If not for Charles Barkley’s mother’s pushback, we could be listening to “Travis Barkley” on Inside The NBA. On the latest episode of TNT Sports’ The Steam Room podcast, Barkley and co-host Ernie Johnson spoke to Jason Kelce, who revealed that he and brother Travis were huge fans of Barkley growing up, to the point where Travis considered changing his name to Charles. That prompted Barkley to tell his own potential name change story:
There, Barkley said it’s “A hundred percent” true that he once wanted to change his name to Travis. That was after local basketball star Travis Abernathy, who actually wound up playing with Barkley at Leeds High School in Leeds, Alabama.
“I remember telling my mom, I said ‘Mom, I want to change,’ because Travis was like the stud in town,” Barkley said. “And I said, ‘Mom, I want to change my name to Travis. She says, ‘Why?’ ‘Because he’s the best athlete in our city. I want to change my name, and I’ll be a much better player.'”
“And my mom’s like, ‘You’re the biggest damn idiot in the world. You named after your grandfather. I’m not changing your name.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, that’s a perfect example. He’s a nobody.'”
That prompted howls and disbelief from Johnson and Kelce, with Johnson saying “You didn’t say that to your mom.” Barkley insists “That’s exactly what I did.” Johnson says “You did not say that to your mother,” and Barkley says “I did. It was her dad.” Johnson says “You can’t say that about her dad!” and Barkley says “No disrespect, he was a nobody.” Johnson says “What do you mean, no disrespect?!”
That’s amazing. And it’s funny that Abernathy, who Barkley once idolized this way, has commented about their time playing together in the past, mostly from a perspective of how Barkley was always talking. Here’s some of what he told USA Today Sports’ Josh Peter in 2014 for a piece on how Barkley’s family and those who grew up around him handle his sometimes-controversial comments:
Long before he earned the nickname of “Round Mound of Rebound,” Charles Barkley was the “Round Mound of Sound.”
“He used to talk so much, we used to call him Ali,” said Travis Abernathy, a former teammate of Charles Barkley’s at Leeds (Ala.) High School. “He would tell us when he was 8, 9 years old, ‘I’m going to play pro ball, I’m going to play pro ball.’ We used to laugh at him because he was a chubby little kid.
“If something came up, he was honest about it. He would tell us when we need a bath, anything. Somebody else would be thinking that person needed a bath. He would actually tell them.”
So that certainly fits in with Barkley telling his mother that her father was “a nobody.” But it’s quite amusing to have that story relayed here, especially after Jason Kelce shared the story of Travis Kelce wanting to change his own name to Charles after Barkley. It’s probably good that neither athlete went through with that.