The Dubs don’t even have to play for Charles Barkley to make it all about them. Inside the NBA was supposed to talk about the Oklahoma City Thunder being 65-63 against Dallas at halftime. Chuck was all praise for the relatively young OKC team. It’s only hard to notice when he started talking about the Golden State Warriors who have a day off today.

“You know they remind me of the Golden State Warriors,” Barkley brought up ominously, perhaps not for the similarities. “The hardest thing about basketball to play defense against – ball movement and body movement.” He brought up Phoenix Suns too before saying OKC “remind me of the Golden State Warriors in their heyday. They’re a bunch of old geezers now but they were awesome in their heyday.” 

This has been a running joke between Chuck and the Dubs. From that time Barkley shared commentary duties with Draymond Green at the All-Star Game, it’s more well-natured banter than animosity. But Barkley’s opinion has remained consistent.

He started this season calling the Warriors “cooked” for their aging roster with Green, Stephen Curry, and Klay Thompson in their thirties. Green told him during a TNT appearance that the comment was a “little harsh.” But turned it on Barkley. “Old sounds as if we look like Chuck when he was out there with the Houston Rockets.” Ouch.

Barkley still doesn’t see the Warriors as title contenders. But he has strong hopes for OKC who currently ranks at the top in the West. The Warriors are the 10th seed. That was the setting for Shaq to trigger the Bay Area hater.

‘Will’ the Dubs beat OKC?

Chuck and Kenny love how the Thunder team is well-positioned. Shaquille O’Neal was looking for the thrill of being outnumbered and declared that the Lakers or Warriors would beat OKC if they make it to the playoffs. The Lakers are ranked just above the Warriors in the West currently. He even had Ernie pull out the Post-it notepad to issue the challenge. As this quartet is prone to, they deviated on a linguistic tangent.

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Note, that the first sentence Shaq said was “The Lakers or the Warriors could beat the Thunder.” Chuck and Kenny just weren’t having it. And their argument vs Shaq escalated into a semantic debate.

Shaq got amnesia and said he said “can.” That led to his co-hosts trying to explain the difference between ‘will’ and ‘can’ which Shaq was having none of. The Curry fan and former Lakers champ is adamant his teams “will” beat the Thunder. It doesn’t matter because Shaq threw in an “if” there and wasted Ernie’s post-it. Do you think the old geezers ‘can’ beat Oklahoma or ‘will’ beat Oklahoma?

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