The time I met Charles Barkley, briefly

It came to me as a big surprise. I had just made the two-hour trek with more than half of it down dark two-lane Kansas highways at 60 miles an hour on a Friday night from South Central to Northeast Kansas.

I was 12 years old and visiting my mother in Lawrence. She and my father had recently gotten divorced and she moved away from my hometown of Eureka. I had decided to live with my Dad. The thought of a big school at that time scared the hell out of me. At that time Lawrence High School was the biggest in Kansas.

“We are going to watch the KU seniors play against Charles Barkley,” Mom said.

Dumbfounded, I let the information sink into my underdeveloped and overstressed brain and found myself finding it hard to accept those words as reality.

“How is this real,” I thought to myself. “Why would Charles Barkley play against KU seniors in the middle of Kansas?”

Charles Barkley’s stats from the 1991-92 season, his last as a Philadelphia 76er, were: 23.1 points and 11. 1 rebounds per contest. He shot 55.2 percent from the field and dished out 4.1 assists while averaging a total of 1.81 steals per contest. So this was seeing live one of the top 10 players in the NBA at the time. It did not seem real at all.

However, it was very real and probably the coolest surprise I have ever experienced in my still-sheltered life.

We loaded up the ole’ blue Pontiac Sunbird four-door sedan, equipped with moon roof and cassette player, and scooted 30 miles down the road to Olathe North High School, located in a Kansas City, Kansas suburb.

The University of Kansas men’s basketball seniors routinely barnstormed in spring and summer after their eligibility had expired. Most or all of the barnstorming stops were for charitable events. When I was a sixth-grader, a group of KU seniors that included Scooter Barry, Sean Alvarado, Milt Newton, Lincoln Minor, and Brad Kampshroeder made a barnstorming stop in Eureka to help a local kid receive a bone marrow transplant.

This time, however, I would get to see, for the first time in my life an actual NBA superstar playing basketball in person in some relatively small gym in the suburbs of Kansas City.

The Ku seniors from 1991-92 including Alonzo Jamison, Macolm Nash, Lane Czaplinski and David Johanning. Jamison was the standout in this group and was a leader of a KU team that featured Greg Ostertag as a freshman, as well as Adonis Jordan, Rex Walters, Richard Scott and Steve Woodberry.

The Olathe North gym was way bigger than any gym I had seen or played in my short career, but was way smaller than the venues Barkley was performing on night in and out.

Imagine playing in the Spectrum or Boston Garden or Madison Square Garden, then jumping on a plane, flying to Kansas City, sitting in a 30-minute commute to the Kansas suburbs and finally joining a high school team to play against a bunch of recently graduated college kids from a Mount Rushmore Division 1 basketball college.

Doesn’t sound like the typical NBA player’s Friday night. But Charles Barkley was anything but typical and I knew I was about to see something very unusual.

Barkley’s flight was late, so the game was delayed by about an hour. No one seemed to care and waited patiently, mostly watching the KU seniors warm-up, with alley-oops and highlights pre-game dunks. Having gotten to the gym and met with my Aunt Nila Simmons, then an honors English teacher at Olathe North, we finally got the scoop.

According to my Mom’s younger sister, Barkley, (then a 76er) agreed to a request to come from a trainer on the 76ers staff. That trainer had a brother that worked at Olathe North. The event was not advertised in the paper or on television that I had known of. It was just another barn storming stop for the KU seniors. They made several each year all over Kansas and probably several at schools in the Kansas City Area.

Once Barkley arrived to the court he had to warm up by himself in front of a crowd of what I would estimate to be about 500 people. He walked out to a basket with a ball and began a warm-up routine. He started in close, missing a few in the beginning, and worked his way out to the perimeter. A routine I later learned was common among pros and therefore adopted.

He clanked about five, but then worked out the kinks. Bank shot, good. Run to other side of the floor, catch pass, step back, bank shot good, move to other side of floor, catch pass, step back, bank shot good, repeat and repeat and repeat. He sank what seemed to be an endless amount of bank shots with his routine and then signaled to whoever the powers that be at Olathe North that he was ready to play.

There were the dramatic PA announcements yelling out the names of the Kansas Seniors and Olathe North All-Stars, of course, saving the big-ticket Round Mound for last. Barkley jogged out onto the floor and eventually made his way to the tip-off circle, playing on the side of the Olathe North All-Stars.

My guess is that this game was as cool to the KU seniors as it was to Olathe kids, the fans, and me.

It was 100 percent obvious from the beginning who the best player on the floor was. The KU seniors seemed to be playing a little harder than your average benefit game and Barkley did not disappoint. I don’t remember much from the game, but glimpses of Barkley dunking and dishing out dimes all game seems to be an accurate recollection.

Barkley was known to be a post power player at this time, using his girth and strength to set the tone down low for Philly. In this game he showed a lot of what he did later in Phoenix. Perimeter jumpers, open floor passing, finishing in the fast break. Hell, the Olathe North All-Stars might as well been Dan Marjle and Cedric Ceballos running the break with Sir Charles.

It wasn’t though and in this game several years earlier to the Finals appearance against the Bulls and MJ, Barkley and the Eagles lost to KU by a wide margin that I don’t remember.

The main thing I do remember about Barkley was how short he really was.

After the game, Barkley stayed and sign autographs for probably every person in attendance and maybe more. He sat at his table and jovially signed autographs without flinching for hours after the game, longer than any of the KU kids.

The area outside of the gym at Olathe North was packed like sardines with everyone in line trying to get autographs. At this point, the only autograph I wanted from this game was Sir Charles’s. My aunt, mother and I got in line and waited for what seemed like an eternity, shuffling slowly like a Thorazine patient at Osawatomie.

After receiving a poster from someone working as crowd control, I approached this completely larger-than-life figure that I had only seen on television and in magazines and newspapers. I was only about 5’10 at the time, about to enter my ninth-grade year the following fall.

As I approached and he stood up, I was shocked by how little distance there was in our heights. My guess is he was only about 3 or 4 inches taller than me at the time, putting him at about 6’3” or 6” 4”. On TV they regularly had his height at 6’5” or 6’6”. NBA.com still lists Barkley at 6’6” 252 lbs.

He was nowhere near that tall. He had stood to stretch his legs, walked around to the front of the table. and leaned over the table to sign autographs. I was the first taker after he had moved from his seat behind the table. Barkley stood next to me and shook my hand.

“What’s your name? Do you play basketball?”

I responded shyly and politely the whole time thinking, ”This guy is way shorter than I ever imagined him being. How is he so short and round, yet so badass?”

I mean this guy was literally a monster in the post. Regularly there were highlights of Barkley dunking, back down defenders, blocking shots, getting huge boards, and scoring on putbacks. And he was doing all of at what seemed to be the height of the tallest kid on the Eureka Junior High Basketball Team.

After the short banter with Barkley and the navigation through the packed-in crowd, we left.

The second my mother (standing at 5’3”) got in the car, she spoke.

“Did you see how short he is? He was just a little taller than you.”

She had been reading my mind. It was that obvious. Charles Barkley dominated the post in the NBA yet was no taller than your average 3A Kansas High School post player.

This gave me that much more respect for Mr. Barkley. He played against very tall, very talented men, in the post, in the NBA, and dominated.

Granted he carried a tremendous amount of girth, and when you met him in person it didn’t look like fat. But to give up that much height and length in the best league in the world and do the things that Barkley did, now became mind-boggling to me. He wasn’t a guard, he was a post player in the NBA at 6’3” or 6’4”. That was almost as unbelievable as the statement. ““We are going to watch the KU seniors play against Charles Barkley,”

This was before Sir Charles got chippy in a Dream Team game with lowly Angola. This was well before Barkey declared he was “not a role model” in a Nike commercial. This was well before he tried to stifle Jordan and company in the NBA Finals as the leader of the Suns. This was way before becoming a broadcaster and a main attraction on “Inside the NBA.”

But this night exemplified who I perceived Charles Barkley to be. Not the spoiled superstar with a flaring temper and a big mouth. This night I saw Barkley as an NBA underdog that night in and night out overcame tremendous physical odds to become one of the best players of his generation and in the history of the game.

It also showed what kind of human being he was. How many NBA superstars do you think would hop aboard a plane from God knows where to play with a Kansas High School All-Star team against a group of barn storming college seniors in the name of charity.

I was then cemented as a Barkley fan forever.