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The basketball world is full of oversized personalities that make the game even more entertaining than it would be otherwise.
But perhaps none of those personalities are quite as large of that of round mound of rebound, Charles Barkley.
Barkley, a basketball hall of famer and former NBA MVP, spends most of his time these days as an analyst for TNT and CBS.
He’s spending the month of March with additional responsibilities to his regular ‘Inside the NBA’ duties as he serves as one of the lead analyst’s for CBS’s March Madness coverage.
Barkley took just 24 hours to make a complete fool of himself during the coverage. But nobody could’ve imagine what was to come.
During Friday’s coverage of a first-round game between Pitt and Iowa State, he talked about how much the game has changed since he played.
As part of the story, Barkley talked about how he used to shower in his game jersey when they had a game the next day in order to get it clean.
His co-hosts were absolutely floored by the admission…
Charles Barkley: "We used to take a shower in our uniforms…"
"It's just easier to clean that way."
Clark Kellogg here 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/ALEheA1XvD
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) March 17, 2023
“Wait, timeout. There’s no era where you did that,” co-host Kenny Smith said as he, Clark Kellogg and Greg Gumbel struggled to control their laughter. “Stop. You’re making this up. There’s no way that you were supposed to wash your uniform with it on. You’re making this up.”
Barkley then tried to explain.
“When I first got to the NBA, we flew commercial,” he said. “So when you played the night before and flew the next morning, when was you exactly going to get your uniform cleaned? You had to wash your uniform yourself. So after the game, when you got to your room, you took a shower in your uniform, and dried it, and dropped it off on the commercial airline the next day.”
But Smith wasn’t having it.
“He’s making this up,” he said.
That’s when Kellogg chimed in.
“You can clean your uniform without showering in it,” he said. “That is possible. You can actually clean it without showering in it.”
“No, but it’s easier to do it that way,” Barkley replied.
The whole segment was surreal and it’s still tough to tell if Barkley was serious. But if anyone would shower in their jersey to clean it, it would be Charles Barkley.