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The Los Angeles Lakers are looking to get back into championship contention and have built a roster around superstar Luka Doncic that they believe gets them closer to that goal. Doncic has made it to the NBA Finals before, leading the Dallas Mavericks there in 2024, though they would fall in five games to the Boston Celtics. There are some who question this Lakers roster and whether it can compete at the highest level with the best teams in the league. But NBA Hall of Famer Charles Barkley believes this Lakers team is just as good as the Mavericks squad Doncic led to the Finals.
“I really want to see the Lakers do well,” Barkley said on the Bill Simmons podcast. “First of all, I’m a big Luka fan, a big Austin Reaves fan. I think they’re gonna be better than people realize. Luka and Kyrie took the Mavs to the Finals, come on, man. This team is probably better; this team is probably just as good as that team.”
Stefan Bondy: Jalen Brunson will be the first Knick to host SNL He’s also just the fifth basketball player after Jordan, Barkley, LeBron, Bill Russell. He’s just the third NYC-area athlete after Eli Manning and Derek Jeter
Legion Hoops: Charles Barkley says Castle and Harper are going to be the new Steph and Klay, per @rBillSimmonsPod. “If I’m a guard in the NBA, I do not want to see them boys the next 10 years.“ (h/t @WembyAlienEra)
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NBA Courtside: Charles Barkley doesn’t agree with the narrative LeBron is beating Father Time 👀 “We have to be honest about LeBron. Just because you’re putting up good numbers don’t mean you’re being affective. — People say he’s defying the odds but if my memory serves me correctly, he’s gotten swept in the playoffs the last couple of years. — LeBron is playing well but to say he’s beating Father Time, they got swept the last two years in the playoffs so don’t tell me how great he’s playing” (Via Bill Simmons podcast)
“He didn’t back down from anybody,” said Morris, now the director of Westbrook’s Team Why Not EYBL team and the boys’ basketball head coach at Redondo Union. “He was fearless. He was relentless. There’s never really been a player quite like him. I would say he kind of has, like, a Charles Barkley, a young Charles Barkley spirit, where he was just passionate and fiery. He wasn’t PC. He wore his emotions on his sleeves, and he didn’t really apologize to anyone for how he felt or what he was there to do.”
A sealed box of 1986-87 Fleer Basketball cards, signed and inscribed by Michael Jordan, sold for $1.48 million in an eBay auction Sunday night. It’s the only unopened box of ’86 Fleer Basketball — the set includes his iconic rookie card, as well as those of multiple NBA legends like Charles Barkley, Patrick Ewing, Hakeem Olajuwon and more — that Jordan has autographed, which he noted with an inscription reading “Rookie Card Box 1/1.”
What’s interesting about the final price of the signed box is that it’s considerably lower than the record $2.7 million that a single Fleer rookie card signed by Jordan sold for last fall, even though the box is a one-of-one while there are more than 100 authenticated ’86 Fleer Jordan autographed cards. It illustrates how scarcity isn’t always the ultimate factor in the collectibles market and how individual cards are often more desirable to collectors.
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Barkley told Stephen A. Smith on Friday that if the 76ers win two titles in LeBron James' two years in Philadelphia — that’s if he opts in to the second — after agreeing to a contract Friday, it would solidify his GOAT case. “If he wins back-to-back championships and walks away this thing at 44, 45. I’ll say something I ain’t never said before. This dude, I think I just saw the greatest basketball player ever,” Barkley told Smith.
Though Barkley did mention that James has provided himself advantages with “stacking the deck” throughout his career when joining talented teams. “The number one knock on LeBron for older guys like myself has always been, ‘Yo, man, you always stacking your team,'” Barkley said. “He stacked in Miami. He stacked in Cleveland. He stacked in LA. Now he’s stacking it in Philly. So that to me, I’m going to still have the same criticism I’ve always had.”
While at last weekend’s celebrity golf tournament at Lake Tahoe, Charles Barkley sat down for a podcast interview with Pardon My Take. And during the episode, he addressed the viral Inside the NBA confrontation. And in true Barkley fashion, he said that it wasn’t really anything he was concerned about because he and Green went for drinks at a dive bar after the show while NBA Twitter was on fire. “What was interesting about it, I didn’t even pay it that much of attention,” Barkley said. “So we go to a little dive bar after work all the time and Dray went with me that night. And so I’m not even paying attention because I don’t do the internet. I don’t do internet sh*t. So I fly and I land and I got 100 messages. I’m like what, somebody got traded or something. And then it was about the Draymond stuff and I was like, ‘I never even gave that a second thought,’ but I was really surprised how many people went after Draymond and defended me. I’m not sensitive at all because I say stuff about players. I hope they’re not sensitive because if I say it I believe it, that don’t mean I’m always right. So that didn’t even phase me whatsoever. I can take it as much as I can dish it out.”
This week, Barkley shared more details about that conversation on Barstool Sports’ “Pardon My Take.” “What’s up motherf–ker?” Barkley recalled playfully saying to Jordan, who was playing golf with Coleman. The Bulls icon repeated the words back to him jokingly, and then the pair talked and made plans to play golf together in the future. “We were great friends, brothers for a long time, and both of us [were] being selfish and stupid,” Barkley added on the podcast. Barkley said that during the conversation, both expressed that they missed each other’s friendship. And while he said Jordan is currently out of the country, the pair plan to golf when he is back.