How Can An NBA Player Be A Slave If He Earns Millions?

Charles Barkley goes off on NBA player’s slavery accusation: ‘Just asinine and stupid’

Dave Urbanski Feb 17, 2017 12:42 pm

Hall of Famer and television analyst Charles Barkley watches during the American Century Championship celeb-am round at Edgewood Tahoe Golf Course, July 19, 2012. (AP photo)

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Outspoken former basketball star Charles Barkley went off on an NBA player’s slavery accusation, calling it “just asinine and stupid.”

Draymond Green, a forward for the Golden State Warriors, said New York Knicks owner James Dolan enjoyed it when former Knicks’ star Charles Oakley intimidated opponents back in the day — but can’t take it when Oakley criticizes his former team now.

“You’re doing it for me, it’s all good,” Green said Wednesday on his “Dray Day” podcast, the Washington Post reported. “But now you’re doing it against me, or you’re speaking out against my organization, it’s not good anymore? That’s a slave mentality — slave master mentality. That’s ridiculous. It was all fine and dandy when he was laying people out, taking fines and all this stuff for your organization. But now all of a sudden when he says something that he feels, it’s a problem.”

But Barkley — not one to be shy about taking the black community to task or expressing his often-conservative views — took issue with Green’s analogy.

“That is just stupid,” Barkley said Thursday on Atlanta sports talk station 680 AM, the Post reported. “I don’t think you ever use basketball analogies to compare to slavery when guys are making $20 million, $30 million a year. I just think that’s just stupid.”

Barkley added that “the Knicks have been very disrespectful to Carmelo [Anthony]” — another of Green’s points, the paper reported — but “to compare guys making $20 million, $30 million to slaves is just asinine and stupid.”