Charles Barkley has been a quote machine this year, and he added to his own madness when he weighed in on the Lakers an an airport on Tuesday.
Charles Barkley doesn’t have the best relationship when it comes to the Ball family, so it’s not surprising that he didn’t have many nice things to say about the Los Angeles Lakers on Tuesday.
While at an airport waiting for a cab, TMZ caught up with Barkley, and quickly asked him about his thoughts on the Lakers’ playoff chances. Barkley gave a quick answer, and when asked if the Lakers are a playoff team in the Western Conference, he replied, “No. Hell no!”
Next, Barkley was asked to clarify his answer and give his thoughts on the Lakers’ chances with Lonzo Ball at the helm as the team’s point guard. Given Barkley’s back and forth with Lonzo’s dad, LaVar, it’s not surprising that Lonzo doesn’t make a difference in Sir Charles’ mind.
The answer isn’t truly surprising, and actually makes a lot of sense given how loaded the Western Conference is, between the Golden State Warriors, Houston Rockets and Oklahoma City Thunder. However, you could clearly feel some animosity coming with the comments towards the Ball family.
Barkley notoriously has given and taken shots with LaVar over the last few months, and even challenged him to a game of one-on-one way back in March when the LaVar madness truly started. Barkley was openly going against UCLA in each matchup that they had, and said it was because of LaVar that he was rooting against Lonzo’s Bruins.
Obviously nothing came out of the one-on-one challenge, unfortunately, but the feud obviously hasn’t died out at all since it really got started back in March when the hype truly heated up for Lonzo during March Madness.