Charles Barkley's Load Management Comments are Disturbingly Pro-Owner and Anti-Player

Charles Barkley called in to SiriusXM's NBA Radio on Thursday to discuss load management. Barkley, like many people, hate the concept of load management and thinks it hurts the NBA product. Rather than offer a solution, Barkley chose to focus on how ownership was going to use this against the players as motivation at the negotiating table and, "put their foot in their asses in this next CBA."

"These dudes gonna do something to these players. They gonna be like wait a minute you can't make $50 million and not play half the season, okay? Because now you're really just slapping me in my face and taking my check twice a month."

Barkley went on to predict a lockout and made the owners' case for cutting salaries in a league that generated more than $10 billion in revenue last season.

"I think they're going to say, Okay, you guys don't want to play, I'm gonna teach you all a lesson. Because you know, we paid you all during the pandemic. We did have nobody in the stands for a couple years, but we still paid ya'll. And this is how ya'll repay us. Making all this money and not wanting to play."

This is one of those times where Barkley's decades of being allowed to say absolutely anything he wants with zero consequences backfires. This is an extremely pro-owners opinion for a guy who actually played and earned less in his career than Kawhi Leonard will make this season.

Load management is obviously an issue, but putting money back in the owners' pockets doesn't seem like the kind of thing that is going to motivate players to play more. Especially when Barkley and other people in the media are the ones driving the RINGZ over regular season performance bus.

Not to mention Barkley is making $10 million a year to work one to two evenings a week. We won't even mention how he just openly campaigned for a job with LIV last year. Come on, man.

During the second half of Barkley's career, he missed 24 games a season. In his final season with the Rockets, when he made a career-high $9 million, he played a career-low 20 games. Did he give any of that money back? Could he have benefitted from some planned rest? It would be irresponsible to speculate.

Certain members of the Inside the NBA crew have a history of being unfair to current players. These comments from Barkley would certainly fall into that category. The owners must love it though.