Charles Barkley hates the Knicks for how they handled the trade of Patrick Ewing.
“I got nothing good to say about the Knicks,” Barkley said last night. “The way they treated my good friend Patrick Ewing, I wish nothing but bad upon them.”
Aw, c’mon, Sir Charles. Don’t sugar-coat it. Say what you really feel.
“They treated him horrible. He’s truly a great guy and has done a lot for the Knicks. They treated him terribly. The fans treated him terribly and the press treated him terribly. I wish nothing good upon the Knicks,” said Barkley before a charity dinner at the Waldorf for the benefit of the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis, the organization set up, in part, through the work of former Dolphins All-Pro Nick Buoniconti, whose son Marc was paralyzed playing football.
Barkley acknowledged that the Knicks “had to trade” Ewing after it was extensively reported that the Knicks were trying to deal him. Barkley said he went through the same thing in Phoenix. Once a player hears that, he has to leave.
“If your wife says, ‘Honey, I’m gonna date different guys all summer but if I don’t find one better, I’m coming back to you,’ that’s not going to happen. And obviously, that’s the situation that happened with Patrick.”
Barkley, like Ewing one of the 50 greatest players of all-time, feels the Knicks as currently composed are a 50-win, first-playoff-round-and-out team. But he also thinks the Knicks are not done dealing. The main reason? They’re no better than they were.
“I don’t see what they did to improve themselves,” offered Sir Charles, who’s moving to a studio analyst’s job with TNT this season. “They did not improve … And they handled Patrick like a circus.
“They’ve got to get rid of one of them guys. They’ve got to make another trade. They can’t be through, the way they’re structured now. It’s common sense they’ve got to do something. They can’t get all three of those guys minutes,” Barkley assessed, referring to Glen Rice, Allan Houston and Latrell Sprewell.
“The other two guys have to have the ball and Glen Rice needs the ball to help his team. He’s not a great defender, he’s not a great rebounder. He brings scoring to the table. How many attempts is he going to get with Spree and Houston out there? Not many.”
