Charles barkley
Photo: Joe Murphy/NBAE via Getty Images

Charles Barkley is known by most young fans for his antics on TNT’s “NBA on TNT”, but before he had a successful analyst career he had a Hall of Fame basketball career. Barkley talked about how he played in a game drunk once on ESPN Reporter’s Zach Lowe’s podcast because he thought he was getting traded to the Los Angeles Lakers during the 1992 season.

Barkley said:

“My agent calls me one morning and he says ‘hey, you’re going to get traded to the Lakers today. And me and my friends, we go out and celebrate and get drunk around noon…. He calls me later and says ‘hey you’ve been traded to the Lakers, they’re going to finalize the deal and I’ll get back to you.’

I’m on cloud nine, he calls me back three hours later, it’s like 3:30 now, he says ‘the Sixers backed out of the deal.’ And I’m drunk as [bleeped expletive] and we got a game that night, and I’m like ‘what? What are you talking about?’ And he’s like ‘the Sixers were scared to pull the trigger.’ So I’m like ‘you’re kidding me, dude we got a game tonight and I’ve been drinking since noon.’ The one thing that’s funny, I don’t even know how I played that night. I think I might have played so bad because I was so angry the Sixers didn’t pull the trigger, and then it’s just suffering the next two or three years.”

Barkley has been known to tell some great stories about his time in the NBA and this one adds to the plethora of stories he has in his arsenal. It is unknown what exact game it was but it is still a funny story to take in.