Charles Barkley Apologized to Draymond Green Instead of Punching Him

Charles Barkley expressed a desire to punch Draymond Green during a TNT broadcast. The Golden State Warriors forward didn’t much care for that and challenged Barkley to put his fist where he mouth is the next time the two meet. Spoiler alert: this little feud is extremely unlikely to end in actual violence, especially now that Barkley has apologized.

The contrite words came on ESPN 1000’s Waddle & Silvy this afternoon.

“I want to apologize to Draymond Green,” Barkley said. “I wasn’t literally gonna fight an NBA player and if he took it like that, I want to apologize. Just because I said something that I shouldn’t have said, I want to be man enough to apologize. I was 100 percent wrong.”

Barkley did clarify that he wasn’t trying to be funny and that he does find Green annoying.

This is one of those weird situations where the argument could be made that both too much and too little was made of Barkley’s initial comments. On one hand, he was never going to actually fight Green. On the other, a television analyst can’t go around talking about how much they’d enjoy throwing a few right hooks at a current player and expect zero consequences.