4/18/2024 0 Comments Charles barkley daughter 2018In his hey day, the “Round Mound of Rebound,” as he was known, the 6ft 6 (198cm) and 250 lb (113 kg) Charles Barkley was a loud-mouth, elbow-swinging, rim-shaking Mack Truck on the basketball court, who was an 11-time NBA All Star for the Philadelphia 76ers, Phoenix Suns and Houston Rockets.Ī member of the US men’s basketball team at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, aka The Dream Team, he was labeled the Ugly American for elbowing a slight Angolan player in the chest for little apparent reason. And as she learned when she was interviewed on a Slate sports podcast, Barkley did not have the best of reputations as a player. To her, Barkley was not one of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA History, as her father would fondly note. Wang’s daughter, Shirley, had no idea who Barkley was, and humored her father who said he was friends with a big celebrity. Everybody’s like, ‘Who’s the Asian dude over there?’ I just started laughing. Here’s how Barkley explained the scene to Shirley on the phone last year: “You know, it was obviously a very difficult time. Charles Barkley and Lin Wang selfieīut when Barkley’s mother passed away, Wang dropped everything, got on a plane, made his way to Leeds, Alabama, and attended the funeral. Barkley would sign Air Jordan and Air Max sneakers for Wang, which Wang would then send to his close friends on their birthdays. Wang would get invited onto the TNT set when Barkley was broadcasting. Shirley Wang tells the story eloquently in this audio report for public radio called “My Dad’s Friendship with Charles Barkley.” Wang and Barkley texted each other. What ensued was 6 hours of drinks and dinner, and a friendship that lasted four years, much to the mystery of Shirley’s family, and the bemusement of Barkley’s jet-setting friends. The story told by Wang’s daughter, a journalist named Shirley Wang, set the internet world abuzz a few weeks ago with her feel-good story of how her father was in a hotel in Sacramento in 2014 when he spied Barkley at the empty bar, and then went up to say hi. Gentler than the relationship of Felix Unger and Oscar Madison, more real than the bond between Melvin Dummar and Howard Hughes, was the friendship between a cat litter scientist in Muscatine, Iowa named Lin Wang, and one of the most famous basketball players on the planet, Charles Barkley. One of the best sports stories of 2018 is a story of an Odd Couple. Lin Wang and Charles Barkley on the TNT set
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