Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley shared one of the closest bonds basketball has ever seen in the 90s. The pair were best friends despite being fierce competitors. Barkley beat Jordan for an MVP and Jordan followed up by beating Barkley in the 1996 NBA Finals. While they have lost touch over the years, Barkley has always been very praiseful of MJ throughout his career, calling him the greatest of all time.
MJ and Barkley were both drafted in the 1984 Draft, with Jordan heading to the Bulls and Barkley to the Philadelphia 76ers. But as many draft classmates do, the pair had played before they made it to the NBA when they were both trying out for the 1984 US Olympic Team.
Barkley narrated a story of those try-outs and his first time seeing Jordan play when Jordan retired in 2003 on TNT.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0cEjdPn62I
“I tried out for the Olympic team (1984), but I didn’t really want to go because I didn’t think I was as good as those guys who went to the big schools. So, my coach Sonny Smith talked me into going… But I played against this one guy, I’ve never seen anybody that good. His name is Michael Jordan, and this is when he was back in college. I never expected him to do what he did when he got to the NBA, but with the first time I played against him for like a week, I knew he was the best I’ve ever seen,
Barkley and Jordan are two of the most recognizable players from the 90s and it is very interesting to look back at the draft class they were a part of. It also included the likes of Hakeem Olajuwon and John Stockton, making it arguably the greatest class of all time.
But even then, Barkley knew the name that would eventually become the greatest in the history of the sport, and that name was ‘Michael Jordan’.
