This just in: A lot of people bother Charles Oakley. The former Knicks forward was a guest on Jim Rome’s radio show Tuesday afternoon, and he covered an array of topics. By that we mean he called out several people with some extremely harsh words. Let’s start with Oakley’s thoughts on Kevin Garnett.
“Garnett left Minnesota and hollered and screamed and all that but hes not a tough guy,” Oakley said as Sports Talk Network shared with us. “He’s one of the weakest guys to ever play the game. He’s a complimentary player and went to Paul Pierce’s team and won a championship. I wouldn’t consider him a top 10 tough guy.”
Garnett is certainly a loudmouth who has done plenty of regrettable things over his NBA career, but he’s hardly a complimentary player. He couldn’t win with Minnesota because they never gave him anything to work with. He could easily be considered a top-10 NBA player in his prime. Enough of that. Onto Oakley’s next punching bag, Charles Barkley.
“Barkley, for his size, was a good player but he’s a coward,” Oakley continued. “He was a good player for his size, but he wasn’t a leader and wasn’t a role model. Now he talks so bad about younger guys. I don’t respect that from him. He’s a fraud. He can criticize all the younger kids and if he got something to say, call them and talk to them before you just blast them. He’s wants to be funny, that whole TNT thing and all that, they’re like some clowns on that show.”
Barkley does feast on younger players and say ridiculous things when criticizing younger teams, so I can’t totally disagree with Oakley on that one. He’s also not much of a role model, so you won’t get an argument there. A coward and a fraud? That seems a bit harsh.
Oakley wasn’t done there. He also said that Kendrick Perkins is similar to K.G. in that all he does is holler and complain, and that the Thunder would win championships if he would just play basketball. Oakley added that Perk’s attitude is the reason he got dunked on by Blake Griffin, and said throughout his 19-year career he only got dunked on three times. Somebody check the tape on that, please.
