Editor’s note: This Playboy Interview with Charles Barkley was originally published in the May 1993 issue of Playboy. It been slightly edited from its original format.
Charles Barkley is a human party. He lives in Hotel Barkley—that’s what his wife, Maureen, calls their home. He answers the door himself; usually in a sweatsuit, holding a putter, inviting everybody to come inside to join in his favorite parlor game: What will I do next?
“I love to play basketball. I love to have fun. And I love to say what’s on my mind,” he says. Every day, he makes sure he hits the trifecta.
When you’re in Barkley’s presence, he dominates the horizon. From his shaved head to his wide grin or profound scowl, he’s a one-man weather system, always moving fast and changing configuration, like a sky full of clouds. Will he let the sun shine through or cloud up and rain?
The power of the power forward’s appeal is that, as much as any athlete in the world, this Phoenix Sun might do anything. And has. If it costs him $40,000 to speak his mind about a referee, he thinks nothing of it. If he feels that a teammate should be knocked down in practice to test his toughness, so be it. He once ordered his NBA coach to take a player out of the game. Of course, his nicknames for that coach and his assistant were “Little Knucklehead” and “Big Knucklehead.”
In Barcelona, the U.S. Olympic Committee begged him to tone down his comments so the whole world wouldn’t end up hating both him and the U.S. After Barkley belted a skinny Angolan player, he quipped, “The guy probably hadn’t eaten in a few weeks.” Instead of apologizing, Barkley told the USOC to stop acting jealous; he added that America should be proud of the Dream Team, since making war and playing basketball were what the United States does best. For this, and more, he was called an ugly American. Yet Barkley spent more time in the outdoor cafés along Las Ramblas, hobnobbing with the common folks, than all the other Dreamers put together.
He’s been arrested and cleared on a gun charge, accidentally spit in a little girl’s face, punched Bill Laimbeer (fine: $20,000—you would think they’d have given him a reward) and spent four hours in jail after an altercation with a heckler. He says he has a new plan for the next guy in a bar who calls him “nigger.” Provoke the bum into throwing the first punch so he can’t be sued, then break the guy’s face. But not with his shooting hand.
On the court, Barkley is equally unpredictable. Nobody can control him. He and 76ers teammate Rick Mahorn used to get ready to play by butting heads, but they did it without helmets. He’ll post up 7’1″ David Robinson and score in his face, spinning, faking, leaping and, probably, dunking—something he’s done more over the last three years than any other NBA player. Or Barkley will run the break, dribble between his legs or pass behind his back. And he loves to stick the trey, too. Usually, he bricks it. Except in the last five minutes of a game.“Can’t nobody on the planet guard me,” he likes to say. “If I were seven feet tall, I’d be illegal in three states.” Will anybody his size ever be so great a rebounder again? Barkley has an opinion: “Never be another. Ever. Ever.”
A man who stands 6’4¾” tall, and whose muscular development is not radically different from dozens of other players, should not be able to play an inside power game for an undersized team and still be the only man in the NBA who is in the top five in both scoring and rebounding. Others come to play. Barkley comes to declare war. “I beat on people. I intimidate people. I’ll endure more pain than they will. That’s a big part of my game,” he says.
Of pesky guards who try to undercut him to draw a charge, the 252-pound Barkley says, “None of them has ever tried to do it twice. I punish them. I drive my knee into their chest. I land on them. Luckily, I’ve never actually hurt anybody. But when they finally get up, they usually can’t speak. Well, “actually, one little guard whispered, ‘I won’t do that again, Charles.'”
Barkley is a powder keg, as well as a 26-point, 13-rebound power forward. He’s a truth-teller as well as a court jester. The roots of his humor, his anger, his ambition and his wisdom go back to the projects of Leeds, Alabama, where he was raised by his mother and grandmother. Growing up fatherless, he was the man of the family. He was always the one who picked up the family pieces, like when one of his younger brothers had a stroke after using cocaine. Barkley’s mother was a maid, but he swore from early childhood that he’d “be somebody special.”
And he was. At Auburn, given access to a training table and the phone number of an all-night pizza parlor, he gained 100 pounds and led the Southeastern Conference in rebounding all three years. Nicknamed the Round Mound of Rebound and Boy Gorge, he came to the NBA in 1984 as a curiosity and a project. But he dropped 50 pounds and came under the tutelage of Julius Erving and Moses Malone, and he soon transformed himself into the Square Bear of Mid-Air. Since arriving in the NBA, he has been the league’s second leading offensive rebounder, averaged 23.5 points and made seven All-Star teams.
However, as a folk hero and lightning rod for controversy, Barkley has exploded in the past year. On the Dream Team, he outshone everyone, including Jordan, showing the world that basketball could be ferocious as well as stratospheric and balletic. Back in the U.S., he discovered a second NBA life after a trade from the grouchy, moribund Philadelphia 76ers to the Suns. To get Barkley, the Suns gave what was widely considered a suicidal price—their 20 point All-Star shooting guard, their starting power forward and a 6’11” center who was one of the league’s better shot blockers.
Would the Suns, who were 53-29 last season, become Charles and the four dwarfs? Hardly. At midseason the Suns had the NBA’s best record. With Barkley at various times playing each of the three front-court positions in the Suns’ four-guards-and-Charles pressure defense, Phoenix has become the talk of the sport and a possible postseason favorite.
To interview Barkley, PLAYBOY sent Tom Boswell, sportswriter and columnist for The Washington Post for 24 years, as well as an occasional profile writer for PLAYBOY. Boswell reports:
“Many superstar athletes like to hide or whine, especially those famous enough to take Godzilla to the rack. Barkley, however, hides nothing. He’s turned in-your-face into a lifestyle. He says what he wants. He invents his own code of conduct. And he invites you to inspect his whole life.
“Subjects for the Playboy Interview are legendary for being reclusive or difficult or self-important. To Barkley, it’s just another kind of fun. He picks you up when you get off the train and plays chauffeur. He gets you another drink and asks which football game you want to watch while you talk in his den. You ask for 90 minutes, he gives you three hours until you run out of tapes. You ask for another hour in another city and he gives you the whole day, takes you everywhere, even lets you hear the women propositioning him on his hotel voice-mail. When he finds out you have the same golf handicap, he wants to set up a game so he can beat you.
“You interview him while he’s in the whirlpool. You interview him while he interviews Shaquille O’Neal. You interview between gigantic bites of greasy food. You interview him while his drop-dead-beautiful wife walks around in short shorts and heels. When you leave something behind at his house and ask the first taxi driver you meet to help you find Charles Barkley’s house, the guy says, ‘Everybody knows where Charles lives.’ And he takes you right to the door.
“Most of all, this is how Barkley dispenses his worldview. You go to his hotel room before a night game in Orlando. You ask him everything you can print and a couple things you figure he shouldn’t have told you, so you won’t print them because they’re nobody’s business. He turns on his beloved soap operas. You help him make the bed and arrange everything in the room so it’s in perfect order. The guy’s a freak for order and you know he won’t do anything until that bed is made.
“A knock on the door. Three tailors—two men, one woman, all young and hip and dressed to die—enter. They’ve flown a thousand miles for a fitting. Today, it’s pants. They brief him on the style they’d like for him. ‘I’ll take six pairs,’ he says. The tailors stay and join the interview.“Another knock on the door. A tall, attractive masseuse enters. Barkley starts to strip. The woman tailor leaves. The guys stay. This they have to see. She joins a Playboy Interview that is about as large as the McLaughlin Group. She hands out her card and says she wishes to be identified as a massage therapist because she doesn’t do that other stuff. She’s rubbed some NBA legs, she says, but none like Barkley’s. ‘Charles’ thighs are as big as Stanley Roberts’,’ she says of the L.A. Clippers 7′, 285-pound center. ‘But Stanley’s are like mush. Charles’ legs are like rock.’
“The two tailors look at Barkley, look at the woman and exchange a glance that clearly says this man’s life is one continuous possibility they can’t even imagine.
“Slowly, Barkley puts on his game face. He wants to get mad at Shaquille O’Neal, but he can’t. ‘He’s a nice kid. Polite, respectful, like I was when I came into the league. Not like Alonzo Mourning. I played him two nights ago. All he did was beat on me, kick my ass all night and motherfuck me to my face every time I tried to say something nice to him. He’s got the worst attitude I ever saw in a rookie.’
“Barkley laughs wickedly. ‘Alonzo’s going to be great. I love his game.’
“In a few hours, Barkley must meet a different man in the paint. One who is eight inches taller, 50 pounds bigger and nine years younger than he. But Barkley expects to kick the Shaq’s butt and lead his team to victory.
“You can look it up. He did.”
Scene: Barkley’s living room in an exclusive Philadelphia suburb. You enter his development through a security gate past an armed guard who sits in a stone turret. Barkley is in the final stages of preparation for his move to Phoenix. Boxes, many full and ready to ship, are everywhere. This disarray drives Barkley crazy. As he sits down for the interview, Barkley shouts to his wife, “Did any of my friends call to bet on the game today?” It was just a head fake.
PLAYBOY: Things are in a moving-day shambles here. How does it feel to be starting over?
BARKLEY: Well, there is some sadness. I’ve been here eight years. This is all I know. Now I’m going into the unknown.
PLAYBOY: You weren’t exactly happy here, especially the past few years. Is there anything that you’ll miss?
BARKLEY: The worst is missing your friends. People in the Sixers organization, people in the restaurants, the fans who see every game. Otherwise, the negatives aren’t that bad. The only negative is losing. I played here for eight years and we lost only two years. Other than that, the eight years have been great.
PLAYBOY: Philly fans are pretty tough.
BARKLEY: Actually, they’ve always been good to me. If you go out and try hard, they’re going to like you. If you don’t, they don’t. I worked hard and that endeared me to them.
PLAYBOY: You must have some regrets.
BARKLEY: It’s hard sometimes. Last year guys were saying they would have done better than me if they got the ball as much as I did. Guys were saying I was holding them back.
PLAYBOY: Are we finding out the truth about that now? Look at the Sixers’ record.
BARKLEY: Yeah, that frustrated me. Hersey Hawkins said I was holding him back. He was an All-Star with me. Armon Gilliam said he didn’t get a chance to show his real game. I told him, “You’ve been on three teams. I wasn’t on the other two teams, and they traded you.” Nobody ever had a problem with my game until last year, and I blame the Sixers for that. The Sixers should have just come out and said, “Listen, Charles is the only player we have with any trade value, that’s why we’ll trade him,” instead of saying that Charles is causing all these problems.
PLAYBOY: Did the fans here give Moses Malone his due? Nobody worked harder than Moses.
BARKLEY: I don’t think he was ever loved. Because they’re not as nice to guys who are their own individuals. They want you to stay in your place. That’s unfair. We all have opinions and we’re all individuals. Just because you say something doesn’t make it controversial, and it doesn’t make you a bad person. We’re not all supposed to think alike. But they want you to stay in your place before they give you their full love.
PLAYBOY: Can we talk about Harold Katz, the owner of the Sixers?
BARKLEY: Oh, Jesus.
PLAYBOY: What do you think of the guy?
BARKLEY: Well, he’s just a great businessman. The biggest problem I have with him is that he treated everything as strictly business. There was no personal relationship with the players. If I were an owner I could see that. But as a player it wasn’t right. Because we’re not business. We’re not property, we’re not meat. We’re people.
PLAYBOY: Katz’ locker-room tirades were infamous. Was that destructive?
BARKLEY: Yeah. That’s hard. You can’t treat people like that. You can’t shake somebody’s hand if he wins and curse him out if he plays bad. That’s too much of an emotional swing.PLAYBOY: Do you rein yourself in for the press or the public?
BARKLEY: A lot of guys are different in private than they are in public. They say stuff to get reactions from the fans or the media. That’s not my style. I don’t have to lie, or say something and not really say anything. I don’t think that’s the way it should be done. You ask me a question, I’ll tell you the truth. If you like my answer, that’s great. If you don’t, I’m still entitled to my opinion.
PLAYBOY: You have done things in moments of anger—such as the time you spit at a fan who was heckling you and hit a little girl instead—that seemed crazy or mean.
BARKLEY: Other than the spitting incident—I did apologize for that—I don’t apologize for anything I’ve said or done. I’m always blunt. I feel that white people are treated better than Blacks. I think the rich are treated better than the poor. And I think men are treated better than women. The press gets on my case a lot because I say stuff like that. But other than the spitting incident, I don’t really think I’ve done anything wrong.
PLAYBOY: You’ve been a champion of fat people, too.
BARKLEY: That’s true. People don’t want to hear the truth. Fat people are discriminated against. That’s just human nature. Stereotypes abound. Like all Black people are hoodlums, all Jewish people are crooks. That’s totally not true. What’s even worse, it’s considered all right that people think that way. Marge Schott can say “money-grubbing Jews” or “million-dollar niggers,” because that’s the society we live in. People say it’s freedom of speech. That’s not freedom of speech. Any woman who has that much power isn’t going to hire Blacks or Jews. That ain’t the worst part about it. The worst thing is that she may go and kiss up to them. When the Reds won the World Series, she was drinking champagne with the brothers and calling them million-dollar niggers behind their backs. I have more respect for the Klan, because when they call you nigger they don’t sit there and drink with you.
PLAYBOY: In Leeds, Alabama, where you grew up, were people judged on their merits?
BARKLEY: No, you were judged on your race in Leeds. I have to give credit to my mother and grandmother and my best friend in the world, Joseph Mock. Those three people always kept my head level as far as race was concerned. My mother and grandmother said, “Listen, all white people are not bad.” They kept stressing that. A lot of white people helped us make it, because my mother and grandmother were maids.
PLAYBOY: But most people aren’t as open-minded as your mother and grandmother.
BARKLEY: I blame the media for a lot of our problems. They don’t usually tell the truth. They got the majority of white people thinking Black people are bad, and they got the majority of Black people thinking white people are bad. I don’t believe that. The truth is, we’re all the same. But the negative stuff sells papers and TV shows. Instead of always doing stories about who gets mugged and killed by somebody of the opposite race or saying that all Black people are on welfare or all white people are in the Klan, they can be a little more realistic in their reporting.
PLAYBOY: You grew up in the Deep South, in the projects, but you went to a school that was mostly white. What was that like?
BARKLEY: It was good for me. It gave me a chance to experience more. The educational system was better at the white school. It gave me a chance to interact with nice white people. When you’re a kid, you don’t think racist. When you grow up, that’s when you become racist. Some knucklehead teaches you to be racist. You can’t look at all white people and say, “I don’t like them.” You can’t say, “Well, I like all Blacks.” There are Black people I don’t want to be around, and there are white people I don’t want to be around.
PLAYBOY: Do you think people cry racism when they can’t get the job done on their own?
BARKLEY: A lot of people use racism as a crutch. I’d be the first to admit that a lot of Black people use that for their failures. No white person in this world can stop me from being successful if I want to be successful. I believe that. No Black person could stop me from being successful, either. I don’t think it’s fair to blame all Black America’s problems on white America. Because we do a lot of stuff to ourselves. I saw a very disturbing statistic. More than seventy percent of crimes against Black people are committed by other Black people.
PLAYBOY: Is there any way around that frustration?
BARKLEY: It doesn’t help to get mad at the world. I’m not ever going to be jealous of somebody else’s success. If a Black person wants to open up a business, he can. I don’t think it’s fair to get mad at people from another culture for being successful in your culture. We have that same opportunity. If we were going to put in something, we should have put it there before.
PLAYBOY: And how do you handle racial slurs?
BARKLEY: I can’t take them.
PLAYBOY: Does that make you a target for anybody who is obnoxious enough?
BARKLEY: No, that’s just going to make my right hand sore from hitting people. I don’t mind. I just have to get better at provoking them. I’ve got to make them hit me first, so they can’t sue me. They don’t pay me enough money to let people call me any name in the book.
PLAYBOY: When I was reading up on you, the thing that worried me was that you have a gun in your car. Are you the kind of person who should carry a gun?
BARKLEY: Let me ask you a question. I’ve had my gun in my car for, let’s see, nine years. You’ve heard about it only once. If I was a maniac or a crazy person, don’t you think you would have heard about it more than once?
PLAYBOY: It’s argued that your chances of getting killed with your own gun are much greater than your chances of getting killed with anybody else’s gun.
BARKLEY: We live in a dangerous society. People are so sick in this world. With the car jacking going on, I feel safer with my gun. People know I’m Charles Barkley and I’m going to have money on me. I’m not the statistic. What about the statistics that say some small kid from Alabama isn’t going to make it to the NBA? You can’t compare yourself to a statistic. You have to be better than a statistic.
PLAYBOY: The stats say you’re more likely to be killed with your own gun by accident, or in a domestic argument or by your kid, who doesn’t know what he’s playing with, than by an intruder. People get depressed and kill themselves.
BARKLEY: I won’t kill myself. I’m one of my favorite people.
PLAYBOY: When people draw you into fights with racial slurs, are they doing it so they can sue you?
BARKLEY: No, people use those words because they’re racist. That’s what they’ve been taught. We’re taught racism in this country. I have to stand up for myself. I didn’t get where I am now by backing down and letting things stop me.
PLAYBOY: On occasion, you’ve been accused of being racist. Remember the Dave Hoppen incident last season?
BARKLEY: The Sixers were down to fourteen or fifteen players in training camp and somebody asked me, “Do you think they’ll cut Dave Hoppen?” I said, “I don’t know. But if they cut Dave Hoppen, some people will be upset because we’ll have an all-Black team.” End of quotation. Well, in no way did I say Dave Hoppen was on the team only because he was white. Or a token. I was really offended by the way the media made me out to be a racist. Because, as a Black person, I am never going to be a racist. I know how it feels to be treated that way. I will never treat another person that way. Never.
PLAYBOY: You hold your opinions strongly. Do you fall into the trap of thinking that everything you believe is absolute truth?
BARKLEY: Well, as far as racism and sexism go, I’m flat-out right. There’s no in-between. I’m not fooling myself that I’m the smartest person in the world. But on those two things I am a hundred percent positive that I am right. I think the majority of people in the world will agree with me. My opinions are just as important as everybody else’s.
PLAYBOY: People are fascinated by public figures who say what they think.
BARKLEY: It is more important to talk about things like that than it is to play basketball. That stuff is a lot more significant than going out and getting twenty points.
PLAYBOY: There are some quotes that live on. After Bobby Knight left you off the 1984 Olympic team, you said, “I hate the son of a bitch.” Do you still feel that way?
BARKLEY: No, not at all. I love Bobby Knight. I like the way he coaches. But, honestly, has he done things wrong? Yes. Have I done things wrong? Yes. But, on the whole, the guy is a great basketball coach. I didn’t deserve to make that Olympic team. I didn’t want to and didn’t care about it.
PLAYBOY: Does it bother you that that’s one quote you’re remembered for?
BARKLEY: You know, with most of the stuff I’ve said, I was just trying to have fun. Everybody laughs, and then they put it in the paper and it doesn’t sound funny. That’s one thing that makes me mad about the media. The reporters know you’re joking, and then they print it. The night I said, “That’s the kind of game that makes you want to go home and beat your wife and kids,” everybody started laughing. When I read it in the paper the next day, I could see why people were offended by it. I don’t think of myself as giving interviews. I just have conversations. That gets me in trouble.
PLAYBOY: At the Olympics you said a couple of things I wondered if you wanted to take back, such as America’s being best at basketball and the military.
BARKLEY: No, I’m right about the military. We should have the best military. We should have the best of everything. I’m for America. I don’t like foreigners thinking they’re better than we are. That’s what we talked about in our team meetings. We wanted to prove we were the best basketball players in the world, and we did.
PLAYBOY: You also said that Herlander Coimbra, the player from Angola you elbowed during the Olympics, probably hadn’t eaten in a few weeks.
BARKLEY: I was just having fun.
Scene: The months pass, and Barkley is stomping through the league with his Phoenix Suns, who, as we went to press, sport the best record in the NBA. This just might be Barkley’s MVP season. He is sitting in a whirlpool in the Orlando Magic locker room, having just interviewed Shaquille O’Neal for Barkley’s Phoenix TV show. Of Shaq, he says, “He’s not as tall as I thought. But he’s so wide. That’s better than tall. He’s as thick as me. Imagine me, but seven feet tall.” Being in a locker room with Barkley is like being in a Vegas casino with Don Rickles. He is the self-appointed master of ceremonies in his world. He tries to trade four of his teammates to the Magic GM for Shaq. He exchanges scouting reports (anywhere else, this would be called gossip) with Magic coach Matt Guokas. He listens to Guokas’ son tell about his college career and the Magic’s Terry Catledge explain his latest injury. Barkley is interested in everybody else’s life story and doesn’t hog the floor with his own business. Everyone who comes into the room and discovers Barkley lights up as if it’s Christmas morning and they just discovered Santa Claus in their living room, still eating his milk and cookies. Nobody leaves quickly. Typically, Barkley finds it natural to give an interview while taking a whirlpool and holding court with anyone who passes by.
PLAYBOY: A few years ago you said, “As long as Bird is around I will only be the second-worst defensive player in basketball.”
BARKLEY: Larry’s one of the greatest players ever to play the game, and that was just some joking around. But yeah, that’s probably the most disappointing part of my game.
PLAYBOY: Do you pick your moments to turn up the defensive intensity?
BARKLEY: I can play defense with anybody in the last five minutes of the game.
PLAYBOY: You crash the boards, and that’s a big part of defense.
BARKLEY: Yeah. The most important stat to me is rebounding. If you shoot the ball enough, you can average twenty points a game. I’d rather get twenty rebounds than score twenty points.
PLAYBOY: Conventional wisdom says you have to box out to get rebounds. Do you agree?
BARKLEY: No, I don’t. It’s hard to box out guys if they are good rebounders. If you’re going to stand there and hold them, you’re not going toward the ball. Somebody will beat you to it.
PLAYBOY: How many guys can get away with that?
BARKLEY: Not many, but there aren’t many good rebounders. No, excuse me, there aren’t many great rebounders.
PLAYBOY: Who are the great rebounders?
BARKLEY: Dennis Rodman, Charles Oakley, Hakeem Olajuwon. Those are the guys I respect the most.
PLAYBOY: Do they mostly block out or do they go for the ball?
BARKLEY: Dennis is the best at just going to the ball. Charles Oakley gets more out of less jumping ability than any player out there, but he doesn’t jump. He boxes out. Hakeem gets them on talent and quickness.
PLAYBOY: You’ll probably be remembered longest as a relatively short guy who is the second-best offensive rebounder in the game. How can you be that much better than people who are that much bigger?
BARKLEY: Number one, God gave me a lot of talent. Number two, I just want to rebound. It’s all desire.
PLAYBOY: What’s the best part of your game?
BARKLEY: My competitiveness.
PLAYBOY: Let’s talk about dunks. Over a three-year period, you had more than five hundred dunks. More than Michael Jordan. More than anybody. Why are you the league’s leading dunker?
BARKLEY: Because I’m so short. I don’t like laying it up because it can get blocked. Get it in the rim. I dunk because it’s the easiest shot.
PLAYBOY: Robert Parish once said that being hit by you was like being crunched in a trash compactor.
BARKLEY: I did bang him. My philosophy is simple. I want to bang, bang, bang for forty-eight minutes. I want to bang you and try to outplay you the last three minutes of the game. I’m betting that you’re going to wear down. If I start banging you in the first quarter, I think you’re going to get tired before me.
PLAYBOY: When you talk about banging, what’s the most important part of your body? Hips, elbows or legs?
BARKLEY: Leg strength is so important when you’re trying to get position. Using your ass is important. I have really big thighs. My legs are huge. That’s why I can’t buy pants. I used to wear size thirty-six pants, but because my thighs are so big, I have to get forty-twos and have the waist taken in to make up for the difference. All my strength comes from my lower body.
PLAYBOY: You once said that the game is slower for you in the final minutes. Wayne Gretzky, Larry Bird and other athletes say the same thing.
BARKLEY: Jerry West said that if you’re a great player, the game’s in slow motion. If you can play the game, it is easy. I really believe it. For me, this is probably the first year in my life that I’ve really had to work and do all the other things to he good.
PLAYBOY: You mean weight lifting?
BARKLEY: Weight lifting, running. I used to take running for granted. Now I can feel myself running. It’s a struggle for me to run. I’m forcing myself to run hard. I guess I’m starting to get old. I used to go to the gym and play. Now I have to get there a little bit early, do a lot of stretching and things like that.
PLAYBOY: Who is the best player you’ve ever played against?
BARKLEY: Kevin McHale, bar none. You had to hope he was missing. You couldn’t stop him. In his prime he was the best. He was too big for me and everybody on him, whether it was Moses or Bobby Jones. That Celtics front line was the greatest front line ever to play the game. There were no weaknesses.
PLAYBOY: Do you like to be the center of attention?
BARKLEY: I don’t enjoy all the attention. I don’t really enjoy being “Charles Barkley.” I just try to have fun in whatever I do. If it were up to me, I would just play basketball and walk around anonymously. But I want to have fun. I don’t try to get attention by doing things or saying things. I just try to be honest and make sure I enjoy this. These are the quality years of my life. I’ve spent all my adulthood being a star. If I’m miserable and don’t enjoy it, that’s wrong. I’m not going to spend twenty to thirty years in this position, so I’m going to enjoy the hell out of it while I’m here.
PLAYBOY: Does that extend to the basketball court during games?
BARKLEY: That makes the game easier for me, because I’m always relaxed. Talking to the fans and cheerleaders relieves the tension.
PLAYBOY: Lee Trevino said the same thing about playing golf. He said if he couldn’t talk he couldn’t play.
BARKLEY: I would be so uptight. I wouldn’t have anything to do but think about a pressing situation.
PLAYBOY: You have a reputation as one of the premiere trash talkers in the league.
BARKLEY: That stuff is overrated. I just have fun. When the guys start talking trash, I’m just talking. I don’t look at it as talking trash.
PLAYBOY: Does it ever hurt your game?
BARKLEY: Sometimes talking trash makes you play better. You want to back up the trash you’re talking. You think, I’ve said it. Now I have to do it.
PLAYBOY: If you were talking trash to Larry Bird or Chuck Person, what would you say? Most people think it would be, I’m going to kill you because I hate you. But it’s lighter than that, isn’t it?
BARKLEY: All they say is that you can’t stop them. Sometimes you tell guys what you’re going to do, then you do it.
PLAYBOY: Does anybody take it too personally?
BARKLEY: When you play against a guy who can’t handle it, he gets all personal.
PLAYBOY: There’s a classic piece of trash talking between you and Chuck Person. You told your teammates to isolate you on him. You said, “Let me torture him.”
BARKLEY: Chuck talks more than any other player in the NBA. If you don’t play well against him, he lets you know it.
PLAYBOY: When you’re torturing somebody, how do you feel?
BARKLEY: When I get twenty points in a half, sometimes I feel bad. I like playing against good players because it’s a challenge to me. I don’t like playing against bad players who you can kill all night.
PLAYBOY: Did it hurt you when they called you Food World in college?
BARKLEY: It didn’t make me feel bad, like it does fat people. I understood that they were trying to get Auburn’s basketball program on the map and they wanted to use me to attract attention. The only thing that annoyed me was that they weren’t giving me enough credit as a basketball player. I was leading the SEC in rebounding.
PLAYBOY: What about when they sent pizzas to the bench?
BARKLEY: You know what? I don’t get upset about stuff like that. I have a great sense of humor.
PLAYBOY: Even when they called you the Crisco Kid?
BARKLEY: I don’t worry about what they call me. I worry about playing ball well. I may be whatever they call me, but I am one of only two guys who led the SEC in rebounding three years in a row. The other guy played before they had sneakers. [While at LSU, Shaquille O’Neal became the third player to reach this record.—Ed.]
PLAYBOY: Did you feel like a fat kid when you were growing up?
BARKLEY: No, because I didn’t get fat until I went to college.
PLAYBOY: How did it happen?
BARKLEY: They served dinner too early. We practiced from three to six. They served dinner from six to seven, but I had been running down the court for three hours. You don’t feel like eating right away. The guys on the team usually slept through dinner, or we were just too tired to rush back to eat. So we ordered pizza. My freshman year, I would say out of two hundred days, I probably ordered pizza late at night one hundred sixty times. That won’t do you any good.
Scene: Barkley sits in a hotel lobby, waiting for his old friend Buzzy Braman—former shooting coach for the 76ers who now holds that position with the Magic—to go to lunch with us. On the short walk from the Magic’s arena to the Suns’ hotel, Barkley has signed 50 autographs. Every attractive woman does or says something that, if the roles were reversed, would constitute sexual harassment. Barkley is polite but never reacts. When he gets his messages, one is from a woman who has found a way to proposition him on his hotel voice-mail. Braman arrives in a tiny, old, beat-up car that looks like it escaped from a Sixties college campus. Barkley offers to sit in the cramped backseat. When he gets in the front instead, he pulls the seat all the way forward and says, “Got enough room back there?” His knees are close to his chin. Braman takes Barkley to his health club to show him off to his friends. Barkley’s “lunch” is 90 minutes of constant interruption, requests for photos and congratulations. At this greasy spoon joint, he has an enormous deli-style sandwich with fried egg sticking out every side. He praises the food. He smiles for every group photo, even for one woman who can’t figure out her own camera. Braman is in heaven. Barkley enjoys Braman’s obvious pleasure.
PLAYBOY: You were saying, while we were walking over here, that you didn’t have much freedom in public. Make that no freedom in public.
BARKLEY: That’s probably the hardest part of it: not being able to do things like a regular person. I am a normal person, except when I’m playing ball.
PLAYBOY: Do you turn down your metabolism in public?
BARKLEY: Yeah, I can’t respond to people all the time. You have to keep your distance. Everybody wants a piece of you.
PLAYBOY: All sorts of people ask you for your autograph. I would think you’d see a lot of lost souls. Does it depress you?
BARKLEY: The only thing that depresses me is that most of the people are selling autographs now. It’s not the good old days when they just asked for them if they respected your ability. Now they do it as a business venture.
PLAYBOY: You criticized Harold Katz on that front as well. Is the Phoenix front office different?
BARKLEY: I have never even seen the Suns’ owner, Jerry Colangelo, in the locker room.
PLAYBOY: Does that cause less tension?
BARKLEY: Yes. If the organization really likes the players, they will play harder for that organization. They will come back from injuries sooner and try a little harder.
PLAYBOY: How good is the Suns team you’re with now?
BARKLEY: We’re not the best team in the league, but we’re one of them. If we play well we can beat anybody.
PLAYBOY: Can you see down the road, within a year or two, when you might be able to say the Suns are the best team?
BARKLEY: I don’t know if we will ever have the best team. We have some weaknesses. We have a small team.
PLAYBOY: There was a story at the beginning of training camp about your putting a big hit on Kevin Johnson. Do you test your teammates?
BARKLEY: I always test my teammates. You don’t want to go eighty-two games without knowing what to expect from them when it gets to crunch time.
PLAYBOY: People have often said you’re critical of teammates. There was the time you motioned to coach Jimmy Lynam to take Mike Gminski out of the game when he wasn’t playing well.
BARKLEY: Mike Gminski and I played together for three seasons. He was having a bad game one day and I got frustrated and I told the coach to take him out. We were together for two and a half years and that’s the only thing that people can remember.
PLAYBOY: Today, the first person you asked about was Gminski.
BARKLEY: Everybody will always try to make a big deal out of that. Let me tell you something. Danny Ainge screamed at me the other night on the court. That’s one thing about our team. We don’t get upset when somebody says something. But that’s hard to explain to the public. Players are so fucking spoiled now. When I first went to Philadelphia, we screamed at one another and that made us play better. Dennis Johnson said when he was on the Celtics they yelled and that made them play better. We do the same thing in Phoenix, but we don’t take it personally. We don’t whine to the media. We don’t whine to the coach. That’s the difference between a good team and a bad team.PLAYBOY: Why is there less whining with the Suns?
BARKLEY: Because the players are not insecure. They probably think, Charles is that good and he’s going to get a lot of publicity. We’re not jealous of him and that’s just the way it is. When I went to Philadelphia, I was not jealous of Doc and Moses. Look at Chicago. I don’t think those guys are jealous of Michael and Scottie. They just want to win. You have to sacrifice a little bit of yourself.
PLAYBOY: You continue to have problems with referees and fines—more than $140,000 in fines in the past few years.
BARKLEY: I’m just giving my money to charity.
PLAYBOY: Are the referees in the NBA that bad?
BARKLEY: No, not in general. But some of them get intimidated on the road.
PLAYBOY: So you intimidate them back?
BARKLEY: [Laughs.]
PLAYBOY: You and Mike Mathis don’t get along. He threw you out of a game a few years ago.
BARKLEY: I hate him and he hates me. It’s definitely personal between us.
PLAYBOY: Can you guys work out the problem?
BARKLEY: Never, never, ever.
PLAYBOY: Have you asked the league to take him off your games?
BARKLEY: I don’t want to think about it.
PLAYBOY: What if you saw him working the seventh game of the NBA finals?
BARKLEY: I don’t want to see him there.
PLAYBOY: Do you have the qualities to lead a team to the championship?
BARKLEY: You have to have the talent. No matter how good Michael Jordan is, he needed Pippen. They couldn’t win because they didn’t have enough players. I just met Dave Winfield. Think about all he’s accomplished. He said he was finally on a team that was good enough to win. That’s what it comes down to. I’d be a fool to walk up to Dan Marino and say, “Hey, you haven’t won a Super Bowl, you’re a loser.” You should never let a sporting event dictate your self-worth. If this team plays well, we could win it. If we don’t, there were teams that were better than us.
PLAYBOY: Do you think there are players in the NBA who raise their teammates’ level of play? Like Magic and Bird?
BARKLEY: I always think about that. That stuff is kind of overrated. Look at the players they’re playing with. Kevin McHale is going to be a hell of a player regardless. Robert Parish was going to be a hell of a player regardless. Dennis Johnson was a hell of a player. Danny Ainge has always been a hell of a player. James Worthy—hell of a basketball player. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Scott. Cooper. I had Charles Shackleford. You can’t compare Charles Shackleford with Robert Parish or Kareem. You can’t compare Armon Gilliam with James Worthy. That’s a little unfair.
PLAYBOY: Bird and Magic raised their teammates with their great passing. Do you raise your teammates with your emotional level?
BARKLEY: Coach Westphal thinks I inspire the team by my attitude. My attitude is simple. I go out there and play as hard as I can for forty minutes. My emotion has helped me most of the time. Magic Johnson has a word he always uses: manpower. He says it all comes back to manpower. If you have enough manpower and things go your way, you’re going to win it.
PLAYBOY: How do the fans in Phoenix take to your flamboyant style of play?
BARKLEY: I don’t worry about who likes or dislikes me. I know what it takes for me to be successful. I’ve been successful for 11 years.
PLAYBOY: Do people like you in Phoenix?
BARKLEY: They have been unbelievable to me. But I was never treated badly by the fans in Philly. Never.
PLAYBOY: Arizona gets something of a rap on racial issues.
BARKLEY: The city of Phoenix had the Martin Luther King holiday before the state. That’s all I can say on that.
PLAYBOY: I saw you partying along Las Ramblas when you were at the Olympics. Do you hate to sit around?
BARKLEY: I love sitting around, but I was at the Olympics. I’m not going to spend two of the greatest weeks of my life sitting in my damn room like a moron. That was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Because there was never anything like the Dream Team. There never will be again.
PLAYBOY: A lot of people don’t understand that. Even though you knew you were going to kill everybody, it was still special.
BARKLEY: It was really special. Let me tell you something, I’m getting sick of hearing how bad the other teams were. It wasn’t that the other teams were bad. It was that our team was just so awesome. It’s kind of like having a Rolls-Royce every day of your life and never having to drive a Chevette.
PLAYBOY: Do you feel lucky that you came along at the right time to be at your peak on that team, before Bird and Magic disappeared, and while some young guys like David Robinson were starting to blossom? That might be the all-time team.
BARKLEY: It was the all-time team in any sport, ever. Magic played well. Larry didn’t play as well as he was capable of because of his back. But you still had Michael and Scottie. You just can’t put together a team that good in any sport. I was honored to be selected.
PLAYBOY: Can you talk about the teamwork or chemistry?
BARKLEY: There’s no such thing as that. See, it’s simple. If you can play, you can play. Good players just want to win and that’s all we were concerned with. Bad, insecure players cause teams problems. Bad players worry about how much they score, because they’re not getting minutes. But on that team, because all of us were so good, we just let it happen.
PLAYBOY: They divided up the minutes pretty evenly so nobody really had to worry about that.
BARKLEY: If we had lost, guys would have been bitching. If you’re a good player and you’re on that team, you’re only concerned about winning.
PLAYBOY: How did you feel about the controversy surrounding Magic Johnson’s second retirement?
BARKLEY: I feel bad about all the pressure Magic has been under. I think he should be playing.
PLAYBOY: What did you think about the people who were afraid they might have caught AIDS by playing against him?
BARKLEY: They’re entitled to that opinion. It’s not fair for us to tell them they’re wrong. The medical opinion says there’s a small chance. Well, who are we to tell those guys they should take that small chance? Everybody said there’s a remote chance you can get bitten by a snake if you walk through the desert. Well, you don’t have to walk through the desert.
PLAYBOY: Have guys around the league changed their sex lives because of AIDS?
BARKLEY: Yeah. If the situation with Magic Johnson didn’t make you change, there’s something wrong with you.
PLAYBOY: You don’t think guys are backsliding now?
BARKLEY: No. Magic has helped so many people understand sexual activity. Anybody who has sex without using a condom is out of his mind.
PLAYBOY: If you were infected with HIV, would you go public after seeing what happened to Magic and Arthur Ashe?
Barkley: We’re so ignorant in our society. We treat people with AIDS terribly. I would probably retire and spend every day with my daughter.
PLAYBOY: Has being a parent changed you in any way? Have you found out anything about yourself since Christiana was born?
BARKLEY: It lets you know that there’s nothing more important than your kids.
PLAYBOY: Are you good at the obnoxious parts of being a parent—the diaper changes, the midnight feedings?
BARKLEY: No. I’d rather go out and run five miles and make more money and hire a nanny. Every time I think about changing a diaper, I run a little bit harder and a little bit faster to make sure I can afford a nanny until Christiana’s old enough to take care of that herself.
PLAYBOY: Are you a good playing daddy? Do you like to play the board games and blocks and stuff like that?
BARKLEY: Not yet. I’m looking forward to retiring. Right now, my whole life is based on making things better for my family, so I’m not good about being a father. I’m trying to make money and set myself up for the future. We can have fun like a regular family once I’m retired. That’s why women are important. They are better parents than men are because they are willing to do those obnoxious little things. They get up in the night.
PLAYBOY: What’s the best part about being a dad?
BARKLEY: When she’s kissing me every five minutes and telling me she loves me, or when we go shopping and she’s just happy. When my daughter is playing with her toys, and then running back to show me, that’s what makes me feel like everything I’ve done is worth it. If I die tomorrow, my daughter wouldn’t have to marry some bum who beats her just because they have kids and don’t have any money. My daughter won’t ever be in that situation. It makes me think all the bad experiences were worth it.
PLAYBOY: Okay, here’s a news flash: Charles Barkley appointed commissioner of the NBA. What would you do?
BARKLEY: I would drug test everybody. I would put somebody in charge of helping the inner city because we don’t do enough for the inner city. I would be a little more stringent with the fans because some of them just go to games to harass, and that’s not right. When they use profanity toward you or your family, they cross the line. The NBA doesn’t really have any balls. It’s concerned only about money. It’s like, well, the fans pay their money, so they can say and do what they want. That’s not right.
PLAYBOY: Both Isiah Thomas and Michael Jordan have been involved in gambling controversies. You had a flap about making a bet with Mark Jackson.
BARKLEY: Michael Jordan was treated unfairly. What Michael Jordan does with his money is his business. I think the NBA was totally wrong. He can do whatever he wants to do with his money. If he wants to play golf with it, that’s fine. And if he’s going to keep playing golf like he was playing that weekend, I want to play him, too.
PLAYBOY: How about the people he was playing with?
BARKLEY: In fairness to Michael, he did not know that guy. When he goes home for the summer, he’s not going to assume his friends will be hanging out with drug dealers and put him in that situation. I blame his friends more than I blame him. Obviously, Michael Jordan ain’t going to play with no cocaine dealer. But if I go to Leeds during the summer, I don’t expect my friends to have a drug dealer as one of the guys in our foursome.
PLAYBOY: Portland’s Clyde Drexler once said, “Whatever Charles wants, Charles gets.” Is it too easy for you now?
BARKLEY: Nobody gives me anything. Everything I get I earn. I don’t want that much from other people. There ain’t nothing easy and there ain’t nothing free. That’s the only rule I know.
PLAYBOY: Is that a lesson for Black kids?
BARKLEY: As a Black person growing up in this country you have to realize that’s a strike against you. So you’re going to have to work a little harder. And if you want an excuse, you’ve got an excuse. The white man can’t stop me from being successful if I want it bad enough. That’s a phrase you hear tossed around by Blacks sometimes.
PLAYBOY: That whites can stop you?
BARKLEY: Yeah. The white man won’t let me be successful. I say that’s bull. Nobody could stop me from being successful, and that’s the way you have to approach life.
PLAYBOY: You don’t think that your physical talent is a big part of your success? What if you had less talent?
BARKLEY: There are a lot of players who have talent who never make it.
PLAYBOY: But you feel that you could have made it, even without your athletic talent?
BARKLEY: I would have made it at something. I’m too determined. I made up my mind a long time ago I was going to be successful at something.
PLAYBOY: You were not a particularly good athlete growing up, even after you said you were going to be in the NBA. You didn’t make the high school team the first time you tried out.
BARKLEY: I was just joking around then. I was using basketball to go to college for free. That’s the only reason I started playing ball. I never expected to be where I am today. But there was no doubt in my mind I was going to be a success.
PLAYBOY: You said from an early age that you were going to do something special.
BARKLEY: I don’t want to be like everybody else.
PLAYBOY: Most people do.
BARKLEY: I know. I don’t. Seriously. Nobody wants to shoot in the last two or three minutes of a game. I do. Somebody has to be the hero. It might as well be me.
PLAYBOY: Is it possible that the two special gifts you were given were basketball and the ability to make people around you have a good time?
BARKLEY: Yeah, I believe that.
PLAYBOY: And that the second one sometimes gets misinterpreted and people think, Well, he’s a show-off or he wants attention?
BARKLEY: Yeah. There’s no doubt in my mind. Because I am Charles Barkley, I’m going to get the attention. I just want people around me to enjoy what I’m experiencing. I’ve lived a dream. I’ve done more in my life than people who will live to be a hundred are going to do. I’m thirty years old and I’ve been all over the world, played with Dr. J, played against Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, got to meet all kinds of people. I got a chance to give people money who didn’t have money, to make them smile, to visit kids in the hospital. Hey, I’ve had an incredible life. If it ended tomorrow, I’d still be, like, wow.
PLAYBOY: Are you ever impressed with what you’ve accomplished?
BARKLEY: I think it’s kind of amazing. My wife said to me the other day, “Are you ever in awe of yourself?” And that made me think. Life goes by so fast that you don’t have time to be in awe of yourself. I know I can go out there and score a hundred points. But tomorrow night some guy could lock me up and kick my ass and it would be like I ain’t done nothing. You’re only remembered for your last game. That’s the sad thing about it.
PLAYBOY: Ten years from now, will you miss all the action?
BARKLEY: No. I can accept getting old. There are people who say I’m not going to want to retire in three years. I don’t believe that. You have to be a man about everything that happens in your life. When I make a mistake, I don’t lie, bitch or complain. I take the heat and move on. You won’t see me out there struggling to play. They won’t have to tear my uniform off me. You won’t see me going overseas to play. I think you just have to say, “Hey, I had a great career and I can’t do it anymore.”PLAYBOY: Your threshold of pain is a legend. Is that willpower, or do you think you actually feel pain less?
BARKLEY: A combination of both. Athletes have to play in pain. If you sit out every time you’re in pain, you can’t play professional sports.
PLAYBOY: Are you worried that your injuries will stick with you the rest of your life?
BARKLEY: I realize that when I’m in my late forties and fifties I won’t be able to walk. But I won’t have to work until I’m sixty-five, like most people do. To me it’s worth it. I see my grandmother’s new house or visit my mother in her new house and ride in her new Lexus. When I signed my first contract, I bought my mother an Oldsmobile. For Christmas three or four years later, I bought her a Mercedes. Every time I think about how bad some part of my body hurts, I think about that. You can’t describe what that is like.
PLAYBOY: We’ll have to come back in 20 years and ask you about the pain.
BARKLEY: You know what? There’s no greater pain to me than being poor. I’ve been poor and now I have money. That’s pain: being poor and struggling all the time to make ends meet. Seeing something that you want and can’t have, to me that’s serious pain.
PLAYBOY: When your basketball career is over, how do you think you will be remembered?
BARKLEY: People will say, “When I paid my 50 bucks to see Charles Barkley play, he played as hard as he could.” That’s the only thing I expect. When I lace up them Nikes, I play as hard as I can no matter what is happening around me. I don’t dog it. I play.
Sir Charles telephones from Los Angeles, where two days before he has attended his first Super Bowl. He declares the spectacle “awesome” and the game itself “awful.” He skipped all the fancy parties—like Magic’s bash at the Palace. Barkley says, “I just came for the game. Sat with Jeffrey Osbourne. Had a ball.”
PLAYBOY: When we first talked before the season, you said that the Suns were not the best team in the NBA, but you thought that you would have a fighting chance to beat anybody in the playoffs. It’s past midseason and the Suns have the best record in the league. What do you think about your chances now?
BARKLEY: Things have worked out better than anybody could have imagined. It’s been incredible how well we’ve come along. I thought our lack of height and defense would hurt us. But we’ve played taller and bigger than I thought we would, and we’ve played great defense when it has really mattered. We’re a finesse team. But so far, the punchers haven’t been able to catch up with the boxers.
PLAYBOY: Have your new teammates surprised you?
BARKLEY: Before I got here, everybody told me this team was soft. Not true. I knew that Danny Ainge, Dan Majerle and Kevin Johnson were outstanding players, but I didn’t know just how good they really were. Majerle is just as tough as I am. There are not many players in the league that tough. But he is. Ainge wants to win just as bad as I do. Same goes for KJ. When he doesn’t play well or somebody else doesn’t play well, Kevin gets really ticked off. He gets on himself. He gets on them. I like that. Tom Chambers has been an inspiration to me the way he’s handled a tough situation. Here’s a guy who has scored more points in the NBA than I have and he’s accepted playing less minutes for the good of the team. I really respect him. He’s made me think that, when the time comes for me, maybe I could handle it, too.
PLAYBOY: What about Richard Dumas? He’s the talk of the league this season—a rookie coming off a drug problem who’s the second-highest scorer on the winningest team.
BARKLEY: He’s a nice, quiet kid. He reminds me of a small-town guy. I don’t think he understands the magnitude of his ability. He has spectacular talent, and right now he’s playing on talent. He can get by with that. But once he learns the fine points of the game, he’ll get to the next level.
PLAYBOY: What’s the general attitude on the Suns, compared to your last couple years in Philadelphia?
BARKLEY: We’re a veteran team. We know what it takes to win. And we really want it. It’s been a long time since I could go to a game and not have to worry about being spectacular every night. In Philadelphia people expected me to play defense. They expected me to score every basket. They expected me to get every rebound. That’s impossible. Here it’s so nice. Everybody on this team scratches everybody else’s back. Like they say, life is good.