Charles Barkley doesn’t shy away from openly dishing out his opinions. But for Barkley, discussing political matters isn’t always a matter of heated discussion as it could also make for a light-hearted banter. Therefore, when he arrived in Phoenix, he was glad to have 2x Coach of the Year Cotton Fitzsimmons. The endearing personality could go toe-to-toe with Barkley in terms of wit. Despite being on the opposite side of the political aisle, the two would enjoy their conversations.
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It was 1992 when the former Philadelphia 76ers forward got traded to the Phoenix Suns. Fitzsimmons, who was then Suns’ senior executive vice-president played a huge role in the trade that brought Barkley to the Suns. In 1992, the USA was also having its Presidential Elections with Democrat Bill Clinton and Republican George H.W. Bush being the prime contenders.
When Barkley and Fitzsimmons met, they didn’t shy away from discussing their presidential choice. They also injected humor into it. Barkley supported Clinton, while Fitzsimmons preferred Bush. In his 2020 memoir, Barkley: A Biography, written by Timothy Bella, the 1987 rebounding champion revealed his political exchange with the executive.
When the Suns Forward told him that he was a “Bill Clinton man and a black multimillionaire”, Fitzsimmons quipped that by the time Clinton’s term is done, Barkley’d just be a “black millionaire”. He took a dig at the fact that the Democratic tax regiment would result in the Suns Ace losing his “multi” millionaire status. However, the Hall-of-Famer Coach didn’t stop there.
He slipped in a joke about how if his wife Maureen Blumhardt divorced him, he’d lose even his millionaire status due to the maintenance of his divorce settlement. It’d just snatch away the tag of “millionaire” due to the huge sum he’d have to pay. It would render him just an average African American man in terms of wealth.
“He[Fitzsimmons] said if I[Barkley] got Clinton got elected, I’d just be a black millionaire by the time Clinton got through. And then he said if I got divorced from Maureen[Barkley], I’d just be Black. I liked that,” narrated Charles Barkley in his 2020 memoir.
While the Suns Forward enjoyed this banter in the 1990s, he’d have even more fun when his former NBA nemesis Shaquille O’Neal became his colleague.
Charles Barkley and Shaquille O’Neal are the best NBA duo on TV
In 2011, when Shaq joined the Inside the NBA, he and Barkley immediately started entertaining fans with their ceaseless banter. It is the shenanigans of these two that have kept the show lively. One of the most common banter between the two is Shaq taking a dig at Barkley for having no rings, and on the flip side, Chuck telling the big fella that he had help from two of the best shooting guards of all time, Kobe Bryant and Dwyane Wade.
It’s not like it is all fun and games between the two. There can be heated discussions too, but at the end of the day, they make light of it. The notorious pranksters even had a laughter-filled wrestling match after trash-talking for years. During another instance, Shaq tried his hand at a mini-hoop shooting from a few feet away. He just made one out of eight shots. While the 76ers legend kept poking at him, O’Neal finished the segment by dunking the ball over him through the mini-hoop.
The Lakers legend also mocked the former Suns Ace for his acting skills. In 2016, when the producers played a compilation of Barkley’s scenes from Space Jam, The Big Aristotle quipped, “And I thought Kazaam[Shaq’s disastrous 1996 movie] was bad! Oh, that was terrible.”
He also hilariously acted out the scene where the Forward twitches after losing his basketball powers to “Monstars”. To which Barkley humorously responded that he got “nominated for Academy Award” for his performance. Such back-and-forth has become the plank of this exquisite friendship.
