Charles Barkley and Steve Kerr mocked people who said LeBron James wouldn’t be great in the 90s by sarcastically going along with it.
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LeBron James is undoubtedly one of the most dominant forces the NBA has seen since the turn of the millennium. The 4x champion has made the NBA Finals 10 times over his illustrious career and did so with a combination of longevity and productivity. Even in his 19th season, ‘The King’ is actively the best player on a Los Angeles Lakers that has a shot at the championship.
There have been questions regarding his dominance however. Many claim LeBron James has been able to bully his way to around 27 points, 7 assists, and 7 rebounds a night due to the fact that the league isn’t all too physical any longer.
The narrative that the NBA was more physical back in the 80s and 90s is one that is littered with exaggeration and has only a morsel of truth to it. Charles Barkley seems to believe that James would’ve done just fine in his era.
Charles Barkley and Steve Kerr on LeBron James.
NBA Open Court features some of the greatest to have ever done, chopping it up about various topics within the NBA. On one segment, Ernie Johnson posed the question, “Would LeBron James reach superstar status if he came into the league in the 1990s?”
Guys like Dominique Wilkins and Steve Smith answered the question with a certain level of seriousness, with the former even claiming that James would have to develop a decent post-game. Charles Barkley and Steve Kerr however, hilariously claimed towards the end of the segment that James would suck in their era.
This of course, isn’t a dig at LeBron James, rather, a dig at people who are foolish enough to believe that 6’8, 250lb LeBron James would not reach superstar status in a league that was considerably less skilled than it is now.
