Axios political reporter Alexi McCammond said via Twitter that “Inside the NBA” host Charles Barkley threatened her when she asked the Hall of Fame former player about the 2020 presidential race.
According to McCammond, Barkley responded, “I don’t hit women but if I did I would hit you,” when she asked about his political support for former Massachusetts governor and newly announced Democratic presidential candidate Deval Patrick after previously backing South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg in July.
Just FYI Charles Barkley told me tonight “I don’t hit women but if I did I would hit you,” and then when I objected to that he told me I “couldn’t take a joke.”
— Alexi McCammond (@alexi) November 20, 2019
When McCammond objected, Barkley said she “couldn’t take a joke,” according to the reporter. She alleged that the comments were made in an off-the-record conversation in advance of Wednesday’s Democratic presidential debate in Atlanta, but she opted to make them public because “this is not OK.”
McCammond said that, despite reservations about becoming part of this story, she felt obligated to share Barkley’s alleged threat, citing a 2014 U.S. Department of Justice report that concluded one in four women and one in nine men “experience severe intimate partner physical violence, intimate partner contact sexual violence, and/or intimate partner stalking with impacts such as injury, fearfulness, post-traumatic stress disorder, use of victim services, contraction of sexually transmitted diseases, etc.”
“It’s not about me or my feelings — [though] I’m grateful for the many friends who have reached out,” McCammond tweeted. “But it’s about refusing to allow this culture to perpetuate because of silence on these issues. It’s easier and less awkward to be silent, but that helps NO ONE but the perpetrator.
“I encourage you to consider how you’d respond if a friend said something similar to what Barkley said tonight,” she added on Tuesday. “And then challenge yourself to ask the same of yourself if a stranger (or ‘celebrity’) said that. I hope the answers are the same. Everyone should be held accountable.”
A number of people weighed in on Twitter with examples of Barkley’s past incidents involving females. The 56-year-old made a similar attempt at a joke in a 1990 postgame press conference, when he told reporters, “This is a game that if you lose, you go home and beat your wife and kids. Did you see my wife jumping up and down at the end of the game? That’s because she knew I wasn’t going to beat her.”
The first serious conversations about domestic abuse in sports were sparked in 1990 by Barkley's comment about beating his wife. A year later, he spat on an eight-year-old girl during a game. A year after that, Nike featured him in the famous "not a role model" ad. https://t.co/xJSbFNKZie pic.twitter.com/Ahfq6JxL3T
— Timothy Burke (@bubbaprog) November 20, 2019
He later apologized for those comments almost 30 years ago.
In 1991, Barkley spit at a heckling fan who allegedly made racist remarks toward him, inadvertently hitting an 8-year-old girl. He reportedly befriended the family, who served as his guest at future games.
At the tail end of his playing career in 1997, Barkley openly opposed both women serving as NBA commentators and the league’s hiring of female referees. He has since also apologized for those takes.
Barkley has a little bit of a history of this kind of stuff. In 1997, Barkley said on female referees, "I just hope they don’t have women officials. It’s the principle of the thing. I wouldn’t want a man doing a W.N.B.A. game." https://t.co/rm3fwo0H58
— Sopan Deb (@SopanDeb) November 20, 2019
As a commentator, Barkley has likened the Golden State Warriors’ playing style to “girly basketball” and derided the women of San Antonio. Barkley currently works for Turner Sports, which is based in Atlanta.
Turner Sports released a statement on behalf of Barkley on Wednesday morning, in which Barkley apologized for his comments to McCammond.
Statement on behalf of Charles Barkley in response to tweet by Axios reporter Alexi McCammond:
“My comment was inappropriate and unacceptable. It was an attempted joke that wasn’t funny at all. There’s no excuse for it and I apologize.”
— TurnerSportsPR (@TurnerSportsPR) November 20, 2019
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Ben Rohrbach is a staff writer for Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at rohrbach_ben@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @brohrbach
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