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The Barkley: The award that nobody wants
by Roland Lazenby / April 20, 2006

Instead, I’ve got the job of calling out the league’s Most Visible Problem. The award, by the way, is named the Barkley Award, in honor of a guy who once got angry during an NBA game and spit out in disgust, only to watch in horror as his loogie landed on a little girl sitting courtside.

Of course, we all love Charles these days as a humorist/broadcaster known for offering up his unblinking commentary. But there was a time when Sir Charles was reviled as a young knucklehead. I bring this up only to remind readers that we are fussing at players for being immature. They are not war criminals or sexual predators (we hope), so their getting a Most Visible Problem award, a Barkley, doesn’t mean that some day when we’ve all grown up a bit we won’t cherish them as good and regular gentlemen.

Some writers take considerable joy in lashing out at recalcitrant young millionaires, guys who are cashing huge checks and not only doing little to earn their money but doing a great deal to devalue the performances and careers of those players who do lay their hearts on the line every night.

I find the Most Visible Problem candidates to be disgusting. They have violated a special trust. They are the guys who give the NBA its bad name in America’s heartland.

Mention the NBA in Iowa or Nebraska or Virginia or anywhere in small-town America, and you’re likely to get the usual sneer. They don’t play hard in the NBA. A bunch of rich, overpaid prima donnas. Who cares about the NBA?

In fact, I heard a commentator on ESPN radio in Roanoke, Va., spewing out such commentary just the other day. He said he didn’t even watch the NBA until the Finals, because up until then, no one played hard.

Earlier this year, I blew a gasket when a sportswriter for a San Diego newspaper said the Lakers were playing a “meaningless” game in January. I wrote back and asked him how he could call himself a sportswriter if he thought a January game by a team battling for its playoff life was meaningless. But you really can’t blame him or the folks in middle America for espousing their prejudices against the NBA.

Each season there are just enough Most Visible Problems to build on the league’s long-held negative image as the domain of spoiled superstars.

I do think it’s important to note that you never heard such drivel coming out of Chicago when MJ patrolled the courts of the league. Just as you never hear it today coming out of San Antonio or Detroit or Dallas or Utah or anyplace where players and coaches are laying their hearts and futures on the line.

That’s because night in and night out there are NBA teams and players who leave nothing to question. They play and play and play and travel and travel and travel, a grueling schedule that most folks in the heartland would never dream of undertaking.

I think it’s important to remind the public of this before I launch into some diatribe about this year’s embarrassing collection of immature, selfish louts who have done really stupid things.

This assignment is made all the more difficult by the fact that I’m pretty sure if someone had handed me a blank check worth millions when I was 19 or 20 or even 48, I would have led the parade of knuckleheads. That’s why I have trouble with most moralizing sportswriters I know. From what I’ve seen of my peers in the sports media today, most of them would be nightmares for their bosses if they were ever paid any kind of serious money. And not just the young ones. The older a sportswriter gets, the more ornery he gets. Give a sportswriter a lot of money and he (yes, I said he, because most of them are still men) will do little or no work, choosing instead the plump life, dodging deadlines and editors and any sort of responsibility.

Ask a sportswriter to be a part of a team? No way. They occasionally travel in packs but they’re mostly loners, far more detached than any athlete would ever dream of being.

Okay, okay, the audience is nervous. The bandleader has started that little riff to let me know that my nomination speech has strayed and run long. But I had to get a few things off my chest.

Anyway, the envelopes, please. Here are the nominees who have earned recognition this season for giving the NBA a bad name.

- Darius Miles, Portland Trail Blazers: Sadly, the Blazers still owe this guy $34 million. He balked at the discipline and professionalism demanded by new Blazers coach Nate McMillan. Some would argue that Miles’ game is the problem. He simply isn’t as good as his rep or his contract. But the troubles really started in December with his complaining of an unresponsive right knee after minor surgery (note: minor surgery is that which is performed upon someone else). McMillan reduced his role and wanted him to come off the bench. The friction between coach and player built until Miles was benched for missing a shootaround March 23 in Phoenix, saying he overslept. During late April he was sent home from Los Angeles after he changed into street clothes during halftime of a game against the Clippers.

- Zach Randolph, Portland Trail Blazers: Sadder news still is that the Blazers owe him $73.5 million over the next five years (with Miles’ money, that’s about $110 million in bad attitudes for a team that lost 60 games this year). Like Miles, he has shown frustration from his conflict with McMillan, long known as a league disciplinarian. During the season, Randolph was kicked out of a practice, late to five shootarounds, and was suspended one game after leaving the Rose Garden during the third quarter of an April game.

- Ron Artest, Indiana Pacers (another Ron Artest has shown up for work with the Sacramento Kings):
Ronnie has established his rep for being one of the NBA's most controversial and unpredictable players. It’s an image that took seed long before his involvement in the 2004 Pacers-Pistons brawl. His image blossomed this year with his subsequent season-long suspension by the Pacers and virtually flowered with his decision to force his way out of Indiana. Upon his arrival with the Kings, Artest stepped up as one of the team’s leading scorers and brought a new defensive toughness to the struggling Kings, to the point that they righted their problems and made the playoffs. Yet his overall nuttiness is of such a high profile that he merits at least consideration for a Barkley.

- The New York Knicks (as a team, including coach Larry Brown and stars Stephon Marbury and Steve Francis): No one other than Barkley himself has had tremendous fun this season belittling the overpriced, hapless Knicks. The analyst for TNT took one final on-air shot at the team as the regular season ended. Asked on a conference call previewing the NBA playoffs what he would do if he were Knicks owner James Dolan, he said, "The first thing I'd do is kill myself."

"I've been associated with the NBA for 20 years and I've never seen a situation that bad before . . . I don't know what the hell they are going to do. They have players who make a ton of money who nobody wants."

Asked about guards Stephon Marbury and Steve Francis, Barkley replied, "They ain't never going to be able to play together – never. If I'm another GM in the league I would not trade for those guys."

And the winner of the 2006 Barkley is. . . . The New York Knicks. How could we overlook the nomination speech of the master himself? It would be just like Red nominating Phil Jackson for the Auerbach Trophy for best coach.

Besides, how can one player, no matter how immature, stand up against not just a roster of immature, overpriced meatheads but an entire franchise that has spent hundreds of millions in search of a clue. In New York no less.

Now that’s a Most Visible Problem.

Roland Lazenby is the author of The Show: The Inside Story Of The Spectacular Los Angeles Lakers In The Words Of Those Who Lived It, recently released by McGraw-Hill

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