Charles Barkley is sick and tired of hearing how the sanctuary of the locker room is not ready for a male athlete in a major team sport to come out to his teammates, how awkward everyone would feel after they heard a teammates say, “I’m gay.”
After all, Barkley has no doubt he played with several gay teammates.
“I didn’t think it . . . they were gay,” he said when asked Monday about Phoenix Suns President Rick Welts coming out in a New York Times story over the weekend.
The Hall-of-Fame player and TNT analyst added he was certain he had gay teammates “on two of three teams I played on.”
Big deal, Barkley basically said, in a wide-ranging interview we taped Monday for my radio show on 106.7 FM: Those two teams with gay players? They still won and flourished. They had camaraderie and chemistry. And no, neither he nor his straight teammates were ever hit on or flirted with to his recollection.
Fears of feeling uncomfortable in the shower or the dressing areas, Barkley said, are unfounded in his experience.
“A guy is never going to put himself in that situation in a professional locker room,” Barkley said. “It never crossed my mind, and I never felt any different about the guy.”
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