Charles Barkley Tells THE TRUTH About LeBron James?!

I meant peace. So recently, the NBA All-Star roster was revealed in regards to who will be the starters for this upcoming 2018 NBA All-Star Game. This has led to much speculation on how LeBron James, who was predominantly viewed as the best player in the NBA, is now perceived because he was not the leading vote-getter amongst the players. Giannis Antetokounmpo was.

NBA Hall of Famer Charles Barkley has hypothesized that the reason for that is that the players view LeBron James as a drama queen. This led to a conversation between Stephen A. Smith and Max Kellerman in regards to why they would view him as such and also what his overall legacy will be in the NBA.

They're gonna talk about number one, the NBA All-Star Game, but he narrowly lost the player vote to Giannis Antetokounmpo. And Charles Barkley has a theory as to why. Thursday night on Inside the NBA, Barkley said, "I think the players like Greek Freak's personality better. LeBron is a great player and a great guy, but he's a drama queen."

No, look, I partially agree with that. LeBron is certainly a drama queen. Oh, when I say a drama queen, a [ __ ] starter, someone who likes to passively aggressively attempt to manipulate players. He thinks that he's a little bit more cerebral than he actually is. You know, it really only comes off as transparent and annoying. So, from a certain perspective, I agree with Charles. But I also think that there's a degree of, we're just looking for somebody new. LeBron has been the most prominent name in the NBA now for the last, I'd say five years, definitely. You know, the NBA is kind of came out of the era where there was a dispute as to who was better, LeBron or Kobe. There were other players that LeBron could share the limelight with in the late 2000s, even though he was growing in prominence during that era, but you had a faction who believed Kobe was the best, you had a faction who believed LeBron was the best, and then you had a faction who believed that Tim was the most impactful. I always remember that the new girl on the block is always going to get the most attention. Giannis brings a lot to the table, and you'd be surprised how close a season Giannis is having to LeBron when you really put the numbers. Giannis is actually having a better season than LeBron in regards to PR. It's by one-tenth of a point. But when you consider that LeBron is having, you know, pretty much maybe his best overall offensive season of his career, and Giannis is right there, it is conceivable that Giannis is right on his heels in regards to the best player in the Eastern Conference.

We take you right to the fourth quarter with about ten seconds to play. Isiah Thomas draws the foul for Shelvin Mack. Let's take another look. If you get all ball, I don't really know that's debatable. Frank Vogel, the Magic coach, does not think that's debatable. He is mad, and now his team is losing. Isiah drains the shot. The Cavs are up by one now with about five seconds to play. Alford ain't driving, trying to get it to go, and he does not. The ball goes out of bounds. Orlando has a few problems. Their main problem is two-point guard Elfrid Payton. Without a dominant point guard, you're not going to be a good team in today's NBA. There are certain guards who are pretty good, but they're not great. Alfred Payton is one of them. On a championship-level team, he's your backup. He's not your starter. Bobo's gonna have to do something about that very quickly. The problem with Orlando also is that their coach, Frank Vogel, has never shown that he's understood how to win in today's NBA. And when I say today's NBA, I'm talking about over the last four or five years now. He was moderately successful in his last couple of years in Indiana. We know that Paul George's horrific injury crippled them. But in the modern-day NBA, which in the last three, four years, you have to have a dominant point, a very good shooting guard, and shooters around the floor. He does not seem to understand how to coach in that style. So all I know has to figure out what they want to do with 0.2 seconds left. The Magic would not get another shot attempt, and the Cavaliers would hold on to win, 104 to 103.

Bao's for Thunder on Saturday on ABC. And LeBron has a three out. What he wants to do with that hair, too, because he looks like somebody put a line of tape. You know, like when people go for those body waxings, top of his head look like somebody put windows body wax and tapes on the top, and peeled it off. Well, appreciate just Sir Charles Cola breezy, a drama queen. So technically, he's a drama king. Stephen A., does Barkley have a point on the run? He does have a point, but it's not. It's it's it's not about LeBron being a drama queen. I would never disrespect LeBron like that by calling him that. Well, you never disrespect him like that publicly. You've never used those words, but you pretty much implied that. Especially recently, it's very clear to me that you're getting news from your sources, from your outlets, from your conduits of LeBron James's quote-unquote [ __ ]. It's obvious that the Kyrie Irving situation has blown up in LeBron's face. And LeBron, at this point, operates like a political dignitary. He has to have people put out certain, you know, put out certain stories before they catch fire. And he's looking really bad with this Kyrie situation right now. And I'm sure that Stephen A. has certain viewpoints on that story because of a background and intelligence gathering that he has, which any Doggett reporter should have. I'm sure that he knows a lot of things about this story that he's not willing to reveal right now, which has spurred on his recent quote-unquote attacks on LeBron James. I do think it's somewhat disrespectful to call him that. But the reason why Charles Barkley has a point is because Charles Barkley knows what I know, and that is, Max, that there's a lot of people in the league who have said that about LeBron James for years. It's not a secret going throughout the NBA. There are a lot of people who feel that way about it. They feel he cheated his way to his first two titles in Miami. They, you know, the public and they feel like the media, what-have-you, favors him excessively because obviously he's a box office attraction. More importantly, the ultimate thing, and this I totally, totally agree, because this is why I say he's always trying to control the narrative. They consider him the master at being passive-aggressive. He is the kind of person that would drop one-liners or drop little things and says things without seeing them directly. So he has a way out of the situation that he may have helped create.

Let me say this in response to Stephen A.'s little soliloquy there. It's low rent. Number one, LeBron did not cheat his way into two titles. And I hold the brunt under as much scrutiny as anyone else. I think that the greater you are, you have to be held under even greater scrutiny so that the platitudes that you receive are actually earned as opposed to acquired, just, you know, just based off of consensus. You know, whatever people achieve based off of consensus, based off of consensus or mass appeal, there's normally not real. It's normally just based in hearsay. So it's very, very important to scrutinize, scrutinize everything that people have accomplished, that when they receive these accolades, it's richly deserved. Point being is this, there was great controversy when LeBron James decided to break the NBA paradigm of sticking it out with your team, and he decided to leave and go to Miami. But he went there, and he was the lead player on a championship team that he was able to formulate. Now, he did not go to a team that was already made. But look, we all knew that it was only gonna be a matter of time before that team became a champion because he brought together three of the top 15 to 20 players in the NBA. Chris Bosh would be no lower than probably 15 if you would have done a list of top players in the league at that time. And it was LeBron James's magnificent performance in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference Finals that saved their season. And he was also great in the finals in 2013. He was the MVP of the NBA Finals, even though Ray Allen saved his ass, there's no doubt about that.

The real issue that you have, a lot of old-head NBA stars from the '90s who can't get over the fact that they did not have the the economic freedom to leave their team and go to another team, or really, they did not have the foresight to leave their team and go to another team and team up with other players. Now, what if Charles Barkley had teamed up with Reggie Miller when they were both 28 years old? Well, what if Patrick Ewing had teamed up with Karl Malone and John Stockton when they were 27? They'd probably beat Jordan, but they didn't. So it was really just mano a mano, and Jordan was greater. So a lot of times, you'll encounter this in life, not just in sports. Two-dimensional thinkers tend to be resentful towards three-dimensional thinkers because they cannot conceive what a three-dimensional thinker can conceive. LeBron James has a great deal of foresight. Now, in regards to the other issues that people have with him, in regards to his pettiness and his passive aggressiveness, there's definitely merit there. But you cannot fault LeBron for being smarter than you and taking advantage of a modern-day situation or scenario or creating it. Because when he got on TV and held that press conference and decided to go to Miami, he totally changed the NBA paradigm of what a player could conceive. Like, like players would not even conceive leaving their team, star players, and going to another team before he did that willingly, willfully. I didn't even think like that. It was like people who, you know, I know explorers who decided to go somewhere else. That's why I would never come down on him for that, or Kevin Durant for that, because your job as a high-level thinking manager is to make your life easier, not harder. You cannot allow low-level thinkers to dictate to you how to think and how to carry yourself and how to move on with your life. Low-level thinkers are miserable, and misery loves company. In terms of causing controversy or causing storylines to come his way or try to control the narrative. Now, if you listen to his side of the Kim, they won't even deny that he tries to control the narrative. What they'll say, and Stephen A., how can you blame him? He's the most scrutinized athlete in the modern-day era. If Michael Jordan and others had to play in the age of Twitter and Facebook and beyond, how would they be so? To use that as rationale to justify some of the passive-aggressive tendencies that LeBron.

Ask Michael Jordan is on record as stating that he wouldn't want to play today. He's on record. If then, he probably couldn't play today because of the heightened level scrutiny. And I give LeBron credit for that. You know, LeBron has a lot of feminine energy, has a lot of feminine ways about him. And I think that that has actually helped him in this era because he's so infatuated with it, with attention, and with being provocateur-y, being a troll, which a lot of males today are infatuated with because a lot of males today have feminine energy. They get off on going back and forth on Twitter, on Facebook, on Instagram, and YouTube. They want to argue for 100 comments. That's LeBron. And that has kind of created that shelf for him and how to deal with this. You know, we know what this current NBA, you know, architecture, he's able to know to really thrive in this era of hyper scrutiny and theatricality and emotionality because he's very emotional and theatrical. Jordan and the players of his era, that was a much more masculine era, so they were not with all the drama and and all the nonsense, at least not publicly. Appetites of controlled narratives about himself. And in all honesty, you really, really can't blame them because of today's world. It makes total sense, which is why I think that I was God against saying what Charles Barkley said. But there is no doubt that what Charles Barkley said has been said by many folks within the NBA community. LeBron James is highly respected, Max, no question. And it's big. His business acumen is exceptional, and he's done a lot for the game of basketball, and he's done a lot for a lot of guys in the league, and he should be, he should be respected for that because he has helped out a lot of guys in the end, and he has tried to show them the way in regards to business acumen and a ruling class mentality, which LeBron James certainly does have, which goes along with it with his three-dimensional thought process. The issue with LeBron is that he's also a corporate [ __ ], a corporate pawn. And um, he has a lot of female energy, has a lot of feminine energy. So those two things balance it out. All right, that's part of the good with the bad. And in regards to Stephen A. saying that LeBron likes to control the narrative, all kings want to control the narrative. You know, I tell, I, you know, I tell you guys that every video where this topic comes up, why is that? Because the king believes that he can perceive the situation greater than anybody else who will be talking about him can. The king's attitude is, I know what occurred better than anybody else. So why would I allow someone else to tell my story? That's just basic common sense for anybody who has a ruling class mentality. In regards to why he wants to control the narrative, they accused Kyrie of the same thing when he was on their show. No, all Kyrie is a three-dimensional thinker. He was not going to let Max Kellerman dictate to him what the conventions or the dynamics of his relationship with LeBron were. And when he was ready, he was going to bring it out. Vitriol towards him, and they believed that his willingness to control the narrative is what grates their nerves. And privately, they don't respect them nearly as much as they should.

Sounds like you're talking about yourself, Stephen A. A lot of things that you said there to end your little statements are very much akin to what you say on air about LeBron, that he controls the narrative and things of that nature. So maybe you're talking about yourself. Who the hell knows? There's the issue. You can't lead your statement about LeBron James saying that he's so much better than everybody else in the league, and then not be able to explain why he keeps losing in the finals. Yes, basketball is a team game. If your, if your levels multiple levels above the second-best player in the NBA, then you should be able to transcend whatever issues you could possibly encounter in the finals. So one of those two things are not true. Maybe more than one. But clearly, LeBron James is not levels better than than who he's facing in the finals because he keeps losing. The rest of the plane with the bomb stars, and people understand that. But look, Jordan, it was the same thing, right? But I know a former player, and the only reason I won't give his name now is I don't remember if he told me this off the record in a personal conversation, but I can relay the story. He said, Max, I thought Mike was Satan. I said, I know what you mean. It feels like he sold his soul, right? He said, no, no, I think he was Satan himself. And he told me some stories about how Michael Jordan was basically superhuman. So even though people may have been jealous of Jordan or envious of Jordan, they had to respect his like, pure demonic superiority. Right? And of course, because Jordan changed the NBA paradigm on the floor, the way that with the way that LeBron James has been able to change it off the floor. Once again, before Michael Jordan, it was considered taboo that your best player be a shooting guard, and that that, and that, and that shooting guard be leading the league in scoring, and you think that you have a realistic chance to win a championship. Like, you know, a lot of people today, they really don't understand the context of the rise of Michael Jordan and the situation that he was put in by the media in regards to them castigating his style of playing, not being a winning style. And for the most part, it wasn't until Phil Jackson came along and raised his level of understanding and and cognitive function on the basketball court on how to do what he did best while also utilizing his teammates. So there was a lot to that whole situation. You know, people think that Jordan just had it easy in regards to media coverage, and that's just not the case. But the difference is that the media back then left it on the court. They left their criticisms on the court. Now, with social media and the 24-hour media cycle, LeBron has to deal with far greater scrutiny than Michael Jordan ever did. And once again, Michael Jordan's on record as stating that he would not even want to play today. And that to me is why Jordan keeps a very low profile. You very rarely ever hear from him. He normally does not grant interviews. I mean, other than to his friend Ahmad Rashad. I saw an interview with him for Cigar Aficionado a while ago, and that's basically it. Michael Jordan is pretty much unplugged from society. I think that he's burnt out from all the attention that he got over the last 30-plus years, and I really don't blame him because, as I mentioned on another video, the media deals in an cult worship. They create cult of personalities around many of the affluent people in this society, these so-called celebrities, and they do that so that they can create a scenario where they can tell you down. And Jordan understands that very well. Fear and respect the way Jordan did. But to know, right, that the split, the story is all about him, and they are purely hating on this man. Stephen A., the fact is, look, is he imperfect? Yes, he's a human being. And yes, he is imperfect. Yes, he is a human being. And yes, there's gonna be an element of hate. Well, that's something that you have to deal with as a king. When you're a king, everybody's not gonna come next to you and get down on one knee and say, thank you, my lord, what is thy bidding? They're not gonna do that. They're gonna applaud for the throne. And that's okay. That's part of wearing a crown. That's why you have that that slogan or that credo, "Heavy is the head that wears the crown," because you constantly have to be concerned with, aware of what is going on around you. But that's that is part and parcel of being a king. Is that through that three-dimensional thinking, that three-dimensional comprehension? Because if you didn't, if you did not think like that, you wouldn't, you would never have attained to the throne in the first place.

To his time, from the time he was a kid with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, right, Lew Alcindor back then, had the kind of proportional scrutiny, but there was just much less media. And Lybrand, think about Kareem, by the way, who is a genuine intellectual. I mean, intellectuals are few and far between, but also in sports, they're probably even fewer of them. And it's Nonaka job to tell if the intelligence is obviously not stupid, but Kareem is intellectual. He went to college. LeBron didn't. Not only didn't go to college, he went to UCLA. Not only did he go to UCLA, he graduated. He, yes, but you know, none of those things comprise an intellectual. What makes Kareem an intellectual is his cognitive function, his awareness, his quote-unquote intuition, his perceptual abilities, not the fact that he went to an institution which Colvin known as UCLA, which is what these universities are there, which Colvin's in disguise. Now, Kareem, because he went to UCLA, was opened up to a lot of alternative thoughts and ideologies and philosophies that have affected his thought process down the line, which is what happens to people when they go to college. And then nothing wrong with that, as long as you know, you have the mental faculties to separate the meat from the bones. And a lot of people don't have that, so they get indoctrinated with certain ideologies and and, you know, it becomes part of who they are, and it just is what it is. Most people don't know how to distinguish between what's right for them and what's wrong for them, what's good for them and what isn't. But once again, will make Kareem, or what makes him an intellectual, is his god-given perceptual abilities, not, not, not because of what institution he attended. That LeBron is not an intellectual, but he has other gifts mentally that he has been able to parlay into his life as a, you know, as a productive person to make himself a being of higher standing. LeBron is able to see things two or three steps before they happen, not only on the court, but off the court, in regards to business opportunities, and he certainly deserves credit for that. He did well there. And now writes columns in magazines about complex social issues that are worth reading. I mean, Karina is as mental faculties, he has abilities that others do not have. And even Kareem had to develop and already had a thick skin in order to deal with the kind of scrutiny and pressure. Again, look, every public figure has to have thick skin. You cannot be a public figure without thick skin. You have to be able to weed out the, you know, the what they call the white noise. You have to be able to do that, or you're not going to be able to function as a so-called public figure or as a quote-unquote celebrity. LeBron, it didn't happen. LeBron, LeBron has welcomed this kind of stuff with open arms, and it has embraced everyone and brought them in as handled it much better, I would say that Kareem, even though there's been more pressure on him. I agree, and I give LeBron credit for that. He's been able to deal with a lot. When you look at his environment where he came from, that's why I make those videos about how he succeeded despite his mother, because the, the mother worship cult in America is really just an attempt to take away from the achievements and the fortitude that many men, particularly so-called black men, have shown to rise in their environment. And let me say this, there are many men who owe their lives to their mothers, literally, not just because she brought them into the world via her birth canal, but because she was the only one that they could turn to in times of adversity. And LeBron James's case, his mother was the one created most, most of the adversity of his life. So that's, that's where you have to, you know, distinguish between the two. Go make that or create that partition. Know when I make these videos and I say certain things about LeBron James's mother, I know I already know that I'm gonna get backlash from certain factions, why? Because a lot of people are under my control and they don't know it. They worship the mother goddess, and they don't know it. And that's okay, because whenever you bring four up, the truth is going to create separation. They're going to create division. But we have to be able to analyze things properly with sharpness and acuity, or you're just going to go along with the rest of the crowd, the rest of the lemmings, and fall off the cliff like the rest of the lemmings are going to fall off the cliff.

So yes, LeBron James deserves a great deal of appreciation and as many accolades as can be bestowed upon him for rising out of his environment. People will say, well, you know, he was a blue chip prospect. He's been, no, he was treated favorably. There were many blue chip prospects in basketball over the last 40 years. How many have become LeBron James? Only one. Only one. Okay, from from his from his type of background. Wow. It's his personality. He's been able. And by the way, he did this and presided over the NBA at during the advent of social media, and yet got out of it and learned better than anyone else. And that's another thing. Since Max Kellerman brought up the, you know, the point about how he learned how to manipulate social media, and of course, D Binet has gone on and on about how LeBron likes to control the narrative. All kings utilize propaganda for their own means. All kings want to control the storyline. That is why the first thing that a dignitary or president, a king, a prime minister has to become fully accustomed to once they assume power is who are my ministers of intelligence? Whether it be the CIA, MI5, Israeli Mossad, whoever. You have to understand what, you know, what they're doing and what you need them to do, because they're going to control the story. As LeBron James, once again, he has a ruling class mentality. It's part of the drama queen or control or whatever. But you would be hard-pressed to find someone who's dealt with a scrutiny better than LeBron. And when people jump on him for that, they are player-hating. Why are you guys? Are you, but you player-hating or not player-hating? Charles Barkley has a point if he's alluded to what folks fail about it, because remember, his answer was predicated on the question as to why LeBron didn't lead the player vote for the All-Star Game. The Greek Freak did that. So Charles Barkley, there's substance there because they all play in the legal field. Way, match this. Some dudes are walking around, and I'm telling you this is a fact. There's some players that reached out to me when KD went to go to Sanderson. What you bothering him for? LeBron instigated all of this. Good for him. It's good that King Dean has drastically shifted the balance of power. It's good that KD one-upped the King, because the fact of the matter is, LeBron James instigated all of this other stuff. Absolutely. And that is why LeBron was so frustrated when that occurred because he got checkmated. LeBron was so accustomed to being at the forefront, at the vanguard of revolutionary thinking, of quote-unquote evolutionary thinking in professional sports. Therefore, another player to trump him, it shocked him. He still has not gotten over the fact that KD left OKC to go to Golden State because LeBron James is a basketball mastermind. He knew that KD fit in perfectly with their system. There was no way that he'd be able to beat Golden State. He knew that coming into the 2016-17 season, had Golden State's that stood pat, that he would have had a mental advantage over them that they would never have been able to transcend. Because when Cleveland came back from down 3-1, they had Golden State's heart after that, and it would have been, it would have been a lot of the same in the 2016-17 season. That series would have been totally different in the finals. I'm not saying that Golden State definitely would not have won without KD, say if they still had Harrison Barnes, but it would have been another seven-game series, and it would have been LeBron James playing trying to play bowling pins again with him being the bowling ball all over again in the finals, like he did in the last three games of the 2016 finals. Y'all go out there, y'all give him all the love in the world, Stephen A. That's all y'all do. Y'all shower LeBron James all the love in the world. Well, damn, if I was six-nine, 260, I would be able to do such some of the things he did as well. These are the common things that get said. All I'm trying to say to you is that he's a product of God's ability, his size, his massive strength, all of that, because everybody can't walk around six-nine, 260. Yeah, but in the end, they look at that and get bored with the willingness to control the narrative, and they have a problem.