Charles Barkley lays into Bryant Gumbel for his comments on David Stern: NBA News
Famous Television sports anchor Bryant Gumbel received lot of criticism after he evoked the slavery issue in an editorial regarding the labour talks between the franchise owners and players union.
Although, Gumbel did what he was famous for that, but during the course “plantation overseers” comment has put him under serious censure.
This backlash on Gumbel includes has come from several people and the latest name that has joined this list is Charles Barkley. "The Round Mound of Rebound" was rated as one of the most dominating centres of his time. Presently
working with TNT, the verbose analyst said
“I thought (Gumbel’s comments) were stupid. First of all it’s disrespectful to black people that went through slavery while guys are averaging five million dollars a year, that’s just disrespectful. When David Stern took over,
I went and did my research because I knew people would make a big deal out of it, when Davis Stern took over the NBA in 1984 which was my first year the average salary was 315,000 dollars. That was the average salary. The average salary now is 5.15 million
dollars. When has he been holding people back from making money?”
Barkley also added that Commissioner David Stern works for the franchise owners therefore it is his duty to get them a good deal out of these negotiations. He said like Gumbel and his show too, but this wouldn’t change things around
commissioner will still work for the owners. Coming back to the comment made by Gumbel earlier, Barkley said it’s discourteous to black people because slaves aren’t making $5.1 million per year.
It’s been really harsh of Gumbel to use a comment like “plantation overseers” for the NBA players, as the first of all they are not slaves because unlike slaves they can leave their jobs if they are having any issue with it.
However, still you’ll find a lot of NBA players depicting the same idea, whenever they spoke off the record about the work stoppage. The reason behind this slip-up idea is that the NBA players see themselves working for the rich
people and now these owners are looking to reduce their per annum income by introducing new clauses in the new Collective Bargaining Agreement.
However, if one considers the financials provided by the league to the players, it shows that only eight NBA teams are in green zone, while the rest of the 22 teams are in red. So it still remains to be seen how a deal is reached
between the players and the owners, with league had already cancelled the first two weeks of the 2011-12 regular-season.
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