No one ever questioned Charles Oakley's toughness during his 19-year NBA career. But that isn't stopping him from criticizing others.
Oakley appeared on The Jim Rome Show on Tuesday, and he had plenty to say about Celtics forward Kevin Garnett, among others. The longtime Knicks big man said that he doesn't consider KG to be as tough as he wants other players to believe.
"Garnett left Minnesota and hollered and screamed and all that but he's not a tough guy. He's one of the weakest guys to ever play the game," Oakley said. "He's a complementary player and went to Paul Pierce's team and won a championship. I wouldn't consider him a top 10 tough guy."
Oakley then decided that ripping into The Big Ticket wasn't enough. He also took a shot at one of Garnett's former teammates, Kendrick Perkins, later on in the show.
"He's just like Garnett. They holler and complain," Oakley said of Perk. "If Kendrick Perkins would play basketball, Oklahoma City would win a championship the next three or four years…[He brings] Nothing [to the table]. That's why he got dunked on and he got mad about someone tweeting about it. You're a power forward, you don't let guys dunk on you. I played 18, 19 years, I got dunked on three times. You're limited on offense, do something on defense, get a rebound make some free throws."
Oakley, of course, is referring to Perkins expressing his displeasure with LeBron James tweeting that Perk should be embarrassed about getting emphatically dunked on by Blake Griffin.
But even before Oakley's outburst on the former Boston center, he momentarily steered away from the C's to take a shot at Charles Barkley, whom he battled in the paint for years before the two retired. He called Barkley "a coward" and "a fraud."
"Barkley for his size was a good player, but he's a coward though," Oakley said. "He was a good player for his size but, he wasn't a leader and wasn't a role model. Now he talks so bad about younger guys, I don't respect that from him…He's a fraud, he can criticize all the younger kids and if he got something to say, call them and talk to them before you just blast them. He's wants to be funny, that whole TNT thing and all that, they're like some clowns on that show."
Well, we can probably rule out Oakley joining the TNT crew anytime soon. And Garnett and Perkins probably wouldn't be too welcoming if he were to show up to their respective locker rooms, either.
A hat tip to Sports Talk Network for pointing out Oakley's tirade.
