Notice Charles Barkley claims he could have been a Trail Blazer, but Portland refused to trade for him

I thought Portland didn't want to include both Buck Williams and Jerome Kersey in the trade for Barkley and that's why the Blazers turned it down?

 

They went to the finals and lost to Jordan, just like us.
That was a great team. Barkley, chambers, kJ, Oliver Miller played his best couple seasons with them. Plus a few others I’m forgetting.

 

They also had Ainge, Majerle, Ceballos, and Mark West. Yeah, that's a pretty loaded team.

 

Geez. How could I forget ainge and marjerle!

Ainge is one of my fav all time players!

 

Really? Bro, fan is short for fanatic.

 

Barkley said he's never told anyone that story which isn't true, because I heard about that years ago. I think he even mentioned the players the blazers should have traded for him. I can't remember who he named though.

 

Don't forget about that Twitter shit where he got caught defending himself with his real account rather than ghost account. He's as thin-skinned as LA. Both felt too emasculated by their alpha PGs and had to leave town. Something about Univ Texas makes some bitchmade players...

There's nothing likable about him - he's a soft, coattail riding, prima donna through and through. He's a mix of KG and LA. Fuck all those dudes.

 

Chuck was as much a negative as a positive and too slow for our team back then. He wanted to ride our coattails.

 

People on the outside would've said the same about LaMarcus.

 

I feel like lamarcus is completely different than Durant’s situation. Shit even on the spurs lamarcus is a head case and asked for a trade. I think Durant’s best move was getting away from Westbrook. I always said he can’t win a title with him. I think Westbrook as gifted and great as he is, is also a selfish player. That wasn’t the situation in Portland for lamarcus.

 

Funny, My dislike of Durant's decision has gone down quite a bit in the last couple of years. Maybe it's just hindsight and OKC completely becoming Westbrook's team. But honestly, I think it's mostly just acceptance that we are in the Super Team Era and it is what it is. You can't hold it against Durant for the choice he made. It's the same one Lebron and every other major star is going to make in moving from team to team.

Also, Fuck Lamarcus.

 

Basically. I mean Gordon Hayward left the jazz but in the end it kinda worked out because the nba gained a new star in Donovan mitchell. The difference is out lamarcus handled it. Could of handled it so much better. I don’t dislike lamarcus as much as I did when it happened but I just plain don’t like him and I think it says a lot about him that he asked for a trade in San Antonio and had to be convinced to stay. That’s insane. Lebron always gets shit but he just moves around from super team to super team but whether anybody likes it or not he’s done a lot for the league, one of the greatest to play the game, is a great role model. Can’t really hate on his character at the end of the day except for his younger “chosen one” back tattoo days. Going back to lamarcus it says a lot about him in his last days in Portland, his attitude toward dame trying to make it a competition on who the face of the franchise was. He got jealous because dame was and is more marketable while LA is boring. His insecurity and fragile ego showed. He almost went to Phoenix instead of San Antonio just to be the man. The list goes on.

 

I think people are forgetting just how dominant Charles was in 92-93, arguably the best, yes BEST, player in the world. He was utterly dominant in Barcelona and ended up winning the 93 MVP. That Phoenix team he played on was nice but Phoenix didn't have two players better than Clyde Drexler or Terry Porter. I'd say there's a 7/8-10 chance Portland wins a title with Barkley added to the core.

There's a book out there titled, "Against the World" and it was written by Dwight Jaynes and Kerry Eggers where they detail the 91-92 season. In it, there were anecdotes of trade rumors. I'll need to go back and re-read it, but I believe the rumor was Jerome Kersey, Danny Ainge, and Kevin Duckworth for Charles Barkley and contract fillers.

 

I think we would have won a title with him if we had traded for him.

I watched some of the tapes of that series against Chicago, and we were smashing the Bulls. We had a huge lead in game one, and then MJ started going off. We just folded. Completely choked. Nobody stepped up. Clyde had all the talent in the world, but he never had the kill instinct that MJ or Barkley had. He didn't have that "I'd climb over my own mother just to win this game," killer instinct. If we had added Barkley to that core, I think we would have won. Of course, I think Clyde would have pulled a LaMarsha and thrown a hissy fit.

 

You can 100% hold a choice someone makes against them. Freedom of choice is not freedom of repercussion.

Also, highly doubt any other major star joins Golden State from a team that was as good as OKC. MJ never would’ve joined the pistons even if they had offered him a billion dollars. Bird never would have joined Magic.

Also, you don’t have to actually dislike the guy - but claiming his title is as valuable as say someone like, Dirk Nowitzki would be foolish. This isn’t the era of super teams...there is one... which was allowed by an absurd aberration. In retrospect they should’ve increased it over the course of 2 years, not 1, and let the teams just pay a bonus to staffers, d league, etc to make up the difference in the first year or some shit.