Another week, another ex-player-turned-television-talking-head picking a verbal fight with Draymond Green.
During the Warriors’ first-round series against San Antonio, Green calmly brushed off Chris Webber’s head-scratching comment about how valuable he was to the Warriors even though he might not be a starter for some other teams in the league. But in dealing with Charles Barkley’s declaration about him during Tuesday’s Warriors-Pelicans telecast, (“I want to punch his ass in the face,” Barkley said, begging the question of how exactly such a thing could be possible), Green wasn’t nearly as forgiving, daring Barkley to back up his words with action.
As The Athletic’s Tim Kawakami wrote after talking to Green on Tuesday night, Green isn’t likely to forget this incident anytime soon. He not only called Sir Charles out, he made it clear that he wants Barkley’s boss, TNT head David Levy, to know of his displeasure. Barkley did apologize on a Chicago radio show on Wednesday (and then followed that up with an apology on the TNT studio show Wednesday night).
“I want to apologize to Draymond Green,” he said on the radio show. “I was 100 percent wrong. I wasn’t going to fight an NBA player. If he took it like that, I apologize.” But Barkley also added, “I shouldn’t have said it, but I meant it.”
He had an acceptable mea culpa going until that last line. Still it’s more than Barkley had to offer, because he’s far too valued and powerful a figure at Turner Sports to face any serious repercussions about his statements. It’s more likely that what he said about Green will just be added to the list of semi-outrageous things Barkley gets to say that most other broadcasters would be disciplined for.
Perhaps the strangest aspect of the whole thing is that Green is the kind of player you’d think Barkley would adore. Green is, after all, a tough, hard-working power forward who takes on bigger players, backs down to no one and is sometimes funny, sometimes harsh, sometimes profane, but always completely candid when he talks to the media. In other words, he’s a lot like the guy Barkley sees staring back at him in the mirror every morning. In fact, jump ahead about 20 years from now and it’s not hard to envision Green sitting in the TNT studio chair Barkley now occupies.
You would expect Barkley to be hailing Green at every opportunity as a throwback, the kind of player who would have been at home in the Chuckster’s more rough-and-tumble era of the ’80s and ’90s. The fact that he’s gone entirely the other way can only rekindle many Warriors fans’ long-held suspicion that Barkley simply has a problem with all things Warrior-related.
Does Chuck hate the Warriors? Anyone who has paid attention over the last few years can list at least some of the supporting evidence for that theory. In 2015 he was referring to the Warriors when he said, “I don’t like jump-shooting teams. I don’t think they can win a championship.” The Warriors went on to win the title.
He went even further in 2016, saying, “Maybe I’m old but I’m never going to like that little girly basketball where you have to outscore people.” (Guess who he was talking about.) In 2017, during the Warriors’ first-round series against Portland, Barkley predicted a high-scoring series, because “neither one of these teams is good defensively.” The Warriors had finished second in defensive efficiency that season.
He has also been highly critical of Kevin Durant’s move from Oklahoma City to the Warriors, and he’s been dismissive of Steph Curry’s game at times, leaving Curry off his list of the league’s top five players (behind LeBron James, Kawhi Leonard, James Harden, Russell Westbrook and Durant) even though Curry is a two-time MVP.
But Barkley hasn’t always come down on the anti-Warrior side of the fence. He has called Curry and Klay Thompson (whom he holds in high regard) the best backcourt in the NBA, ahead of Portland’s Damian Lillard and C.J. McCollum and Toronto’s DeMar DeRozan and Kyle Lowry. He’s even picked the Warriors to win at times when it would have been easy to go the other way. Early this season, when Boston was 13-2 despite Gordon Hayward and Kyrie Irving being sidelined, Barkley predicted “they’re not going to beat the Golden State Warriors tonight and they’re not going to hold them to 94 points, I promise you that.” At halftime the Celtics led 47-42, but Barkley stuck to his Warriors prediction, and took lots of Twitter heat for it when the Celtics completed the win.
It’s not so much that Barkley is anti-Warrior as it is that he tends to be a contrarian, and he doesn’t like it when he’s proven wrong. His initial take on the Warriors at the beginning of their run four years ago as a 3-point-happy, no-defense, regular-season flash-in-the-pan was superficial and misguided, and the Warriors continue to show year after year how badly he missed the mark, which doesn’t exactly endear them to him.
None of this is necessarily unprofessional. Barkley is an analyst, not a journalist. He can have his favorites, his pet peeves, his personal biases. He has no obligation to be neutral, only entertaining. But he does look bad when he drifts over the line into illogical opinions or, in this case, suggesting he dislikes a player’s actions so much as to get physical with him. It’s all part of Barkley’s strange relationship with the Warriors, which defies easy explanation. But one thing is certain, if Sir Charles is spoiling for a fight, verbal or otherwise, Green is definitely not the opponent he wants.
Here’s Barkley’s apology on TNT:
Chuck’s apology to Draymond. ??
(Top photo: Joe Murphy/NBAE via Getty Images)
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