Charles Barkley made sure to let everybody know that HIV cannot get contracted by mere touch by saying players aren’t going to go have s*x with Magic Johnson.
Charles Barkley has always been one to express the way he’s felt no matter the people around him. This is the reason as to why NBAonTNT has been an incredible success for the 20+ years he’s been on air alongside the likes of Ermie Johnson, Kenny Smith, and Shaquille O’Neal. The banter between Shaq and Barkley is what NBAonTNT segments tend to divulge into.
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Take for example, when Charles Barkley was on the Houston Rockets and was playing against the Minnesota Timberwolves. In the final moments of the game, a player on the Wolves stepped to the charity stripe to shoot two. Of course, this player missed both.
The postgame presser saw Chuck say something that only he could get away with saying: “You couldn’t get a pencil up there with a jackhammer.” For those who haven’t caught on just yet, this statement is referring that player’s a**hole being tight (metaphorically speaking), resulting in him missing the clutch free throws.
Charles Barkley has a wild explanation for why it’s alright to play alongside Magic Johnson.
Magic Johnson shocked the world in November of 1991 when he let it be known that he had contracted HIV. Unlike the 2020s, being diagnosed with AIDS back then was much more life threatening than it is now, when regarding the ability to survive it with the proper treatment.
There were several idiotic stigmas surrounding the contraction of HIV, one of them being, “you can get it if you are in mere contact with that person.” This cannot be further from the truth and Charles Barkley knew this, resulting in one of the wilder quotes he’s spewed out over the decades.
“We’re just playing basketball, it’s not like we’re going to go out to have unprotected s*x with Magic,” said Chuck. Dennis Rodman also had to put his two cents in this and said, “I couldn’t care less if the guy guarding has HIV. I’m going to slam him anyways.”
