I May Be Wrong But I Doubt It - Charles Barkley [45]
When I was living in Philly, for those five winter months it was pretty much just going from practice to home, games and back home, the airport and back home. It was cold out and I was pretty much locked down indoors from November through March. But I got to Phoenix, and suddenly I could wear shorts to practice, play golf after practice, get outdoors and experience mountains and desert. But to have a whole new culture to be introduced to was for me an entirely different thing. Wherever you live, it’s about the people in the end.
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I can’t imagine my life without travel. It’s just cool to go to so many different places. Growing up in Alabama, in a segregated environment where the black people lived on one side of town and the white people lived on another, there was a tense feeling about everyone different—folks didn’t like blacks, didn’t like Jews, didn’t like Yankees, didn’t like foreigners. And to travel—and I was lucky enough to do it when I was young—is to experience that the country can be better than that, and the world can be better than that.
I don’t know that I would want to live in Portland, but it’s a great town. And the fans make it probably the best place to play in the NBA. I imagine it would be a great place to play an entire career because the people are so welcoming. I loved going to old Chicago Stadium. It was so intimate and loud and the people were right up on top of you. The Chicago Stadium and Boston Garden certainly had their similarities, but they were mean at Boston Garden. The people in Chicago always seemed to have a real affection for me when I went there. It was probably because of my relationship with Michael Jordan. When Michael’s father was murdered in 1993, he asked me if I would host his golf tournament in suburban Chicago. I did, and that just seemed to make my relationship with people in Chicago even warmer.
I hate all the new arenas, although I never played in the new building in Indiana. But these new arenas are just too big, they’re filled with luxury suites because of the owners’ greed. The fans are much too far away from the action. They’re nothing like the old Chicago Stadium and the old building in Portland, Memorial Coliseum. Those were great buildings.
Domestic travel is a big part of your life because you’re playing forty-one road games a year plus playoff road games. But there’s plenty of opportunity for international travel, which is hands down to me the most educational thing you can do. For my first ten years in the NBA, Nike put together international trips. The first couple of times I went on these trips, I figured we could be pretty anonymous. When you’re young and you’ve never been anywhere really, you just don’t think anybody overseas knows who you are. Then we’d go to Germany or France and have thousands of people come to exhibition games.
I was never worried about language differences. They weren’t barriers, they were just differences. You could still communicate despite the differences. Probably, Germany and Japan have been my two favorite countries to visit, although I did go back to Spain two or three times since the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona. A lot of people have made a big deal out of me walking around Barcelona in ’92 and mingling with people. To me, one of the great things in life is to get out and meet new people, people whose experiences are different from your own. It has nothing to do with being recognized and well known. To me, that’s what you’re supposed to do, get out and enjoy a new city. I loved Barcelona. Loved it. Maybe some people don’t enjoy doing that, but I do. I know there are times I’ve been walking around a city overseas, 10,000 miles from home, and I’ve thought, “Here I am, this little kid from Leeds, Alabama,