Back in 1984, Charles Barkley entered the league as the No. 5 pick. He only played 15 games before becoming a starter on the Philadelphia 76ers, but it took him a couple years to become an All-Star and then a couple more before he was a bona fide superstar.
The thing that helped him take a step forward from player off the bench to star: teammate Moses Malone.
“Moses Malone made me a great player,” Barkley said on TNT on Friday.
“I was asking him why I wasn’t getting to play, he said, ‘You’re fat and you’re lazy.'”
Hearing that pushed Barkley to play harder. To evolve from a perennial All-Star into a player who won MVP, played on the Dream Team and competed with Michael Jordan in the NBA Finals.
“Joel Embiid needs a Moses Malone,” Barkley said. “There’s nobody on that team who can push him.”
Barkley with good insight on Embiid, paraphrased:
Moses Malone told me I wasn’t getting the ball because I was fat and lazy.
Embiid needs a Moses Malone. No one on the Sixers pushes him like that.
Embiid is an all star, he’s not a super star yet. pic.twitter.com/o3eJUQMrv1— Patrick (@EaglesPMC) August 8, 2020
The 76ers beat the Orlando Magic 108-101 on Friday, but they still hold the sixth seed in the Eastern Conference in a year that was much-hyped entering the season.
There are reasons for this: Play styles haven’t meshed. The team was a disaster on the road while nearly pristine at home. But Barkley thinks Embiid still needs to make a jump, and he has been deprived of mentorship from veteran stars.
“Do you want to be an all-star or a superstar? Those things are different. You are unguardable,” Barkley said. “Every time you take a jumpshot, you bail the defense out.”
When Barkley was drafted, Malone was a 28-year-old who had been in the NBA for eight years. He was a three-time MVP and a Finals MVP.
Barkley was only in Philadelphia with Malone for two years, but the veteran was able to talk him through — and by the sound of it, insult him through — the early years of the NBA and mold him into a greater player.
Embiid hasn’t found that teammate or coach, Barkley said.
“We’re gonna get you in shape. We’re going to you. And you know, I’m in Philly. And I hear every day, if Embiid and Simmons play together, who should we trade? I said, ‘OK, I’m gonna prove to y’all I should be the one who stays.’ Cause at some point they’re gonna break them up if they keep losing early in the playoffs,” Barkley said.
“But Joel Embiid, he’s an All-Star. He’s not a superstar.”