In the lead-up to the 2023 FIBA Basketball World Cup, TNT analyst Charles Barkley made the case for why it’d be a good thing if USA Basketball did not win a gold medal. While appearing on Bill Simmons’ podcast, Barkley — who is a two-time gold medal winner with Team USA at the 1992 and 1996 Olympics — argued that it’d be good for the sport’s popularity elsewhere if another country won the whole thing.
“They act like if we don’t win the gold medal it’s going to be the worst thing to ever happen to civilization,” Barkley said, per ClutchPoints. “I actually disagree with that. I think it’d be great. Because I think it’d really help with popularity in one of these little third-world countries if they won the gold medal. Can you imagine if France won the gold medal? How popular would basketball become in France?”
There are, obviously, a few non-USA things worth pointing out here — France is not a third-world country, France won the bronze the last time this tournament happen, Spain won gold in 2019 while the U.S. crashed and burned, basketball is already popular in France, this quote came from before the tournament and France has since been eliminated — but the main point is that Barkley thinks it’d be good if the Americans didn’t win. On the heels of the team’s blowout victory over Jordan to wrap up play in the first round on Wednesday, American big man Jaren Jackson Jr. got asked about Barkley’s quote and wrote it off as a joke that didn’t land.
“Chuck from what, [Alabama]? Chuck keeping doing that TNT thing… I bet he thought that was funny.”
Jaren Jackson Jr. on Charles Barkley saying it would be a good thing for Team USA to not win Gold at the FIBA World Cup
(via @jeck_batallones)pic.twitter.com/49OBjO54Sj
— ClutchPoints (@ClutchPoints) August 30, 2023
“Chuck said that?” Jackson asked after learning about the quote. “Where’s Chuck from, Chuck’s from what, Bama? I mean, I don’t know — Chuck, keep doing that TNT thing. That’s fire, man, I love Inside the NBA, man, watching that for years, my dog. I don’t know, I bet he thought that was funny.”
It is worth saying that Jackson was not, under any circumstances, going to agree that it’d be good if literally any other country won the World Cup. Regardless, we’re willing to chalk this one up to Chuck not liking that Team USA usually blows opposing teams out of the water, as he is on the record as someone who hates “bad basketball.”