Ad Disclosure
Charles Barkley Tried to be Too Fat to be Drafted by the 76ers
By Jim Adair
Published:
After failing miserably at a game of charades on Monday night’s the Tonight Show, Charles Barkley shared a story about how he got fat on purpose well before he got fat by accident. According to Barkley, he didn’t want to get drafted by the 76ers because they didn’t pay well. Charles told Jimmy Fallon that the 76ers brought him in before the draft and he weighed 292 lbs. and asked him to weigh 285 lbs. on the day before the draft. After working out and getting down to 280 lbs., Barkley’s agent told him the Sixers likely wouldn’t pay much for his one-year rookie deal, and with only a few days left before the draft:
In a bid to make himself undesirable before the drafting, he ate two Grand Slam breakfasts from Denny’s totaling 1,660 calories, went to lunch at Red Lobster gobbling down every hush puppy in sight, and feasted on two T-bone steaks for dinner … He then repeated the menu the following day before flying to Philadelphia for his final weigh-in. After his non-stop feeding session Barkley managed to bulk up his 6ft 6in frame to 302lbs.
Of course the Sixers drafted him anyway, and Charles continued to make a few too many trips to Denny’s over his career.
When he's not writing about sports here or ranting about them on Twitter, Jim is probably watching X-Files on Netflix or drinking a beer somewhere. Jim has nothing against hockey, it's just not his style. He once met Duce Staley at a Sixers game.