The NBA is a trash talk league. That’s been true for decades. We see it now with guys like Anthony Edwards and Luka Doncic yapping it up at opposing players, and we’ve seen it over the years with players like Gary Payton, Reggie Miller and Larry Bird.
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There are some guys that you just don’t talk trash to, not unless you don’t want to awaken the beast. Michael Jordan was famous for gleefully destroying anybody who dared open their mouths to him, and he took it one step farther by often inventing slights from opposing players in order to motivate himself to annihilate them.
Like MJ, Charles Barkley was never one to suffer fools. He once threw a heckler through a plate glass window, but on the court, he was just as vengeful. On Cuttino Mobley’s recent appearance on the Out the Mud podcast, he recalled one such instance when he and Sir Charles were teammates on the Rockets.
“I was a rookie,” he said, “and this was when the Portland Trail Blazers had ‘The Kid,’ which is Jermaine O’Neal … Then there was Rasheed Wallace, it was [Arvydas] Sabonis, it was Brian Grant.” Mobley didn’t even think of Damon Stoudamire and Isaiah Rider, two other quality players that would later in that lockout-shortened year lead Portland to the Western Conference Finals.
“I know one thing, they beat us by 50 in the preseason,” Mobley recalled. “They was talking so much s***, Charles Barkley, the next time we saw them, beat the dog, fouled all them n*****, Charles Barkley killed them so bad, and wasn’t even jumping high, dawg. When I say post move was crazy, and he’s 6’4″. Oh my goodness, bro, that’s why I was like yo, he’s on a different level.”
Mobley has a few of the details wrong, but we can forgive him since this was way back in 1999. What actually happened was that the Blazers destroyed the Rockets early in the regular season by 40. Houston won a rematch nine days later, and then in the rubber match the following month, Barkley and Scottie Pippen took it upon themselves to shut Portland up once and for all.
Pippen drained six 3-pointers on his way to 31 points, while Barkley was 9-14 from the field as he added 20 points of his own. He also chipped in 12 rebounds and 9 assists, narrowly missing out on a triple-double.
It’s obvious what an impression Barkley, who by then was nearing the end of his career, had on a young Mobley. Not only did he tell Out the Mud this story, he also said that until Tim Duncan came along, Barkley was the greatest power forward of all time. Given what the Round Mound of Rebound used to do to people who doubted him, you’ll find no dissent here.
