I May Be Wrong But I Doubt It

by Charles Barkley

  The problem to me is the bar keeps moving. If Phil Mickelson wins a major tournament, but only one, when he retires people will say, “He should have won more.” Well, why is that? How many people making this criticism of Phil are the second-best in the world at what they do? You’ve got a lot of no-talents out there on talk radio running off at the mouth, getting people all riled up when they’re not stopping to assess how difficult it is to win a championship in any sport in this day and age, with all the good athletes out there competing. It’s still a special thing to win, to even compete for a championship. So I’m telling everybody when they ask me about those guys who didn’t win, that it’s an honor to be grouped with them. And it is. We’re talking about Dan Marino, Jim Kelly, Chris Carter and the NBA guys I just mentioned like Patrick and John Stockton and Karl Malone and Gary Payton. One of the most underappreciated NBA players during my time was Dominique Wilkins. How many people have scored 25,000 points in a career? He was No. 8 all-time in points scored when he retired. But it’s not just guys who are my peers who had great careers and didn’t win.

  Elgin Baylor’s knees were so bad late in his career, he wound up retiring before the Lakers won a championship. Ernie Banks never won a World Series, never even played in one. Would anybody be stupid enough to make the case that Ernie Banks’s life is unfulfilled, as great an ambassador as he is for the game of baseball? I knew Dick Butkus and Gale Sayers didn’t win a Super Bowl, but I didn’t know until somebody told me recently that those guys didn’t even play a single playoff game in their careers. If you want to make the case that those guys, first-ballot Hall of Fame players, didn’t do everything they could while they wore those uniforms, go ahead and try, but it would be pretty stupid.

  I cannot imagine that if I won a championship tomorrow I would lie in bed and think, “Oh, I’m complete now.” I went out there every night and gave my team everything I had, some nights when I was injured and shouldn’t even have been playing. And I know all those other guys did the same thing trying to do whatever they could to help their teams win a championship. We got really close once, in 1993 with Phoenix, and I played on teams that had a chance a couple of other times. I was out there at a little taller than 6-foot-4 battling every night. I think the people I played with and against know that. Only three or four other players retired with more points, rebounds and assists than I had over my career. When I retired, one of my friends wrote me a letter and said, “I’ve stood beside your short ass and you’re only 6-4 but you battled 7-foot guys every night. Congratulations on a wonderful career.” That letter meant a lot to me. It was from Quinn Buckner. At the end of several seasons when I was playing, Michael would call me, knowing how disappointed I was, and say, “Hang in there.”

  That’s what really made me angry when Scottie Pippen insulted me and said Michael agreed with him. Michael had just retired and was in Monte Carlo with his family. It was about 2:00 a.m. one night; the story had just broken with Scottie saying all this BS about me. And Michael said, “You know I’d never say that about you. And if I wanted to say it, I’d say it to your face.” He didn’t need to call me, but it was nice of him to do it.

  We all want to win, but not everybody could win, especially not when they had to go through Michael Jordan in the NBA, not when they have to go through the Yankees most of the time in baseball, not when they have to go through Tiger Woods in professional golf. But you go out there and fight the best fight you can fight. It’s shameful if you cheat the fans, if you go out there and fail to give everything you’ve got when they’re paying good money to see you. But if you’re going to tell me that the twelfth man on one of Magic’s teams or Larry’s teams or Michael’s teams who played three minutes a night had a more fulfilling career than I did, that’s crazy to me. You can’t convince me that a guy who caught two passes the whole season on a Super Bowl–winning team had a more fulfilling career than Cris Carter had, or that the third-string quarterback holding a clipboard for a Super Bowl championship team had a more fulfilling career than Dan Marino or Jim Kelly. What you’d be saying then is that there is dishonor in giving your best, being one of the very top guys in your sport, coming close but losing. That’s crazy. Those guys didn’t win championships either, but they’re great at what they did and it’s an honor to be mentioned with them.

  “I Am Not a

  Role Model”

  Nike didn’t come to me with the idea to do a commercial about role models—I went to Nike with that idea. I talked to my friend the Nike executive Howard White about it, called him after thinking about it for a while, and said, “Howard, people have this role model thing completely screwed up. Is a role model just a celebrity that parents turn their kids over to? Damn, can’t we do better than that? Is the best we can do for kids pointing them to celebrities they have no real chance of ever knowing?” I just thought we as a society need to do better in that area. So I asked, and Nike said, cool. And I thought it turned out great.

  Remember, the main theme was “I am not a role model.”

  And for that, I got ripped. I’d been criticized before, of course, for having my own take on social issues. But the first time I got hit really hard was for taking that stance. There were some columnists who defended me, but mostly I got killed. I’m okay with it, though, because nobody in all this time has been able to convince me that it’s wrong to tell kids to listen to their parents and not a basketball player they’ve never met. How crazy is it to get slammed for saying, “Listen to your parents, listen to your teachers, listen to the responsible adults in your neighborhood or people who have done something with their lives.” I know it’s hard to get an entire message across in less than a minute. But I still believe the message was clear enough that I thought kids need to be able to look up to folks right there around them who can teach them hard work and right from wrong.

  Celebrities can’t teach ’em that from television. People are crazy. Or maybe they’re just lazy, they don’t want to do the hard work, and it’s easier to just turn their kids over to somebody ’cause he’s famous. How stupid is that? How can you make somebody your role model when you don’t know the person? All they’ve got most of the time is a perception of somebody off in the distance that might be totally distorted . . . or it could be the person is just misunderstood. One thing I hate is that all the general public knows about an athlete or a celebrity is what they know from the media, which is often inaccurate or incomplete. I know cases where a guy is labeled a bad guy and he’s really a good guy, maybe worthy of being a role model for kids he’s close to. And I know of way too many instances where the guy comes off as a good guy in the media and he’s not a good guy at all. And that’s a huge problem. Either way, how could that person be a legitimate role model for a kid? Because he’s famous? Because he’s on TV? Can he help get questions answered for you or do anything that’s specific to what you need?

  Television is entertainment. I love television. And in this second stage of my life it pays me well. But television is entertainment, television is celebrity. And with so few people to emulate in their neighborhoods, black kids started fantasizing about being athletes. And having dreams is great, but how can somebody on TV help give you any direction? That’s a one-way relationship. A ballplayer you can only see on TV may inspire you to do great things in athletics, sure. You can look at sports all day and want to try and do things on a court or a field like that player. But that can’t help you with your homework, or with real aspirations, or help you if you’re having problems at home. How does an athlete help you if you’re a terrible athlete but a decent student and you need encouragement to compete academically?

  A role model should be among the people who can influence your direction in a real-life way. The best scenario is if they can be actually in your life. My mother and grandmother were my two biggest role models; my dad wasn’t there. It was my mother and grandmother. A role model, in my way of thinking, is somebody who can help shape your life and what you believe in. And it can�
�t be somebody on television, somebody you can’t touch or go to for advice, or cuss you out when it’s necessary or sit and listen to you. It may be more important to have mentors than role models anyway, maybe somebody you can talk to about stuff you may not feel comfortable talking to your parents about. It needs to be somebody who’s not going to tell you exactly what you want to hear all the time.

  At the time, I felt I needed to attack the subject because on the whole I don’t think athletics are good for black kids. I really don’t. I got to this point because every single time I go and talk to black children or teenagers at a school or at an event, they only want to play sports. I’ll ask them what they want to do after high school or about their plans in the next few years and it’s always “I want to play pro basketball” or “I want to play in the NFL.” Every single one, it seems to me, wants to play sports for a living. It’s like there’s some mental block, or they’ve been conditioned or brainwashed to feel they can’t do anything but play sports. And it’s scary to me. It bothers me. Obviously, I’m not against sports; I’m thankful for everything a career in professional sports has given me. But I don’t know of any other culture where the children all want to do the same thing. I’ve never heard of any other situation like that.

  I know this is complex and there are some real contradictions here because the most really influential group of black people in America is made up of a lot of athletes. There aren’t any Martin Luther Kings or Malcolm Xs or Medgar Everses leading the black community right now. Almost everybody, among the most prominent people in our communities right now, who has achieved any status the past twenty-five years has done so through athletics, which in a way is really a shame. We have a lot of hardworking people, folks doing backbreaking work. But we still don’t see the doctors and lawyers and engineers we need to see and need to have portrayed and need to treat as role models. And the ones we do have don’t have any real platform. They’re not doing anything controversial enough or scandalous enough to get profiles in the mainstream magazines. Athletes and entertainers are the only ones among us who have the platform, mostly because they’re on television every day.

  So when you seriously start to think about it, our kids are so limited in the number of successful black people they can see or be exposed to. They see athletes and entertainers and what else? How often do they see scientists and engineers and writers? They don’t. I know in my own neighborhood, I didn’t know any black doctors or lawyers or professional black folks. They weren’t in the projects where I grew up. I know a whole lot of these kids I’m talking to come from neighborhoods that ain’t all that different from mine.

  I’m not saying that poor white kids and Hispanic kids don’t have similar issues with this, because I suspect they do, too. And I’m not saying that only professional people can be role models. A guy working the nine-to-five cleaning the streets or running the grocery store on the corner could be a great role model. You need to see honest, hardworking people and appreciate what they’re doing with their lives. And just because somebody doesn’t have a college degree doesn’t mean he or she can’t help give some direction to a kid who can’t get it anywhere else. But we also need our kids to see some professional people they can aspire to be like, and they don’t see enough. Every kid can’t be Michael Jordan or Will Smith, and shouldn’t want to be. But this is what they see in their lives every day, because for so many of them they ain’t got anything positive going on at home.

  Anyway, this had been bothering me for a while and I wanted to use my own platform to address it. And I never thought so many people would miss the bigger message. I found it interesting in the spring of 2002 that somebody came up with this TV campaign: “Parents, the anti-drug.” Isn’t that the same point I was making in the role model commercial? That campaign is a damn good reminder. But it’s nothing different from what I was saying in the role model commercial. What’s different about it? It doesn’t say, “Athletes and celebrities, the anti-drug,” does it? I wasn’t supposed to have any ideas of my own or talk about anything serious?

  All I was saying was your parents and your teachers, people you ought to be listening to, need to be your role models. Charles Barkley the basketball player should not be your role model. Yeah, I can be a role model to my daughter and to kids I have some contact with. But that’s not only Charles Barkley the basketball player, that’s me as a father, or a parental figure. Those kids don’t see me only on TV, there’s an actual relationship there, or at least some association. How many people on TV do these kids have an association with? We all know the answer is “None.”

  But if it took me getting slammed to get some dialogue started on this issue, then it was worth it. I’d do it again in a second.

  Making a Difference . . .

  Politics and Business

  Politics seem like such a scam sometimes, because our system is supposed to be inclusive and it’s supposed to represent everybody, right? Okay, so how many black U.S. senators are there? There are no black or Hispanic governors, even though black and Hispanic people make up about 20 percent of the population in the United States. You have to wonder if making an impact is easier to do through private enterprise than it is working through politics in a lot of cases. I’m not saying we shouldn’t try to do it through the political process because we should, of course. But look at Earvin Johnson, for example. He’s making a difference. Look at the impact he’s had since he retired from his playing career. He’s partnered with Starbucks to go into communities that would never otherwise have a Starbucks. And not only did he put a brand-new Starbucks in the ’hood, he took a Borders Books in there, a Subway sandwich shop. He’s got movie theaters in several cities. All those businesses represent full-time jobs, part-time jobs. They represent hope, too. A lot of these communities don’t have anybody investing in them. They’re just forgotten communities. I know in some of those cases there was nothing there but vacant buildings or some empty strip mall. I’ve read where each one of his Starbucks is one of the top-grossing stores in the whole country.

  I can’t say enough about how proud I am of Earvin and what he’s doing.

  See, this is part of my disagreement with Jim Brown. Earvin has done this since retiring. That’s what I’m trying to do now in retirement: find the best way to make an impact and improve people’s lives. I don’t think you can devote enough time to these types of efforts and do it properly while you’re still playing. A playing career now is a full-time job. Yeah, we get some downtime and some vacation time. But it’s not like it was in the 1960s when the NFL season was twelve games and the NBA playoffs ended in early May, and guys went out and got jobs in the off-season because their sport lasted only half the year. These days, the club owns your ass almost year-round.

  To be fair, we can never know all the stuff guys in Jim Brown’s era went through and the battles they had to fight and frustrations they had. If you’re in your thirties or forties you can only imagine what it was like, so I understand what he’s calling for. I don’t know what it was like to have to stay in a separate hotel from my teammates or have to enter the back door of a restaurant to eat in certain cities. I understand why he wants people to be active socially. He was involved in a lot of stuff from what I can tell. And he still is.

  But we can only fight the battles that we are presented with now. Earvin is doing a tremendous job. People say they don’t see famous black athletes using their platform, using their influence to impact change. Jim Brown has said that about today’s athletes. But again, look at Earvin. You think a poor white or poor black person could have gone to the chairman of Starbucks and said, “Hey, man, I want to start putting Starbucks in urban neighborhoods where they don’t have any coffee shops.” He couldn’t even get his call through.

  Earvin is using his celebrity and his wealth to do something serious as an entrepreneur. There’s so much pressure on black athletes today, black famous people period. And I hope people can use their stature to make a difference. But if a guy
does that, give him credit. Maybe people will get some inspiration from what Earvin is doing.

  There are various ways to go about it. People ask me all the time, “Charles, are you going to run for governor of Alabama? Are you going to run next term?” And I say, “That’s next year!” I just retired. I’m relaxing now, enjoying myself, trying to figure out what life holds for me. There are a lot of things I want to do, and I have to identify the important ones and identify what I’ve got the best chance to get done. I do know I want to help rebuild downtown Birmingham, which is essentially vacant. I’m trying to help rebuild my hometown, Leeds. I’ve been meeting with people for the last two, three months and it’s interesting that none of those people are closely involved in politics.

  It’s more daunting for the simple fact that you think you can run for public office and you have this enormous power. But unless you’re part of the larger process with a state legislature, it doesn’t mean anything. That’s the thing that’s caught me off guard the most, how many people you have to have moving in the same direction with you. If you don’t have that army of people, what you do is irrelevant.

  This past spring and summer, I had some weeks where I had two and three meetings a day with home builders, community planners. There are some ways, I believe, to help bring about some serious changes that don’t have anything to do with the political process. One of the things I have to figure out is, do I want to pursue a job with one-tenth the money, 1,000 times the stress and aggravation 365 days a year? I had a resident of Alabama come up to me the other day and say, “Please run for governor.” And I said, “Hey, slow your roll. Let me do some things over the next few years that let people know my heart is in the right place. Let me be involved in this effort to rebuild parts of Alabama. Let me take some small steps first.” It’s important to me, because without economic opportunity, all this other talk is irrelevant. I can talk about all the grand plans in the world, but until we do something about a school system that’s tens of million’s of dollars in debt it’s just a lot of talk. Let me see if I can help attract some businesses to move into our state, so we can increase the tax base. There used to be a Parisians, a Sears, those types of big huge stores. But now they’ve moved. They’re not downtown anymore. I’m not saying Birmingham is the only place where this has happened, but Alabama is my home, so this is close to me. There’s a community called Hoover which is like our own little Buckhead. There are beautiful developments all around it, which is great. But the businesses left the downtown area, and now we’ve got too damn many vacant buildings and the downtown isn’t viable anymore.