Draymond Green needs to stop with his Charles Barkley bashing

It’s time for Draymond Green to stop with his Charles Barkley bashing; it’s coming off as extremely petty and isn’t a good look.

Draymond Green continues to troll Charles Barkley with his latest bard stealing headlines after appearing on All The Smoke Podcast. Here are a few of the highlights from the episode:

"“He never won (expletive)”…“Honestly, it’s jealousy. It’s jealousy that somebody the same as him or smaller can come in the league and have the success I’ve had, made the money I’ve made, win the championships I’ve won. These are all things that Charles Barkley wasn’t able to do.”"

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"…“Granted, he made a lot of money for his time … it’s not my fault I benefited from the money going up.…“He scored more points than me, ight cool, but that don’t necessarily mean you had more impact on the game than me.”"

The idea that Charles Barkley didn’t have an impact on the NBA is laughable.

Charles Barkley during his time was a premier player in the league. A man who helped take his team to the NBA Finals with no other Hall of Fame players on the roster. His Phoenix Suns team lost the series to Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls, but that Suns team is considered one of the best teams to never win a championship.

Draymond is framing himself to be an all-time great but he is currently leading a Golden State team that has been so irrelevant this season it has been flexed out of prime-time slots.

Also, to say it is cool Charles Barkley scored more points than him but I (Draymond) do other things is a bit of a stretch. Yes, Draymond is a glue-guy but he has fallen from his once elite x-factor status. The media once raved about his great defense and ability to accumulate triple-doubles. Over the past few seasons, it seems those praises have been hushed, with Charles Barkley exclaiming Draymond now averages a triple-single

After Draymond won the NBA’s Defensive Player of the Year award in 2017 his stats since then have been pedestrian.

He is now a very poor 3-point shooter, shooting 30 percent or lower the last three seasons. His offensive rating and defensive ratings have crept closer and closer each year following his DPOY season.

2017-18: ORtg 110, DRtg 105
2018-19: ORtg 108, DRtg 106
2019-20: ORtg 100, DRtg 110

Charles Barkley was an 11-time all-star while Draymond is only a 3-time all-star. Chuck made five All-NBA First-Teams, five All-NBA Second-Teams, one All-NBA Third-Teams. While Draymond at 30 years old has one All-NBA Second-Team and one All-NBA Third-Team to his name.

Charles Barkley won an NBA MVP in a year Michael Jordan was playing, while Draymond’s biggest single award is a Defensive Player of the Year Award in an NBA where nobody plays defense.

Charles Barkley was so popular he not only had a signature shoe, one of his shoe commercials was once made into a comic book. Draymond really has no outside of the NBA marquee advertisements except for an invisible braces commercial.

Barkley and his candid behavior with the press paved the way for players like Draymond Green to be so open. In other leagues, players don’t have the ability to talk as freely as NBA players do and the modern NBA media landscape was molded by Barkley’s behavior in the 90s.

There seems to be this movement among NBA players that rings give you this god-like status and it elevates you above players without them. This notion seems to be pushed by players who are insecure about their careers like Shaquille O’Neal. Shaq constantly says how he and Kobe could have won more rings, forgetting that Shaq himself came back to camp out of shape, or put off surgeries to “recover on company time.”

Draymond might be insecure about the fact that he went from being the fourth-best player on his team’s first championship. To become the fifth-best player on the last two championship runs and seeing Klay Thompson and Kevin Durant play just as impressive defense as he once did.

Rings aren’t the only thing that defines you as a player, they are a separation point to pick apart players we find so close to each other that having that ring gives them an edge. Dan Marino is considered less than Joe Montana or John Elway because he never got it done.

Sometimes the rings don’t even matter to separate players; Larry Bird with his three rings is considered an equal to Magic Johnson with five rings.

Charles Barkley was voted “One of The 50 Best Players of All-Time” during his playing career because of the impact he had on the league. You could argue right now that Draymond Green isn’t even a top 25 player in the league and that he greatly benefits from playing in a system with two superstars.

This feud is dumb and petty, and for Draymond to continue it will only show how his status in the history of the NBA is actually not as important as The Round Mound of Rebounds’.