This year marks the 25th anniversary of Charles Barkley’s retirement from the NBA. Younger basketball fans know him now as the engine that makes Inside the NBA run, but back in his day, Chuck was one of the best players of his era, a rebounding savant who could initiate a fast break all by himself.
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Since his playing career ended, Barkley has become known as one of the funniest and most candid people in sports media. His interactions with current NBA players are a joy to watch, and an old clip of him playing in a game of 1-on-1 against Dwyane Wade during the 2009 Eastern Conference Finals shows why.
Barkley was known as “The Round Mound of Rebound” during his career, and it’s fair to say that he got a little rounder after he retired. At the time of this clip, he was 46 and had been out of the league for nine years, while Wade was an in-his-prime 27-year-old who had just led the league in scoring and finished third in the MVP voting.
To say the game was a mismatch would be an understatement, as Wade scored easily on Chuck to start. Barkley then tried to back Wade down, and though he missed the turnaround jumper, he impressed himself by how long he was able to hang in the air to avoid Wade’s blocked shot attempt, even though the shot missed.
“Oh no! Did you see the hang time?”
Wade is clearly having a blast going against such an icon. What makes this even funnier is that you can clearly hear Barkley’s feet hit the ground before he lets go of the shot, which would make this a travel. We get to see two more points after this, with Barkley airballing a lefty hook shot and Wade getting another easy bucket off a post-up spin move.
Charles Barkley was an absolute specimen during his time
Barkley is so good at what he does as a co-host of Inside the NBA, but it’s a shame that his media career has made some people forget about just how great he was on the court. Back before there was any talk of unicorns, Sir Charles really was one.
Nobody had ever really seen a power forward that could get up and down the floor as well as he could, but beyond his physical gifts, what’s really overlooked is just how smart he was as a player.
Barkley is one of the greatest rebounders of all time, and he led the league in two-point field goal percentage for five consecutive years during his prime. That just doesn’t happen for guys that are 6-foot-6.
Barkley’s 1-on-1 game with Wade illustrates just how impossible it is to stay with the best players in the world when you’re no longer in playing shape, even if you are one of the smartest players to ever live. Wade has been retired for six years and is 43 now.
He was in much better shape than Barkley was at the time of this clip, but we suspect that he’d have just as difficult a time keeping up with someone like Anthony Edwards or Shai Gilgeous-Alexander today.
