Charles Barkley has never shied away from making bold predictions, and the Hall of Famer looks pretty good now after one of the ones he made at the start of the 2020-21 season.
During TNT’s NBA tip-off show back in December, Barkley decided to go out on a limb and guarantee that two of the Eastern Conference’s worst teams last season — the Atlanta Hawks and Washington Wizards — would make the playoffs this year.
“The Hawks and the Wizards are going to make the playoffs, guaranteed,” Barkley said, via Matt Weyrich of NBCSports.com.
The Wizards, of course, had just acquired Russell Westbrook in a trade with the Houston Rockets. They finished ninth in the East last season without Westbrook, so that prediction wasn’t all that wild. It was more bold of Barkley to express confidence in the Hawks, who won just 20 games last year and finished 14th in the East.
The Hawks had a huge turnaround this year and finished 41-31, which secured the No. 5 seed in the East. Washington went 34-38 and will travel to Boston as the No. 8 seed to face the No. 7 seed Celtics in a play-in game.
We have to give Chuck credit there. He has also made a somewhat surprising prediction about which team will win the East, so time will tell if he stays hot.
