Barkley Must Show True Grit

Charles Barkley is a star. In anyone’s book. He has all the qualities. Talent. Charisma. Ego. Ability to project a sense of danger. Everything John Wayne had.

He’s also outspoken, reckless, trash-talking, bullying. He can go both ways. He’s like Cagney, Bogart. He can play the good guy or the bad guy with equal skill and bombast. He can be the sheriff--or Butch Cassidy. Elliot Ness--or Al Capone. In fact, he doesn’t like to be the guy in the white hat. He revels in being the renegade, the man who shot Liberty Valance.

But, the one thing a star doesn’t do is get shot down in the first act, or the third reel. You got to stay in the spotlight, got to stick around to get the schoolmarm or save the town, rescue the fort.

Charles Barkley, with apologies to Michael Jordan, is the most exciting personality on a basketball floor these days. He’s not on the Phoenix Suns, he is the Phoenix Suns. Everyone else is below-the-title billing, not exactly dress extras but in the supporting cast only.

So, any script writer in Hollywood would get fired for the plot of the first two games of the 1993 playoffs. It’s not only anti-hero, it’s anti-history.

Picture John Wayne getting bumped off right after the credits, can you? Cagney going to the electric chair in the first reel?

That’s almost the scenario they had for Sir Charles. The Lakers, who were supposed to be cannon fodder in this flick, the 1993 NBA Follies (or playoffs), completely misunderstood their roles. As they say in show business, the snake got all the lines. It wouldn’t play in Peoria.

The country was shocked. The NBA was shocked. Charles Barkley was shocked. I mean, what was this, an art house movie? Hamlet, for crying out loud? Satire? Naw, satire closes on Saturday night. This was anarchy.

Barkley had every right to have his name in lights all year. He came to Phoenix, a team that had a reputation as a gang with a lot of talent but no nerve. The Suns could be cowed by the top gunslingers in the rest of the league.

Not with Barkley in the cast. Like John Wayne taking over a platoon of college boys in “Sands of Iwo Jima,” or a mollycoddled greenhorn in “Red River,” Barkley, like a tough top sergeant, cajoled, muscled, needled, kicked bottoms and bullied a franchise into becoming a gang of terrorists in short pants on the floor.

The team won more games (62) than ever in its history. It won more games than any team in the league. Barkley scored the most points, had the most rebounds (by about 500 over his nearest pursuer), even the most assists and the second-most steals on the Suns. That’s not a season, that’s a career.

Charles had taken a bunch of underachievers and won the war with them.

Or so the game thought. The preliminary series with the Lakers was merely a formality, a kind of complicated shootaround. The Lakers hadn’t even played .500 ball. They didn’t have a star, just a bunch of character actors.

You pictured the director shouting through the megaphone: “All right, places, everybody. Now, you Lakers, you’re all going to get shot down here and then we cut to Charles standing on a hill and the music comes up as he stands with his hands raised in victory, and we go to black with the people of Phoenix throwing flowers at him. Cut and print.”

The Lakers missed the point. Goosey-loose, they trotted out and played with the kind of nonchalant excellence of guys with nothing to lose.

A director would have had to step in at that point and yell “Cut!” The Lakers treated Barkley as if he were somebody’s sidekick, not the Lone Ranger. It was like getting kicked by your own horse.

It’s bad theater. The long-range book called for Barkley to ride into final battle down the line against Michael Jordan, in the ultimate High Noon shootout. If he falls there, he can do it with a flourish, an Academy Award performance. Not a dry eye in the house.

Falling before the Lakers makes it a comedy. A national lampoon.

So, when the Lakers won the first two games and wiped out the Phoenix home-court advantage, the gnashing of teeth from everyone from the networks to the fans became deafening.

The script needed major revisions. When the Lakers scrambled to two victories in the first two games, it was not only shock theater, it was box-office poison. Moses drowning in the Red Sea. It won’t sell much popcorn.

The Suns were supposed to rise and shine on Tuesday night. Order was about to be restored.

“First time I get my hands on the ball,” Barkley had promised, “I’m launching a ‘three.’ ”

He wasn’t as good as his word. But the first time he touched the ball, he launched a shot. It was not a three-point shot, but it was long range. It went in.

But the Lakers were still ad-libbing this picture. They went down, but barely. And scratching and fighting.

Barkley was in an almost pensive mood in the locker room afterward. He knew he had dodged a bullet. “You have to understand,” he said, “that this (Laker) franchise is one of the proudest in sport. It’s one of two with the most mystique. The Lakers and the Celtics. They know they’re something special, and they don’t go quietly. Yes, they’re like the Yankees or Notre Dame. Don’t forget this team had Magic and Kareem. And they have Worthy and Vlade. I don’t know what Vlade’s on--but you try to shoot over him. No, the Lakers know they’re the Lakers. You don’t blow them off lightly.”

In other words, can it be the Lakers think they’re the stars in this flick? That this upstart Barkley would be merely the guy who went out for coffee or who snapped the clapboards together and yelled “Showtime! Take One!” on the old Lakers?

Or maybe it’s only a serial that calls for Charles to hang off a cliff or be tied to the tracks at the end of every episode--only to escape in the nick of time.

Don’t miss the next thrilling episode at a theater near you--the Forum--tonight. The “Perils of Charles.” Lights! Action! Camera! This may be the only serial in movie history in which the train actually runs over the hero at the end of Episode Four.