Stephen Curry has been the toast of the basketball world ever since he led the Golden State Warriors to their 4th championship in the last 8 seasons. Curry won his first Finals MVP in the process to collect the only thing missing from his already-impressive resume and many now have the Warriors superstar as a top 10 player of all time.
Shaquille O’Neal went as far as to say he was top 10 even before he won this title, but Charles Barkley doesn’t seem to share that sentiment even now. During an appearance on the “Dan Patrick Show”, Barkley was asked about who he would take between Isiah Thomas and Curry, to which he had this to say.
(starts at the 2:36 mark):
“I thought that when Steph won the championship this year, that moved him to the table with Isiah. You know because I held those two (titles) with KD against him a little bit, but now this is the second time he has led a team to the championship, so I moved him to the table. When you look at levels in the hall of fame, this moved him to the table with Isiah Thomas.”
Isiah was undoubtedly great and is one of the greatest point guards of all time, but you won’t find too many who have him ranked alongside Steph at the moment. While Thomas was the better playmaker between the two, Curry holds the clear edge in scoring and has 2 MVPs to his name while Isiah has none.
We have our own tier list for the greatest players in history and while Steph doesn’t land in the top 2 tiers, he still is ahead of Isiah, as he should be. While Barkley was praising Steph here in his mind by putting him alongside Thomas, we don’t think Warriors fans would see it that way.
They already don’t like him too much, having pelted him with water bottles and jerseys on the set of ‘Inside the NBA’ during the playoffs. That was very wrong on their part and they might not get the chance to do that going forward, as Barkley might be leaving the show. He revealed during this interview when he could leave TNT for LIV Golf and as basketball fans, we can only hope that it doesn’t come to that.
