Leave it to the one and only Charles Barkley to find the connection between topics as seemingly disparate as sports analytics and yoga. Any ideas? Give up?
"First of all, they (analytics) are just stats. They just gave it a name," Barkley said. "It's kind of like yoga. Yoga's nothing but stretching. They just call it yoga so they can charge more. I tell people, yoga's just stretching. They gave it a different name to charge you for it. The statistics, they change the name — 'We're gonna charge you for analytics now' — and they just raised the price, but it's nothing but stats."
Barkley joined Kevin Durant and Eddie Gonzalez for the second episode of this season of "The ETCs," from Boardroom and Cadence13, and discussed analytics along with other topics, including social media, financial responsibility for young players and how close he was to being, in his own words, too fat to have a successful NBA career.
For those latter two topics, getting drafted into the 76ers organization may have been the only situation that worked out for Chuck. Julius Erving taught him a valuable lesson in dealing with the sudden flow of income coming right out of college — like making him sell his five cars and only stick with one — as well as getting him to dress properly like a professional. And as for fellow Sixers legend Moses Malone... well, he was a little more blunt with his advice.
"Moses is the best thing that ever happened to me, because in college, I was 300 pounds. I was in college for three years, I led the league in rebounding every year I was in college, but I was about 295 to 298, somewhere in there the whole time," Barkley said, acknowledging that doesn't cut it in the NBA. "And I get there and I'm the No. 5 pick in the NBA Draft and I'm not getting to play."
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Barkley then went to Malone to seek advice regarding his situation, and the legendary center couldn't have been more brutally honest with the then-rookie.
"He says, 'Young fella, you're fat and you're lazy.' And I'm like, what?" Barkley said. "He says, 'You're lazy because you're fat... Charles, you can't play basketball at 290-300 pounds in the NBA, the guys are too good. And from that day forward, this guy changed my whole life.
"...And if Moses hadn't taken me under his wing, you know what I'd be saying? Welcome to McDonalds... that would've been my damn job."
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