I’m thirty-nine years old and I’ve never had a real job.
I played organized basketball from nine until thirty-seven. That qualifies as my whole damn life.
Even before the leg injury in my last year, I said to myself, “I don’t want to play like this.” Yeah, I could have played two or three more years on my name. But I knew I was too good to play the way I was playing. Later in my career, I was playing all right, but just all right. I watch Hakeem Olajuwon and Patrick Ewing play now: both of those guys are right at forty, and I hate watching them play. I hate watching Michael play now. I say that because these guys playing now couldn’t have stayed on the court with Hakeem and Patrick and Michael ten years ago, and I love those guys.
Even before the injury I suffered at the start of the 2000 season, I’d already announced I was going to retire. The Rockets had promised they were going to pay me $12 million, then changed it to $9 million as we got closer to the season. As long as I’d been in the NBA, teams had done under-the-table deals with players, and I vehemently disagree with the league’s punishment of the Timberwolves for a practice that’s common around the league. I wasn’t going to play. But six weeks before the start of the season, I said, “Well, the NBA has been great to me. I could bitch about this, but I’ve had it too good—I’m going to go ahead and play.” So I was twenty pounds overweight when the season began and that’s probably why I got hurt.
The thing I was thinking was, “Man, I got carried off the court in my last game. I’ve got to go out there and try to play again.” So I did. I just felt I needed to walk off the court for the final time. So I did the rehab and came back for that one more game. Rudy Tomjanovich said, “Get a rebound and score a basket.” And the funny thing was, I went up and down the court ten times and couldn’t get near the ball. I meant to jump five times and the ball was still a week away. I wanted to jump, it just wasn’t there. I would look at the rebound coming and think, “Shit, that ball is a long way away.”
Anyway, the last basket of my career was an offensive rebound basket, which was fitting.
The only part I miss is the basketball. The stuff that goes along with it, I don’t miss. It wasn’t easy, getting past ball. And when Michael called and said, “I want you to come back,” you gotta say to yourself, “Damn. He thinks enough of me to ask me to come back with him.” You walk around puffing your chest out for a few days because it sounds like a good idea at the time. But a professional athlete knows his body. I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again: Michael was getting in shape but all I was getting was tired. You come to the realization, “I’m almost forty years old; this ain’t workin.’ “ If the Greatest Ever’s body breaks down, mine sure as hell would have broken down. Michael’s got highway miles on him; I’ve got off-road miles.
It’s a difficult transition. People wonder, “Why can’t these guys stay out of trouble?” It’s harder than you think it is. You’ve gotten spoiled and relatively lazy. You’ve got twenty-four hours a day with nothing to do and money to get into stuff you shouldn’t. How many second careers are there that most guys can do beyond going into TV, coaching or working in the front office of an organization? I wonder how many guys have their degrees when they retire. I wish there was a study to consult about the percentage of guys who do. I didn’t complete my degree at Auburn. I went back the first couple of summers; I had promised my grandmother I’d graduate. But I was making $1 million a year early in my career, and I wound up obviously making a lot more than that. If I’d needed to go back and graduate, I would have, but I didn’t. Of course economics are a consideration. If you don’t have access to that kind of wealth you’d better have more formal education and you’d better have your degree.
Economic considerations determine so much of what guys pursue for a second career, and whether they do something they really want or do something just because they need the money. Take that Fox Celebrity Boxing. How sad was that? I only watched to see Manute Bol. First of all, how much are the celebrity boxers getting paid? We know Fox is getting paid because the show had a huge prime-time rating. But you don’t participate in stuff like that unless you need the money. It’s so sad to retire and need money that badly, although Manute’s case is a little different because of the charities he was heavily involved in. And “Refrigerator” Perry was pretty much as big as it got in the mid-1980s. He had to make a little money during that period. But here he is in this Celebrity Boxing. And let me tell you who’s really pathetic: Darva Conger. She does that stupid Fox marry-a-millionaire show where she marries that clown, then when the whole world is talking about it—like she didn’t know what she was doing when she signed up for it—she says, “Oh, I’ve made a big mistake here, and all I want to do is go back to my private life and be left alone.”
I was feeling for her a little bit. Public life can be hell, especially when you go from nobody knowing who you are to everybody getting into every aspect of your life. So I’m thinking, “Okay, anybody can make a mistake and if all she wants is her private life back, we ought to cut her some slack and let her do that.” Next thing you know, she’s posing for Playboy magazine, and I’m thinking, “Oh, this is how you go about getting your private life back?” Now, she’s on in prime time in Celebrity Boxing? Come on now. I guess she didn’t exactly want that private life back, did she? Darva being on it is bad enough, but to see Manute and the Fridge . . . I’m telling you, it’s difficult. You’re in your late thirties, early forties, and you just can’t play golf every day and sit around. But on the other hand, there’s got to be a plan and you have to be honest with yourself. What really helps is to be around somebody who goes about it the right way when you’re young so you can get some idea of what the hell is going on.
You know who really prepared me for retirement? Julius Erving and Moses Malone. And I was twenty-one years old when I met ’em. I was fortunate because Doc has a great sense of business and Moses is so streetwise. Doc was starting his transition from playing to retirement when I first got to Philly. Those guys were a fountain of information. And I’m fortunate to have been able to pick their brains, and that they were so free with their time and their advice. I’ll tell you one thing that bothered me a little bit at the end of my career. I knew my body was breaking down and I couldn’t play the way I used to, and I thought one of the ways I could contribute to the league was to help some of the young guys. It’s only right, since I had benefited from the advice of veterans, to be there for a new generation of young guys. I looked forward to it, to tell you the truth. But when I tried to be there for ’em, their attitude was like, “Hey old man, sit your ass down somewhere over there. You’re trying to hold us back.” And you just kind of sit there and say to yourself, “Can you believe this shit?” It’s not just me either. I’ve talked to other guys near retirement and they’ve had similar stories to tell.
I guess I just want guys never ever to take for granted how unbelievable our lives are, how much influence we have and how much impact we can have. Man, I want to see guys maximize their impact after athletics, not throw it away while they’re still playing on entourages and silly crap. So my story isn’t complete yet. In ten to fifteen years, if I’ve helped some struggling people build something good, then it’ll be a complete story.
To me, this is all connected if you want to try to fight poverty and illiteracy and racism. The legacy of slavery is that nothing was passed down. We’re still at the point where a successful black person is taking care of, or at least helping out, the previous generation in his family, instead of the other way around. You ain’t got many black kids having college paid for by a trust fund. We still don’t own much of anything. Most of the blacks who are successful don’t own stuff. It’s athletes and celebrities. We’re not able to provide an economic path for the next generation.
Just look at a few examples in sports. Jerry Colangelo, the owner of the Phoenix Suns and Arizona Diamondbacks, brought his son Bryan aboard years ago. Jerry is the CEO of the Suns, Bryan is the
president of the organization. I’m not trying to accuse Jerry of nepotism. But it’s just like Jeremy Schaap coming into broadcasting largely because of his late father, Dick. Or it’s like Joe Buck following Jack Buck or Chip Caray following his father, Skip Caray, and both of them following Chip’s grandfather and Skip’s father, Harry. It’s the family business. Even if they don’t own it, they own a stake in it. I love working with Ernie Johnson, Jr., who’s a damn hardworking guy, and he would be the first to tell you how much he owed his father, Ernie Johnson, Sr., who was the broadcast voice of the Atlanta Braves for so long. With damn few exceptions, black folks don’t have that in industries that produce wealth or ownership. It wasn’t until I was playing for the Olympic team and met Bishop Desmond Tutu that I even considered the impact I might have overseas because of my athletic career. It didn’t really cross my mind until he brought these little South African kids wearing our basketball jerseys telling us that there were no black men in positions of huge influence where they live.
So, as much as it pained me to watch Ali get beat like he did in his last few fights, it’s not the sports stuff that matters as much in the end. There will always be great players here and there, in this sport or that sport. And we all love seeing that and celebrating it and debating it. But those of us who were given these great talents and unique gifts by God have to speak up and put it out there, even if it isn’t popular, even if it isn’t politically correct all the time. If the playing is all you’re going to do, you’ve missed the boat. I may be wrong, but I doubt it.
About the Authors
Charles Barkley is a studio analyst for TNT’s Inside the NBA, a regular contributor to CNN’s TalkBack Live and a frequent color commentator. Named one of the fifty greatest NBA players of all time, he was selected to eleven All-Star teams and won the NBA’s MVP award in 1993. He lives in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Michael Wilbon is a Washington Post sports columnist and the cohost, with Tony Kornheiser, of the ESPN show Pardon the Interruption. He lives outside Washington, D.C.
Copyright © 2002 by Charles Barkley
All rights reserved under International
and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
Published in the United States by Random House, Inc.,
New York, and simultaneously in Canada by
Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Random House and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Barkley, Charles.
I may be wrong but I doubt it / Charles Barkley; edited and with an introduction by Michael Wilbon.
p. cm.
1. Barkley, Charles. 2. Basketball players—United States—Biography. I. Wilbon, Michael. II. Title.
GV884.B28 A29 2003
796.323´092—dc21
[B]
2002029169
Random House website address: www.atrandom.com
eISBN: 978-1-58836-274-2
v3.0
I May Be Wrong But I Doubt It Page 16