Shannon Sharpe plays a therapist, and Charles Barkley talks about how his loser dad flew across the country and cursed him out for failing Spanish and not being able to graduate

NBA legend Charles Barkley recently joined host Shannon Sharpe on his “Club Shay Shay” podcast, where he talks about his upbringing in rural Alabama, his family dynamics, his temperament and his illustrious profession.

The former Philadelphia 76ers forward told a common story about his absent father, whom he saw only a few times as a child, flying across the country to reprimand him for not speaking Spanish.

During a conversation with Shannon Sharpe, Charles Barkley recalled two of the best moments from his youth, each of which involved leading his highschool basketball team to a championship.

Particularly during his senior yr of highschool, Barkley took his team to the state championship before he was injured. He then fell into depression, which affected his academic performance.

“Shannon, when I was in high school, a really traumatic event happened in my life,” he said, before explaining what he was pondering about as a teenager.

“I’m behind in all my classes. I caught up on every one of them except Spanish,” Barkley said. “I didn’t graduate, I had to go to summer school.”

Unaware of his son’s depression, Charles’ father, Frank Barkley, booked a flight from his home in California to Alabama.

“My dad, who lived in California my entire childhood, came over and gave me a new hole,” Barkley recalled. “And I’m already traumatized that I won’t make it to the march (for graduation), and when he arrived at that moment, I just (said) I’m not going to ever forgive that guy again for screaming at me like that because I used to be already down .

Shannon asked the current sports analyst how lively his father was in his life, and he replied that he could count on his hands how repeatedly he had seen his father face to face.

Barkley said, “Zero… I don’t think I saw him probably 10 times as a kid.”

According to Barkley, his father flew out to his own highschool reunion when the future NBA MVP’s evaluations got here in and determined he couldn’t graduate. That was the moment his father made the decision to grow to be a parent.

Barkley said that after seeing all his classmates graduate, he cried for two hours but decided he would never be in that place again.

“I stood nearby in the stadium, watched the graduation ceremony and cried for about two hours. And that night I said, ‘This is the last time I’m going to let anyone take control of my life,'” Barkley told Sharpe.

After talking about how hard-working his family’s matriarchs were and how they coped without their father around, he explained that he had finally had to come to terms with his absence.

“My dad wasn’t in the picture,” the 11-time All-Star explained at the starting of the two-hour conversation. “Me and my dad got along later in life, but at first I only had hostility and hatred towards him because he wasn’t around and didn’t do anything for us.”

Barkley said it was painful for him growing up as he watched his mother, a domestic employee and his grandmother, who worked in a chicken factory, trying to raise him and his three brothers. Despite financial difficulties and his father’s absence, Barkley noted that the family all the time seemed to have what they needed.

Shannon offered, “The forgiveness you gave him was for you. Because he lived his life, you were carrying around something that was weighing you down.

The host of “King Charles” agreed.

Barkley said one in every of the reasons he was so offended and furious on the court early in his skilled profession was because he was beating up his father and the teacher who failed him in Spanish, Ms. Gomez.

There was a final turning point in Barkley’s life. He said that when he met two-time NBA MVP Moses Malone, the 76ers center stepped in and became a father figure to young Barkley on their team, filling in where he really needed it.