Please school me on Barkley's defense...

[Round Mound]

Barkley was lazy on defense but as someone mentioned before, when he had his mind into it he was quite good. Its not very easy to defend when your are just a shade under 6-5 ft while guarding 6-8, 6-9, 6-10, 6-11 etc plus PFs. He never had a great or good defensive center around him in his prime as what Malone had in Eaton and Duncan in Robinson but he when he had a decent defensive center in Moses Malone (who was average defensively) he was 7th in defensive rating in the whole league. In his sixer years when he was athletic and young he had seasons averaging almost 2 spg and 1.6 bpg which is amazing for a guy his size playing the PF spot. He was a good team defender too.

[ralph_i_el]

Great defensive rebounder?

Nope, great rebounder, great offensive rebounder, ALL TIME GREAT rebounder.

To compare, Kevin Garnett who the younger generation thinks is a beast and better than Barkley (he is not), had a career high record of 3.5 offensive rebounds a game. Barkley at 36 years old had 3.6 and a career high of 5.1 offensive rebounds a game.

I don't think people realize how insanely good that is.

Let's compare to other great rebounders, their best season for offensive rebounds:

Tim Duncan - 3.5
Garnett - 3.5
Tristan Thompson - 3.9
Ben Wallace - 4
Dwight Howard - 4.3
Shaq - 4.7
Barkley - 5.1
Rodman - 6.4

Barkley averages 4.0 offensive rebounds pr. game over a 16 year career!

He did this while being the team's leading scorer.

And of course, he did that while being 6'6'' two inches smaller than Lebron James.

Barkley might be the second best rebounder in the history of the game.

Does that count for something?

As for his defense, I don't have much recollection of his defense, he was certainly not known as a lock down defender, but much of that was due to his physique, too small to guard big power forwards, too heavy to guard most guards and small forwards.

He made up for it by being a good help defender and had quick hands, which his steal totals testify.

Second, he was one of the greatest coast to coast players, grabbing one of his 12-14 rebounds and racing all the way to the other side.

I don't think Barkley gets credit for his INSANE rebounding while being the size of a shooting guard. I don't think he gets the credit for leading the league in 2pt% several years in a row in a league with multiple elite big men. The man was unstoppable one on one. A great passer out of the post, a great post player, a great mid range shot, a functional 3 point shot, a great open court game.

Barkley played Power Forward but he was one of those very few positionless players on the court.

pace

[90sgoat]

pace

Nope, pace was 91.8, 90.1, 90.3 from 1995-1998 and Barkley averaged 3.4, 4.0, 3.5 offensive rebounds at 32-34 years old.

In comparison, pace this year 95.8, last two years 93.9, while Shaq and Duncan played it was similar to 1995-98.