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Charles Barkley Personal Life
All through the 16 glorious years of his professional life with the National Basketball Association, Barkley was regarded as one of the most controversial, forthright and dominating players in the history of basketball. |
Despite the continuous influx of on and off court confrontations, Barkley continued to remain popular with the fans and media because of his wit and candor.
This basketball legend, Charles Wade Barkley was born in rural Leeds, Alabama on February 20, 1963. Having a population of less than 10,000, his birth place is about ten miles outside of Birmingham. Way back in 1963, who could fathom that this new born of Frank Barkley and Charcey Glenn would grow up to be a prodigy? Ironically, the man nicknamed as ‘The Round Mound of Rebound’ in his college days due to his unusual build was just a six pounds baby! In fact, he suffered from anemia and required complete blood transfusion at a tender age of 6 weeks.
Emotional turmoil and social instability marked Barkley’s childhood. He was still a baby when his parents separated and divorced. His mother, a domestic worker remarried and Barkley was looked after by his mother, grand mother and step father in his formative years. The family went through another upheaval with the death of his step father in an automobile accident. Barkley was then only in grade school.
However, Sir Charles, as he is popularly called, was not the one to be bogged down by emotional or financial pressures. Nothing dampened his spirit of soaring high. As a tenth grade student, standing just 5 feet 10 inches from the ground, he had sworn to carve a niche for himself in the National Basketball Association one day. His mother fondly remembers a young Barkley, who unlike the children of his age never complained about not owning new cars or good clothes. Instead, this young ambitious lad would console his mother and promised to buy her the world one day, only with basketball!
In 1989, Barkley married Maureen Blumhard. The marriage was contentious as mixed marriages are still frowned upon in the US and Barkley's marriage was criticized in some regions of Philadelphia. Their daughter, Christiana, was born to the couple in the same year.
Apart from shining as a basketball legend, Barkley is also in news for his compulsive gambling. In an interview with the ESPN, he has admitted to have incurred a loss of roughly 10 million dollars through gambling. Although, he has gone on air to accept his problem but he does not see it as an addiction. Instead, he refers to it as just a bad habit that does not cause too much of a hassle as long as he has a loaded pocket.
Well that is Sir Charles, a man who does not believe in making politically correct statements. Maybe, that is what earns him the public adulation.
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