I May Be Wrong But I Doubt It - Charles Barkley [31]
That’s why the notion of coming back to play sounds great, but it doesn’t feel great. You love the game so much you want to play, but your body isn’t cooperating with your spirit. I told Michael Jordan, when we were talking about my coming back, that he might have been getting in shape but I was just getting tired. And as amazing an athlete as Michael is, his knees just wouldn’t cooperate with him when he came back to play with the Wizards. The shocking thing is that he hadn’t needed more ’scopes before on his knee, considering the jumping and running he did for thirteen years. Every basketball, football, hockey and baseball player in the world could probably have at least one knee cleaned out right now with a ’scope. But that doesn’t cure the tendinitis or the arthritis or restore the cartilage.
And I don’t know how football players can ever have their health. The collisions those guys have are violent and damaging enough. And then on top of that, they’ve got to play on AstroTurf, which is the worst invention in the history of professional football. I see ex-NFL players now, guys in their fifties and sixties, and I just say to myself, “Damn.”
Tiger and the Masters
In the March 11 edition of Sports Illustrated, the cover of which was graced with a picture of me without a shirt breaking out of chains—it was carefully thought out, planned and meant to be symbolic—I said some things about Tiger Woods, Augusta National and the Masters that pissed off a lot of people. Specifically, I said, “Look what they’re doing at Augusta. They’re lengthening the course for one reason: to hurt Tiger.” I don’t believe that the course was lengthened specifically to stop Tiger from winning, but I do believe that his winning all the time must make people who run the Masters tournament uncomfortable.
It’s not Tiger’s personality—not yet anyway—to speak out about stuff that might be controversial to some people. It’s not like him to talk about whether this thing was designed to specifically stop him and whether that involves race. But I’m not worried about saying the proper thing. I think it needs to be examined. And I don’t think I’m the only one who feels like this was aimed more at Tiger than at anybody else. And even if I am the only one who felt that way, then I’ll say it anyway. People want me to give the benefit of the doubt to Augusta National and the people who run the Masters tournament. Why? Benefit of the doubt is something you earn through past actions. We know what the past actions have been at Augusta National: to exclude black golfers, to make black and Hispanic golfers feel unwelcome, as if they better not even think of the idea of showing up to play there. There are a few members of color now, but that’s happened in the last few years. It ain’t exactly the U.N. up in that clubhouse.
So you mean to tell me that all of a sudden, after all these years of discrimination, the people who run Augusta just became color-blind? We’re supposed to believe that their decisions regarding a golfer of color, the one who was kicking their course in the ass, were made without any consideration of his race? Why would we believe that? You can believe that BS if you want but don’t ask me to. Maybe I would believe it if the history of Augusta was different. But Augusta National is what it is, a great golf course and a symbol of prejudice and racism in the South. It’s a symbol of what people who run traditional southern institutions think of black people.
The people who take me on about my views on Augusta National . . . I’d like to ask them one thing: Does Tiger’s winning change everything that ever happened at Augusta National? Does it affect the lives of the black people who’ve been denied access? Does it change the fact that most of the black people