NBA Hall of Famers Charles Barkley and Michael Jordan’s long frosty relationship could finally be thawing, starting with golf during the offseason.
“We’re not like Prince William and Prince Harry. We always have a lot of love for each other,” Barkley said on Sirius XM’s “Mad Dog Unleashed” this week. “But we talked in the last 72 hours. We just decided to get together and play golf as soon as basketball is over.”
The duo and former Dream Team colleagues were long-time friends during their playing days, but their relationship soured in 2012 over comments Barkley made about Jordan’s tenure as owner of Charlotte’s NBA franchise, he told “60 Minutes” in 2023.
“And what I said, I think that he don’t have enough people around him that are gonna tell him, ‘No,'” Barkley said. “And he got really offended, and we haven’t spoken.”
As for the possibility of a reconciliation, Barkley put the ball in Jordan’s court at the time: “He got my number.”
Barkley later said Jordan “went ballistic” after the comments made waves nationally.
“He said, ‘You’re supposed to be my best friend and you’re going to do that bulls—.’ I told him I got to do my job and I said you haven’t done a good job as a general manager,” Barkley said on Tom Tolbert’s show last year. “How can I criticize other people and give you a pass? When other guys make bad draft picks, I call them on it too.”
During Jordan’s time as majority owner of the then-Charlotte Bobcats, which began in February 2010, the franchise was a perennial loser in the Eastern Conference before rebranding to the Hornets in 2014. From there, Charlotte made the postseason three times before Jordan sold in 2023.
Since then, Jordan has moved on as co-owner of 23XI Racing with Denny Hamlin, who founded the NASCAR Race Team in 2020.
