Charles Barkley has a hard time keeping his opinions to himself and on “Mike & Mike” Wednesday morning he was quite blunt about the state of the NBA this year.
“It’s been very awful basketball this year. Awful. I mean just bad,” he said. “I’m not no old guy hating. But unless Golden State is playing the Clippers, the Cavs, Oklahoma City or the Spurs, I’m not gonna watch a full [game]. It’s not very good basketball, and I love basketball. There’s probably five games (that are worth) watching top-to-bottom.”
While most of the world is captivated by the runaway dominance and brilliance of the Golden State Warriors, the league is still bloated with hilariously bad teams like the Nets, Sixers, Lakers and Knicks. Even the current eight seed in the West, Houston, is two games below .500.
Barkley isn’t criticizing the style of Steph Curry and the Warriors, like other NBA legends have. He’s wondering whether other teams can catch up or even compete with a team this historically dominant. While 10 teams crossed the 50-win threshold last season, only six teams are on pace for that this year. And are any of them really going to push the Warriors, who haven’t lost a game at Oracle Arena in 14 months?
“We got to get more competitive balance. (Your) job and our job is to promote the NBA, but we want it to be competitive. We don’t want to have four good teams. I want people in Milwaukee, I want people in Philly, I want people in Boston. I want to see competitive games and right now we’re not getting that.”
He’s not wrong.
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About Matt Lichtenstadter
Recent Maryland graduate. I've written for many sites including World Soccer Talk, GianlucaDiMarzio.com, Testudo Times, Yahoo's Puck Daddy Blog and more. Houndstooth is still cool, at least to me. Follow me @MattsMusings1 on Twitter, e-mail me about life and potential jobs at matthewaaron9 at Yahoo dot com.