LeBron James even in his 20th year is such an instrumental force in the NBA that his name is enough to shift all media attention from a team reaching their first-ever NBA Finals. He made a comment alluding to his retirement and the seismic shift it caused took away all the spotlight from the Denver Nuggets’ achievements. Charles Barkley believes this to be vainglorious and sounded off on the Dan Patrick Show. He also claims that LeBron being the shrewd mind that he is, is doing so on the heels of his $97 million extension.
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Barkley was animated in the discourse with Dan Patrick highlighting the fact that James’ statement was covered by the media. He stated that “the fools on ESPN” couldn’t stop talking about it. Charles suggested that there are strategic overtones to the statement.
He alluded to the fact that LeBron’s 2-year 97-million extension kicks in this year. Making such an announcement could be a sort of threat he made to the Lakers.
“LeBron James Did It Strategically!”: Charles Barkley Calls LeBron a master media manipulator
Speaking about the announcement, Charles Barkley says, “First of all, LeBron is not gonna retire, I was disappointed that he brought that up in the Nuggets’ highlight for their organization. They’d never been to the Finals, they swept the big-bad Lakers. Nobody gave them any respect”.
Then Patrick asks if James did it strategically to which Barkley says “Yes” a few times. “LeBron James did it strategically,” he says and then he talks about the constantly shifting tide of narrative in the NBA. Charles had already talked about the same on TNT and called James’ bluff.
How it went from praising superstar, after superstar, from Stephen Curry to Kevin Durant, they all got praised. Except for Nikola Jokic and the Nuggets.
Charles Barkley is disappointed at mainstream media
Charles says the narrative behind the Lakers was rather dumbfounded and was the media’s attempt at getting more views. He also chooses to applaud the Nuggets. He mentions the fact that the Nuggets have been in 1st place since October. Whereas the Lakers found their rhythm after the trade deadline.
Now they are sitting just 4 games away from their first-ever title. And still, the discourse around the Nuggets is not enough. Charles’ points are valid. We do hope to see better coverage.
The NBA Finals are set to begin on June 1st. Who do you think will come out on top? Even though we won’t get to see Barkley on TV anymore, we hope we get to hear some of his wisdom soon. Or maybe some of his bizarre “guarantees”.
