Barkley, Charles
Identification Professional basketball player
Born February 20, 1963; Leeds, Alabama
Other than Michael Jordan, Barkley may have been the best
NBA player of the 1990’s. Furthermore, his candid, often
brash public image was the antithesis of Jordan’s carefully
contrived superstar persona.
The self-proclaimed “ninth wonder of the world,”
Charles Barkley is known as much for his verbosity as
for his stellar National Basketball Association (NBA)
career. Barkley joined Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem
Abdul-Jabbar, and Karl Malone as one of only four
players to amass 20,000 points, 10,000 rebounds,
and 4,000 assists in a career. However, his on-court
exploits only partially defined a persona that, like
Muhammad Ali, Jackie Robinson, and Arthur Ashe,
transcended the province of sport. By the end of the
1990’s, Barkley was defined by his
ambivalent identity. He was both the
brawling, hard-drinking iconoclast
and the politically conservative el-
der NBA statesman.
The 1990’s began inauspiciously
for Barkley: He was lambasted in the
national press for what became
known as the “spitting incident,” fol-
lowing a game against the New Jer-
sey Nets in March of 1991. Subject to
incessant and fervent racial epithets
from a courtside spectator, Barkley
attempted to spit on the heckler.
However, his saliva missed its target
and landed on a girl seated nearby.
Barkley credits this incident with
transforming his subsequent behav-
ior toward and interaction with
fans; however, the incident contrib-
uted to the perception that Barkley
was a sullen, cantankerous super-
star.
In 1993, Barkley emerged as a
dominant player whose all-around
basketball skills endeared him to a
public often divided over his can-
dor. After eight seasons with the
Philadelphia Seventy-Sixers, he was
traded to the Phoenix Suns in 1992.
Although he experienced his best
single-season statistical averages in points, rebounds,
and field-goal percentage while in Philadelphia, his
best all-around season was in 1992-1993. He aver-
aged 25.6 points, 12.2 rebounds, and 5.1 assists—a
career high—per game. He was named the league’s
most valuable player (MVP) and led the Suns to an
NBA Finals showdown with Michael Jordan’s Chi-
cago Bulls. The Suns were defeated in six games in
Barkley’s only appearance in the NBA Finals.
In the same year, a Nike advertisement in which
Barkley insisted that he was “not a role model”
added to his image as an outspoken renegade. How-
ever, his statement was lauded by Vice President Dan
Quayle as a summons to family values. As were most
of his comments, Barkley’s statement was miscon-
strued as an athlete’s denunciation of responsibility.
On the contrary, Barkley noted that it was people
like his mother and grandmother, who labored
painstakingly to cultivate a positive and safe environ-The Nineties in America Barkley, Charles 79
Charles Barkley of the Houston Rockets dribbles past Sam Perkins of the Seattle Super-
Sonics in a semifinal game in 1997.(AP/Wide World Photos)