Barkley Is the Gift That Just Keeps on Giving

By Spencer Hall

I am on record as saying that Charles Barkley would be the first person invited to a dinner of athletes, so long as I'm not paying for the food (since Sir Charles is around 300 pounds of hungry man and that kind of gullet-stuffing can bankrupt a man quickly).

Therefore, it's been a good week for me as a fan of Barkley since he's let off two public salvos redolent with vintage Barkley-ness.

First, he appeared on CNN with Wolf Blitzer blasting the GOP as being full of "fake Christians," and then vowed that once he'd met residency requirements, he'd be running for governor of Alabama in 2014:



Then, having not poked enough vocal people in the eye with a sharp stick, Barkley appears in this month's Playboy in an interview proclaiming that Boston's fans are the worst in the NBA, a comment hurting us all when it provokes an 11,000 word response from Bill Simmons, who will pull out the entire bag of 18 year-old cultural references to essentially call Barkley a fat, championshipless loser. You can't wait for it, and don't lie! [/sarcasm]

None of these compare with Barkley's choicest cuts even from just the past year or so, all lovingly collected by The Charles Barkley Quote Page:

-- "First of all, you don't want the Chinese mad at you: They can fight!"

-- "They say it about brothers, but I can guarantee everybody in Finland look alike."

-- (From an exchange with Ernie Johnson) EJ: "Auburn is a pretty good school. To graduate from there I suppose you really need to work hard and put forth maximum effort."
Sir Charles: "20 pts and 10 rebounds will get you through also!"

Sir Charles, the Oscar Wilde of our time. Someday, people will quote him like Shakespeare.

This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.