Top 100 NBA Players: #20

Charles Barkley

(Kalb: #21, Simmons: #19, BBR: #13)

No player in the top 20 did more with less than Charles Barkley, who earned the nickname "The Round Mound of Rebound" because of his short, pudgy stature that didn't seem to lend itself to being a great rebounder, but Barkley didn't let that stop his, and he ended his career as the greatest rebounder under 6-6 in league history.

In his third season in the NBA, Barkley, generously listed at 6-6, led the entire league in rebounding, the shortest player ever to do so, with an average of 14.6 per game. But that wasn't all he did. He was also scoring 23 points per game and handing out nearly 5 assists while shooting nearly 60% from the field on a team that already featured a superstar by the name of Julius Erving.

In 1990, there was a bit of controversy when Barkley came in second in the MVP voting to Magic Johnson despite getting more first-place votes than the Lakers star. Even though those two were the ones that finished at the top of the voting the true MVP that year should have been Michael Jordan, with Barkley placed correctly at #2. Here are those three players' stats for that season:

Jordan - 33.6 pts, 6.9 reb, 6.3 ast, 2.8 stl, .526 FG%, .848 FT%
Barkley - 25.2 pts, 11.5 reb, 3.9 ast, 1.9 stl, .600 FG%, .749 FT%
Johnson - 22.3 pts, 6.6 reb, 11.5 ast, 1.7 stl, .480 FG%, .890 FT%

Looking at these three great players, it's tough to say which is best. Magic was among the league leaders in free throw percentage and assists, and Barkley was among the leaders in field goal percentage and rebounds. The difference is that Jordan was the league leader in both scoring and steals, and finished second among these three in the other four categories.

Three years later Barkley moved to the Phoenix Suns and became the third player ever to win the MVP in his first season after being traded as he led the Suns to the league's best record and their second trip ever to the NBA Finals. Once again that season, Barkley was really the second-best player, because Michael Jordan was still on the court. Here are those two player's stats from 1993:

Jordan - 32.6 pts, 6.7 reb, 5.5 ast, 2.8 stl, .495 FG%, .352 3P%, .837 FT%
Barkley - 25.6 pts, 12.2 reb, 5.1 ast, 1.6 stl, 1.0 blk, .520 FG%, .765 FT%

Once again, Jordan led the league in both scoring and steals, and by this time he had developed a reliable 3-point shot as well. The kicker was when the Bulls defeated the top-seeded Suns in the Finals as Jordan took home his 3rd straight Finals MVP award, while Barkley would never return to the penultimate series.

Two events that happened while Barkley was with his final team, the Houston Rockets, helped cement his legacy of always giving a little more than most would have normally expect of him. In his first game in Houston, he grabbed a career-high 33 rebounds, acknowledging the fact that he was no longer his team's primary scoring option and settling into a role as the guy who had to do the dirty work.

The other memorable happening was the way he ended his career. Early in the 1999-00 season, he suffered a major injury that most assumed would end his career, but Barkley worked very hard on rehabbing his injured quadriceps and returned for one final game in April, in which he was put into the game long enough to grab an offensive rebound and put it back in, after which he walked off the court to a standing ovation and retired immediately, ending his career on a positive rather than a negative note.

The biggest thing that prevented Barkley from progressing farther into the top 20 was that he is one of only 4 players remaining that never won an NBA championship, and he is the only member of the top 20 that played in the Finals only once. Despite his best efforts, which included a triple-double in the Finals against Chicago and 56 points in a first-round game against Golden State, he was never able to become a champion.

Barkley and Pettit had very similar career trajectories, so it is not easy to separate the two. Pettit won a championship, something that eluded Barkley, and led his team to a few other Finals, but Barkley's peak season was superior to Pettit's, and he remained a star-level player for several years after Pettit had called it quits.