How a failed trade deal left Barkley playing a Sixers game drunk

NBA icon Charles Barkley has revealed he played a game for Philadelphia drunk after the 76ers backflipped on a deal to trade him.

Charles Barkley has recalled being caught out drunk before a game after celebrating a release a little too early. (Photo by Mike Powell/Getty Images)

Charles Barkley celebrated too soon.

At the height of his unhappiness in Philadelphia in 1992, watching his prime being squandered, the NBA star was told by his agent that his wish was finally being fulfilled.

By day’s end, Barkley would be joining the LA Lakers.

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When the 76ers backed out of the deal, the team was left to play that night with a star forward whose blood alcohol level would surpass his stat line.

“My agent calls me one morning and he says, ‘Hey, you’re going to get traded to the Lakers today’. And me and my friends, we go out and celebrate and get drunk about noon,” Barkley said on ESPN’s The Lowe Post podcast.

Barkley, posing here with Michael Jordan, was celebrating the news that the Sixers had agreed to the deal. (Photo by Andrew D. Bernstein/NBAE via Getty Images)

“I’m on cloud nine, he calls me back three hours later, it’s like 3:30pm now, he says, ‘The Sixers backed out of the deal’. And I’m drunk as s**t and we got a game that night, and I’m like, ‘What? What are you talking about?’

“He’s like, ‘The Sixers were scared to pull the trigger’. And I said, ‘You’re kidding me. Dude, we got a game tonight and I’ve been drinking since noon’.

“The one thing that’s funny, I don’t even know how I played that night. I think I might have played bad because I was so angry the Sixers didn’t pull the trigger, and then it was just suffering the next two or three years.”

Though it is unclear which game Barkley is referring to, he wouldn’t be stuck in Philadelphia much longer.

Barkley would be sent to Phoenix before the 1992-93 season in a lopsided trade for a package deal headlined by Jeff Hornacek and be named the league’s Most Valuable Player (MVP) that season, while leading the Suns to the league’s best record and an NBA Finals appearance.

Charles Barkley was caught off guard by the news. (Photo by Ron Koch/NBAE via Getty Images)

This article was first published in the New York Postand reproduced with permission.

Originally published as How a failed trade deal left Barkley playing a Sixers game drunk