The TV lights clicked on, the tapes rolled. Barkley eyed the reporters—his muses, his foils—and announced he had just 15 minutes. Then he held court for nearly an hour. Charles, as usual, was in charge. A sampler:
On what he learned from watching professional golfers at the Phoenix Open: "To work on the jumper—I get paid better."
On being fouled: "I told [the referee], 'I know women that don't hold me that tight.' "
On his seats for the Super Bowl: "They're at the 50-yard line. Where else? I'm a star."
For once, Barkley, 30, a featured attraction in the NBA all-star game on Sunday, Feb. 21, was being modest. He is more than a star. He's an event. Though not the best player in basketball (guess who that is?)—he is without peer as the game's No. 1 bad boy—currently featured slam-dunking over Godzilla in the Nike TV commercial.
An apparently movable feast, Barkley was traded to the Phoenix Suns last summer after eight dyspeptic years with the Philadelphia 76ers. Barkley made the NBA all-star team six times, but the low-light film of his Philly tenure would have to include the following footage: Charles punching Detroit's Bill Laimbeer—himself a notorious provocateur; Charles throwing Gatorade on fans in Milwaukee; Charles calling his Sixer teammates "wimps."
Undaunted, the Suns gave up three starters to get him. So far, he has been worth it. With Barkley in the lineup, Phoenix, a perennial also-ran, sports a 34-9 record—tops in the NBA. "Charles has an intense desire to win," explains Suns coach Paul Westphal, "and he doesn't respect anyone who doesn't. If you play hard, you'll never have any problem with Charles."
Growing up in Leeds, Via. (pop. 8,000), Barkley turned to basketball early on to solve emerging problems of his own. Charles, whose father, Frank, left home when he was an infant, was reared, along with two younger brothers, in a one-bedroom apartment by his mother, Charcey Glenn, and his maternal grandmother, Johnnie Mae Gaither. Charcey cleaned homes and worked in a school cafeteria; Johnnie Mae was a meat packer. "They don't let me forget where I'm from," he says.
As a teenager, Barkley's energies were not focused on basketball. He especially remembers one night—he was about 15—when police were chasing him and his buddies toward the woods. "A cop said, 'Freeze!' But we didn't freeze. We just started crawling on our hands and knees through the woods. I ran into a damn tree. That's when I said, 'There's got to be a better way.' That's when I started playing basketball."
A star at Auburn University, Charles, who tops out at 6'5". lipped in at anywhere from 259 to 310 lbs. He was celebrated as much for his improbable shape as his ferocious drive to the basket. "Boy Gorge" was just one of the nicknames he acquired. But "Round Mound of Rebound" was the one that followed him to the NBA in 1984.
Barkley blames the press for the Ugly American flak that followed his vicious elbowing of a rail-thin Angolan during a game at the Barcelona Olympics last summer. "Gimme a break," he says when asked about the episode. He believes he was just playing the game the way it's meant to be played—hard. "That's why you don't worry," he says, "about what other people think of you."
In Phoenix, meanwhile, not exactly a hotbed of Angolan sympathizers, fans think highly of Barkley. Three games into the season, he had to start parking his Mercedes inside the arena after he was mobbed by admirers while hoofing it through the players' entrance. Barkley's teammates are smitten with him as well. They especially admire his way with children. "I have four kids and they love Charles," says guard Danny Ainge. "They have posters of him in their rooms. Charles remembers their names, kids around with them."
Guarded about his private life, Barkley, who has reunited with his father, won't talk about his rumored separation from Maureen, his wife of four years, who still lives in Philadelphia. But there is no shutting him up about his 3-year-old daughter, Christiana. "She's the greatest thing in my life," he says. "She and my wife have come out to Phoenix a few times. But we have a pact: I can call her every day. It's important to me to be a great father."
Can it be that the NBA's premier intimidator is soft on children? The truth is Barkley has made a habit of visiting kids in hospitals in Philadelphia and Phoenix, with only one stipulation—no publicity. "I don't want TV cameras showing me doing that," he says, "so people can sit around at home and say I'm a nice guy." Not a chance, Charles, not a chance.
WILLIAM PLUMMER
LORENZO BENET in Phoenix
- Contributors:
- Lorenzo Benet.
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