I May Be Wrong But I Doubt It - Charles Barkley [17]
Moses Malone’s influence helped me figure out what was right for me, too. Moses is eight years older than me, and he was the first guy to come straight to the pros out of high school and have a Hall of Fame career. I really hated it when the Sixers traded him on draft day in 1986. He and Doc had led the team to a championship in 1983 over the Lakers, and Moses had been through it all, seen it all, understood what was needed to survive in the league and keep your sanity intact. He said, “Look, these folks aren’t your friends in most cases. So stop trying to please everybody because you can’t do it anyway.” He and Doc were so different in a lot of ways, which was a great benefit to me because I could get great advice from two guys who sometimes saw the world differently. Doc wanted to please everybody. Doc is just one helluva nice man, and he had built a great life in Philly and had a near-perfect image, and I’m not about to say that’s a bad thing. But Moses had the attitude of “To hell with y’all.” And in the end, when they tried to trade Doc and they did trade Moses, it was obvious that no matter what you did and no matter how great a player you are, in the long run you’re still just a piece of meat to them. It’s a realization that you have to come to, that it’s a hard business and people can make it harder with their own prejudices even if they don’t know they’re doing it. And here I was, a little kid from small-town Alabama, naive. I didn’t know what the hell was happening to me and around me.
The real turning point for me was when I just got killed with criticism for answering a question on my own radio show. We were in camp—I think it was preceding the 1991–92 season—and we had one cut left to make before the start of the season, and it was coming down to Rickey Green, who is black, or Dave Hoppen, a white guy. And somebody asked me while we were on the air live who I thought the team was going to cut. I said I don’t know who the guys who make that decision will keep. But some people might be offended by an all-black team.
I woke up the next day, and people were saying, “Charles Barkley said the 76ers will keep Hoppen because he’s white.” And that, of course, is not what I said. I still think some people would be offended by an all-black team today. I was asked a question, and just stated my opinion. You mean to tell me people think there haven’t been times when white guys were kept as the eleventh or twelfth man so that it wouldn’t be an all-black team? I remember when the Knicks had that all-black team and people called ’em “the Niggerbockers.” I remember how people around basketball, black guys and white guys, would joke about playing two brothers at home, three on the road, and four or five when you’re trailing in the fourth quarter.
You think there wasn’t some truth to that for some franchises at some points in time? I’m not saying it was that blatant in 1991, but don’t tell me race played no factor at all in decisions like that. It reminds me of a conversation I had not too long ago with Warren Moon. He told me one day that people think race is no longer a factor in being an NFL quarterback. And while it’s a helluva lot better with a lot of coaches starting black quarterbacks now, Warren pointed out that there aren’t any third-string black quarterbacks. And that’s a fascinating observation. You’ve got to be good enough to start, pretty much, to be black and play quarterback in the NFL. There are only a couple of second-string guys, but if you look at it they were all starters very recently and could be starters again. Now, tell me it’s just a coincidence that there are no third-string black quarterbacks in the league? Twelfth man . . . third-string. Don’t tell me this is so far-fetched, because it isn’t.
Anyway, people all over town in Philly were just killing my ass. And I’m like, “Damn, this is all-out