Charles Barkley apologizes to the Rockets owner, CEO, GM (Video)
Every since John Stockton hit a Western Conference finals-winning three-pointer over him in 1997, Charles Barkley has had a contentious relationship with the Houston Rockets, the last of three NBA teams the Hall of Famer played for.
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The next season saw Barkley chirping with longtime local hero Clyde Drexler about Drexler’s apparent snail-paced approach to returning from a hamstring injury in his final season, while Barkley battled to drag an aging Rocket team to the West’s No. 8 seed. Then Barkley took a pay cut in his third season with the franchise in order to make room for acquiring Scottie Pippen’s max deal. Barkley worked the 1999 season for $1 million.
The Rockets signed Barkley to a $9 million deal for his injury-shortened swan song in 1999-00, but Barkley has intimated several times through the years that the team has yet to fully pay off what might be a deferred payment deal. Or that, in spite of Barkley working for just 20 games in his final year, he should have been paid more in total to make up for working for the minimum in 1999.
This, and Houston’s continuing underachieving, are part of the reason Barkley used his distaste for both advanced statistics and the Rocket franchise as a shield to go after the team last week. In the wake of this tweet from the Rockets CEO:
Barkley responded on ‘Inside the NBA,’ spurred on by Shaquille O’Neal, by calling Tad Smith “Toad Smith” and Rockets general manager Daryl Morey “Daryl Moronic,” prior to dropping this nugget, about the Rockets, who are barely better than the Nuggets right now:
“They didn’t pay me all my money. Just for the record, they still owe me $3 million.”
This came as a mild surprise to those who have been covering the team for a while:
On Tuesday evening, though, Barkley tried to make things right:
Despite the apology, this probably will never end.
Charles Barkley worked his tail off for the Rockets from 1996 through his final, token appearance with the team (following a quadriceps tear) in April, 2000 (just days before his first appearance on ‘Inside’ with both Ernie Johnson Jr. and Kenny Smith). Averaging 16.5 points and 12.2 rebounds from ages 33 to 36, as a power forward working at 6-5 (maybe) is no joke.
The issue, as Scottie Pippen (in a petulant bid to be traded away from Barkley’s Rockets after just one year) brought up in 2000, was Barkley’s off-court habits. Pippen had come from Chicago, where he and Michael Jordan along with Ron Harper met each morning, schedule be damned, for a workout session prior to practice. They called it ‘The Breakfast Club,’ and it was bent on staving off the effects of age.
Barkley wasn’t of the same mind, and along with an uncreative offense and poor fit between the team’s stars and young backcourt (which included two rookie starters in Cuttino Mobley and Michael Dickerson), Pippen’s lone season with Houston was a mess. Houston was forced to deal Pippen for spare parts a few months later, but in the same offseason they turned a few rotation players into eventual co-Rookie of the Year Steve Francis. Barkley’s well-funded 1999-00 seemed like it would go swimmingly.
Instead, it fell apart. Even while still working with Hakeem Olajuwon and the ascending Francis, the team started poorly. Barkley got into that infamous fight with Shaquille O’Neal, and then the quad tear hit. By that time the Rockets were 7-13. Save for that token appearance mentioned above, that version of the Rockets, and Barkley’s career as a player, was over.
Whether Barkley merely expected more in contract negotiations, or whether there was an under-the-table deal gone awry (remember, the Joe Smith fiasco would hit just a few months following Barkley’s retirement, sending a scare through the league) isn’t the point. The 2015-16 Houston Rockets feature a pair of uninspired, cash stealing players at the top, Barkley is wrong to be petty while dismissing functions of basketball analysis he’s too lazy and/or uninterested to keep up with, and the CEO of an NBA team shouldn’t be on Twitter ripping on a Hall of Famer’s play from 1998.
At least some tact prevailed, on Tuesday night.
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Kelly Dwyer is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @KDonhoops
