I May Be Wrong But I Doubt It - Charles Barkley [67]
You see how Bill Cartwright has done a nice job with the Bulls? I know it’s early and he’s got a long way to go with a young team. But we really shouldn’t be that surprised because Bill had more influence with those championship Bulls teams than people thought. Michael would yell and scream at everybody. And one day Michael told me that Bill said to him, “ ‘If you yell and scream at me again I’m gonna kick your ass.’ “ When I got to Auburn I was an eighteen-year-old kid who was basically lazy. And my head coach, Sonny Smith, would tell me over and over, “Charles, you’re fat and lazy.” And I’m thinking, “If I’m leading the Southeastern Conference in rebounding, these other guys must really be lazy.” So Sonny and I were always butting heads, and after two years I was just ready to leave. But one night we sat down and had dinner and I told him, “Sonny, if you change your approach just a little . . .” And after that he said to me once, “Charles, you’re doing great . . . now if we could just do this a little better,” and it made all the difference in the world in my case. Leading a team is difficult: it’s so much about knowing when to do something and when not to.
I’ve got to tell this story about some of the best basketball advice I ever got. People looking in from the outside think that the most important thing is Xs and Os and devising strategies for certain situations. And yeah, that stuff is damn important at the end of games and in special situations. But when I first got to Auburn, Roger Banks watched me struggle with rebounding and he told me, “Son, you averaged twenty rebounds a game in high school . . . I’m gonna watch you for a while and figure out why you’re not rebounding here.” He came back to me after watching me and said, “No wonder you’re not rebounding; quit boxing out and go after the damn ball.” I’m standing there looking at him . . . he just told me the opposite of what people preach all the time and he said, “Son, go get the ball. If you’re blocking out all the time, five rebounds might bounce right to you, but we didn’t bring you here to get five rebounds a game.” So much for conventional methods. Might be the best basketball advice I ever got. I’m so glad Roger took me under his wing from Day 1 at Auburn.
I guess the thing I’d want any young or aspiring player to take away from this is that making a successful career in anything has to do with so much more than pure talent. And that doesn’t pertain to just sports. I’d bet it’s the same way with any profession. It’s just that sports are right out there in the open for everybody to see. But there’s a lot of talent wasted in the world because people don’t realize that what’s just as important as the physical skills and the Xs and Os—maybe more important—is managing your life and staying away from the big mistakes that can ruin your career, ruin your life no matter how much talent you have.
If the Playing Is All
You’re Going to Do,
You’ve Missed the Boat
I was watching a Bryant Gumbel Real Sports episode last summer that had a long segment on Muhammad Ali. And it was wonderful to see that his mind was so great. The guy reporting the piece reminded Ali that thirty-five years ago he had talked about the “white devil” and Ali said, “Hey, I was wrong, because the devil comes in various colors and it has nothing to do with race or ethnicity.” While he doesn’t sound like the old Ali and it’s painful to see him suffering from Parkinson’s disease, his mind is still very sharp. It’s still Ali’s mind and it just makes you feel better to see that that’s the case. I met Ali once, in 1996 at the Atlanta Olympics. I walked up to him and said, “I’m so pleased to meet you. You’re probably the greatest influence in my life.” And he said, “Aaaaaw, I’m