the wind”.
7. During the 1985-86 season, Barkley’s game greatly improved under Malone’s tutelage:
Barkley and legendary basketball player Moses Malone, who was named three-time MVP, almost developed a protégé-mentor relationship. Malone helped him with his weight issues and taught him how to prepare and condition himself before a game. Under Malone’s tutelage, a young Barkley was able to control his weight and learned to organize and condition properly for a game. He earned a spot on the All-Rookie Team, averaging 14.0 points and eight.6 rebounds per game during the regular season.
He started all 80 games played during the regular season and averaged 20.0 points per game. During the playoff series, Barkley played 12 games and averaged 25 points per game.
8. Successful post-retirement career:
Barkley entered his retirement by surpassing 20,000 points, 10,000 rebounds and 4,000 assists, and he is also the 4th NBA basketball player to pass this threshold.
Barkley has had a successful career as an NBA analyst, since retiring as a player. He works with Turner Network Television (TNT) as a studio specialist to broadcast NBA games with Shaquille O’Neal, Kenny Smith and Ernie Johnson, and is a CDW spokesperson. In addition, as a politician, he wrote many books and showed interest in politics; He declared in October 2008 that he would run for Governor of Alabama in 2014, but changed his mind in 2010.
9. He is among the best players to have never won a championship in the NBA:
Considered one of the most controversial, outspoken and dominating players in basketball history, Barkley is among the game’s few true legends who have never won an NBA championship.
Throughout his career, he was of the view that athletes should not be seen as role models. He has repeatedly told parents and teachers that they should be role models instead of looking after them to raise their children.
10. He was named NBA MVP only in 1993 during his career:
In the 1989-90 season, despite receiving a large number of first-place votes, Barkley finished second to Los Angeles Lakers’ Magic Johnson in the MVP voting. Barkley was also given the acclaimed title of Player of the Year by The Sporting News and Basketball Weekly.
11. Charles Barkley admits he played a match when he was drunk:
Since Charles Barkley’s life is full of vibrant and sulfurous stories and anecdotes, this anecdote about his career is not likely to change his reputation.
While playing for the Sixers, he received a call from his agent for an announcement that was about to give his career a whole new meaning. I got a call from my agent one morning, and he said, “I think we have a deal, you’re going to the Lakers.” I was so excited, so me and two of my friends went out to celebrate. We started getting drunk in the middle of the day. My agent called me back like three hours later. He said to me “The Sixers have retired”. We had a game that night. I don’t remember anything from that game. Already, I was so pissed off, but I was drunk too. I have no idea what happened in that game.
Unfortunately, Charles Barkley no longer remembers which match it was. It would have been interesting to see the match sheet of this famous meeting. The only memory the former Sixers player has is that it all happened in the late 80s, which doesn’t really help us. Perhaps it was the 1987-88 season when the Sixers struggled and missed the playoffs. We can possibly imagine that they had tried to change the face of the team by exchanging a major player. But these are just guesses. In any case, it was reluctantly that the Hall Of Famer stayed in Philadelphia after this episode.
“I don’t remember many of my games, but that day we were so excited that I was leaving Philadelphia. And I was devastated, I’m not going to lie. We were sending shots and everything”.
After a few dead-end drinks, Barkley therefore had to resolve to play the same evening, when he was totally drunk – something out of the ordinary and completely unimaginable today. And when Jimmy Kimmel asks him if that’s the only time he’s played while drunk, Sir Charles’ response is succinct: No.
We get a glimpse into the early life of Barkley at the Lakers in the late 80s. Which means that he could have possibly played alongside Magic Johnson, James Worthy, or even a late-career Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
12. Charles Barkley was on Shark Tank:
Shark Tank is a business-related reality TV series about the basics, which premiered on August nine, 2009. The show is the franchise of the international format Dragons’ Den, which originated in Japan in 2001. It shows promising entrepreneurs putting on business shows to a panel of 5 investors or ‘sharks’, choosing whether to speculate as business partners in their company.
The series was a ratings success in its range, winning the Primetime Award for Outstanding Structured Reality Programming four times (from 2014 to 2017) in the four years that category has existed. Prior to that (2012 – 2013), the show won the Outstanding Reality Program.
When he isn’t announcing NBA games, Mr. Barkley is an investor and businessman. Charles Barkley joined Mark, Kevin, Lori and Robert in the panel as a guest Shark in Shark Tank episode 1004 evaluating four new businesses as hopeful entrepreneurs plead their case in the Tank.
13. The Olympics and Angolan funny business revealed Charles’s true nature:
Charles Barkley, as we all know, in addition to being one of the best players in the history of the NBA, is also a very interesting character. When his problematic structure combined with his pointed tongue, his participation in the Dream Team was met with question marks by some. For example, Barkley did not behave well in the Dream Team. He never shied away from speaking to the press. For example, his first rivals commented on Angola: “I don’t know anything about Angola, but Angola is in trouble”. When asked if America’s previous defeats at the Olympics bothered him; “At that time, I was just thinking about doing my homework in kindergarten,” Charles replied. Of course, Barkley’s interests were not limited to off-field.
However, as we said, Charles Barkley’s incredible talents are enough to make him one of the best names in the NBA ever. The United States’ first game at the Olympics was against Angola. The better the United States, the worse Angola was. The result of the match, 116-48, was not surprising. However, the event that marked the match was not the fantastic play of the Dream Team, but instead the tension Barkley was involved in.
What had happened was that Barkley had managed to get him in trouble even in a casual match that felt like a show game. The star player claimed that the Angolan players elbowed him in several positions and complained to the referees about the issue, but he did not get the whistles he expected. As a result, he made a worthy decision and decided to cut the sentence himself. After hitting the basket in one position, Herlander elbowed Coimbra hard and committed an unsportsmanlike foul. This fueled the image of “Ugly America” and turned the arrows of criticism towards the Dream Team.
Compared to the Angolan team, the American team was guarded by strict security measures, and thousands of people were waiting for them wherever they went. Heavily guarded, they appeared not often. Except for one person: Charles Barkley! Who decided to tackle the problem in his own way: The star player became one of the most visible names of all Olympics. He took walks in the squares, attended parties, toured the city, and thousands of people accompanied him while doing this. Barkley had not forgotten the problem he had in the first game. So much so that he found Angolan players in the Olympic village and took them all out for a drink to hang out!
14. Charles Barkley was cut from his college team:
Hall of Famer and Rebound machine legend Barkley did not find a place for himself in the team during his first and subsequent years in college.
Barkley opposed college basketball in the achromatic sport for 3 seasons. Although he struggled to regulate his weight, he excelled as a player and made the SEC diode on rebounds every year.
He was named Southeastern Conference (SEC) Player of the Year (1984), 3 All-SEC choices, and a Second Team All-American selection, among various other awards. Subsequently, Barkley was named the 80s SEC Player of the last decade by the Birmingham Post-Herald.
In Barkley’s three-year faculty career, he averaged fourteen.8 points per game, with sixty-eight% shooting, 9.6 rebounds, 1.6 assists and 1.7 blocks per game. In 1984, he led the Tigers to the first NCAA Tournament in school history, finishing with 80% shooting, 17 rebounds, 4 assists, 2 steals and 23 points in 2 blocks. Auburn retired Barkley’s number 34 jersey on March 3, 2001.
In typical Barkley fashion, he admitted that during his career in achromatic in 2010, he asked sports representatives for cash and was given money. Barkley described the sums he demanded from agents as ‘coins’ and said, ‘Why can’t an agent lend me some money and I’ll pay it back when I graduate?’
Barkley paid back all the money he borrowed after signing his first NBA contract. So yes, Charles Barkley did not play the senior season for Auburn. Instead, he prepared himself for the 1984 NBA draft.
15. But at the age of 19, he was drafted 5th by the Philadelphia 76ers in 1984:
Barkley left before his final year in college, qualifying himself for the 1984 NBA draft. When the Chicago Bulls drafted Michael Jordan, Charles was drafted by the 76ers with the fifth pick and he joined a veteran team that included players Julius Winfield Erving, Moses Malone, and Maurice Cheeks that led Philadelphia to the 1983 NBA championship.
He was the Sixers’ starting force and helped his team make it to the playoffs, averaging twenty-five, 0 points and 15.8 rebounds per game on 0.578 shots from the field. In his second year, Barkley improved his game under Moses Malone’s leadership throughout the season alongside his practice, becoming the team’s leading rebounder and #2 goalscorer, averaging 20.0 points and twelve.8 rebounds per game.
In the end, the Philadelphia 76ers selected him as their fifth pick in the first round. The 76ers have had a mostly veteran team this season. While they won the 1983 World Series, they performed poorly in the 1983-84 season.
In his first season in professional basketball, Barkley played 82 games, started 60, and averaged 14.0 points per game. The 76ers made it into the playoffs where Barkley played in 13 games, starting two of them and averaging 14.9 points per game. Although they were eventually defeated by the Milwaukee Bucks in the Eastern Conference Semifinals, Barkley’s performance earned him a spot in the All-NBA Second Team.
At the start of the 1986-87 season, the 76ers traded Malone to the Washington Bullets, which meant Barkley had to step in as the team’s leader on the court, something he did very well.
In his third season with the 76ers, he played 68 games, 62 of which started, averaging 23.0 points and 14.6 rebounds per game. He appeared in five games in the playoffs and averaged 24.6 points per game. This was also his first season for the NBA All-Star team.
At the start of the following season, Julius Erving retired and took the position of Barkley 76ers’ new franchise player. On November 30, 1988, he became the first player in league history to record 40 points, 20 rebounds, five assists and five steals while scoring 41 points, 22 rebounds, five assists and six points. He stole in a 114-106 win against the Portland Trail Blazers.
16. Despite his most successful debut with the Philadelphia 76ers, he wore the Phoenix Suns jersey in 1992:
Barkley continued his career with the 76ers until the 1991-92 season. When Jeff Hornacek was traded to the Phoenix Suns in exchange for Tim Perry and Andrew Lang, he had become a household name across the country and built himself an astounding legacy, but the best years of his basketball career were yet to come, as future events would prove.
He was named the league’s most respected Player with the Phoenix Suns in 1993, and was named one of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA History on the NBA’s 50th commemoration day.
In his first game with the Suns, Barkley nearly recorded a triple-double after racking up 37 points, 21 rebounds (including 12 offensive rebounds) and 8 assists in a 111-105 win over the Los Angeles Clippers. He averaged 25.6 points, 12.2 rebounds and a career-high 5.1 assists per game, which led the Suns to a 62-20 record. For his efforts, Barkley won league MVP and was selected to play in his seventh consecutive All-Star Game. He even led Phoenix to their first NBA Finals appearance since 1976. Despite Barkley’s proclamation to Michael Jordan that the Suns were “destined” to win the title in the 1993 Finals, they were defeated in six games by the Chicago Bulls.
He averaged 26.6 points and 13.6 rebounds per game throughout the playoffs campaign, including 27.3 points, 13.0 rebounds and 5.5 assists per game throughout the NBA Finals. In Game 4 of the Finals, Barkley recorded a triple-double after scoring 32 points, 12 rebounds and 10 assists.
The 1995–96 season was Barkley’s last with the Suns. He led the team in scoring, rebounds and steals, averaging 23.3 points, 11.6 rebounds and a career-best 77.7 percent free throw. He appeared in his 10th straight All-Star Game, earning the most votes among Western Conference players and earned his 18th career triple-double on November 22, 1995. He also became the 10th player in NBA history to reach 20,000 points and 10,000 career rebounds. In the playoffs, Barkley is averaging 25.5 points and 13.5 rebounds per game in a four-game first-round loss to the San Antonio Spurs. After the Suns finished the season with a 41-41 record and a first-round playoff loss, Barkley was traded to the Houston Rockets in exchange for Sam Cassell, Robert Horry, Mark Bryant and Chucky Brown.
During his career with the Suns, Barkley excelled, being selected to an All-NBA Team and an All-Star Game selection in each of his four seasons.
17. He played in the Houston Rockets squad from 1996:
He would play three more seasons for the Suns before being traded to the Houston Rockets in 1996. His first season with the Rockets did not go well as he constantly dealt with injuries. Season two was not much different. Despite this, he continued to play well and led his team to the play-offs. This was his last postseason appearance.
18. After 2000, he decided to end his career, almost went into politics:
Barkley has spoken for many years about his affiliation with the Republican Party. In 1995, he considered running as a Republican candidate for governor of Alabama in the 1998 election. In an interview with Brandon Robinson on the Scoop B Radio podcast, Barkley said if he ever ruled the world he would get rid of both Republicans and Democrats because “they’re both awful,” adding, “They fight all the time like little children.”
Barkley lent credence to the idea of running for governor of Alabama at a July 2006 meeting of the Southern Regional Conference of the National School Boards Association in Florida.
In September 2006, Barkley again reiterated his desire to run for governor. “I can’t run until 2014…I have to live there for seven years, so I’m looking for a house there right now.
In July 2007, he made a video showing his support for Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election. By contrast, Barkley is also known as a critic of President Donald Trump, dating back to his Republican nomination in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. promoted throughout the presidential race.
In September 2017, when President Trump called out former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick for kneeling during the United States national anthem during the 2016 NFL season, Barkley expressed his disappointment with President Trump (although Barkley has stated that he does not fully support athletes who kneel during the national anthem in protest). In December 2017, Barkley mocked President Trump’s tax bill, which he called pro-rich.
Barkley supported Democrat Doug Jones in the United States Senate election in Alabama in 2017. During the Alabama Senate election, Barkley noted that Jones’ competitor Roy Moore was an embarrassment to the state.
19. He would almost run for governor:
In September 2007, during a broadcast, Barkley announced that he had bought a house in Alabama to meet residency requirements for a 2014 gubernatorial campaign. Moreover, Barkley declared himself an independent and not a Democrat.
In February 2008, Mr. Barkley announced that he would run for governor of Alabama in 2014 as an independent. On October 27, 2008, he officially announced his candidacy for governor in an interview with CNN, saying he intended to run in the 2014 election, but began to back down on that idea in an interview. granted on November 24, 2009 at the Jay Leno Show. In 2010, he confirmed that he would not run in 2014.
The next year in August 2015, Barkley announced his support for the 2016 presidential election representative: Republican John Kasich.
Barkley is a strong advocate for gay rights. In 2006, he told Fox Sports, “I’m a huge advocate for gay marriage. If they want to get married, God bless them”.
20. Met his future wife in a restaurant:
Charles Barkley met his future wife, Maureen Blumhardt, at a City Avenue Restaurant in the 1980s. At the time, she was a part-time model in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, as well as a legal assistant for a nonprofit. They married in 1989 and their daughter, Christiana, was born the same year.
Very Interesting Quotes By Charles Barkley:
I got some cash from agents. I spoke with the NCAA. I think this should be legal. I want some money too; Everyone is making money. I want to go on appointments. I want to buy myself a new suit. I want to buy myself a new sneaker and I have paid it back to the agents.
When the situation really is the rich versus the poor, everyone wants to talk about black and white.
My perspective on this will never change… We have to do a much better job of taking care of poor people because you can’t put all the poor in bad neighborhoods, send them to bad schools and say, ‘Good luck alive. ‘This is not true.
Neither side is doing anything for poor people. Both are full of it. Black people have voted as Democrats all their lives and are still poor. Republicans also do nothing for poor people.
Charles Barkley: Most Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Charles Barkley?
Charles Barkley is a retired American professional basketball player who is currently an analyst at Inside the NBA. He established himself as one of the most dominant forwards in the National Basketball Association. He was selected by the Philadelphia 76ers as a junior with the 5th pick of the 1984 NBA draft. A DNA test read by George Lopez on Lopez Tonight revealed that Charles Barkley was of 14% Native American, 11% European, and 75% African descent. He almost ran for governor of Alabama!
How old is Charles Barkley?
As Charles Barkley was born on February 20, 1963, as of 2022, he is 59 years old.
How tall is Charles Barkley?
Barkley stands at an average height of 6 feet and 4 inches. He said that many described him as aesthetically deficient because he had his socks pulled up to his knees on the field.
Is Charles Barkley married?
In terms of his love life, he was officially engaged to Maureen Blumhardt in 1989. Christiana Barkley, their daughter was born the same year.
How much is Charles Barkley worth?
The NBA legend has an approximate net worth of $40 million thanks to his leading role in the sports industry.
How much does Charles Barkley earn?
Barkley used to earn a salary of $1.5 million and owns property worth $2.2 Million in addition to getting endorsement salaries from Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Nike, Right Guard, T-Mobile
Where does Charles Barkley live?
For security reasons, he did not share his exact place of residence.
Is Charles Barkley dead or alive?
Barkley is alive and well. There were no reports of being sick or having any health-related problems.
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