The Chuckster is clearly not too fond of The Perkster.
ESPN’s Kendrick Perkins was openly critical last week of some comments Charles Barkley recently made about Steve Kerr’s coaching performance for Team USA at the Olympics.
“They shouldn’t be tested,” Barkley said of Team USA at the time, per Awful Announcing. “They should win. They got the best team. They haven’t used their depth the right way … [Kerr] has not used this team properly.”
Perkins totally disagreed with Barkley’s take and said on ESPN that it was an “asinine” opinion (though he did recognize Barkley’s accomplishments on the court and as a broadcaster).
“Look, Charles Barkley is one of the greatest power forwards to ever play the game of basketball,” Perkins said. “One of the greatest players to ever touch the damn basketball. And look, one of the greatest TV personalities ever. But this was just an asinine way of talking about Team USA and what’s been going on, as far as them representing our country.”
You can watch Perkins’ full response below (in which he noted that the game has gone global and that teams overseas are catching up to Team USA).
Barkley appeared Wednesday on “The Dan Le Batard Show” and was asked about Perkins calling his opinion “asinine.” In response, Barkley went scorched earth.
“First of all, don’t bring up a guy who averaged five points a game,” replied Barkley. “I’m not gonna stoop to his level. You average five points a game, shut the hell up.”
The Hall of Famer Barkley isn’t wrong there. Perkins did indeed average 5.4 points per game for his NBA career (compared to Barkley’s 22.1 points per game). While Perkins did win the championship ring that Barkley never could, that was as an undisputed role player on the 2008 Boston Celtics.
The substance of the discussion probably doesn’t matter at this point since Team USA went on to win their fifth straight Olympic gold medal in men’s basketball with a double-digit win over France last weekend. But there is definitely some history here between Barkley and Perkins. Earlier this year, Perkins called out Barkley and TNT co-host Shaquille O’Neal for supposedly not actually watching games. Dating back even earlier that that, Barkley once hilariously tore into Perkins by saying that he had “ESPN disease.”
