Charles Barkley talking:



"You take Karl. Karl needed John Stockton. That's not a knock on Karl; it's just a fact. I could get mine any time I wanted to. So I'll say it on the record: I was better than Karl. Nothing against Karl. He was great. But I was better. The only thing he did better than me was score, and that came down to John Stockton."

[Dream Team Excerpt: The greatest game nobody ever saw<http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2012/magazine/07/23/usa-basketball-game-nobody-saw/index.html>]

I ask Charles how much better he would've been had he dedicated himself to conditioning like Malone.

"I always laugh when I hear that," says Charles. "There are four guys who got 20,000 points, 10,000 rebounds and 4,000 assists. So I'm saying, 'What the [expletive] else could I have done if only four guys did the [expletive] I did?' Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem and me."

(Actually, Charles has the number and the players wrong. Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Malone, Barkley and Kevin Garnett are the five players in this exclusive club.)


Read more: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2012/writers/jack_mccallum/07/24/charles-barkley-dream-team-olympics/index.html#ixzz21g77kKf1