The game that changed Charles Barkley's life | 60 Minutes

60 Minutes Overtime Five seconds. Let's have fun, y'all. Just basketball. Our story this week on 60 Minutes is about Charles Barkley, a Hall of Fame basketball player, and he may have surpassed himself as a broadcaster and public figure. Live TV. It's the most dangerous thing in the world. He is unapologetically authentic.

Delicous, stink. They all force enough to show him all the time, like they're going to be good. And in giving his opinion, agree or disagree, it's almost bought him this level of cushion. You think our team sucks? I'm like, yeah, I only think that because they suck. Fans only want two things. Tell me my favorite player is great, and tell them my team is great. Nobody planned better basketball in the world than Jarl and Veej right now.

If you deviate, either way, you're hated. Do you care? Everybody wants to be liked, but this is not a like job. I don't care who wins. By design, we wanted to see Charles Barkley in his element. We went back to his hometown of Leeds, Alabama. And this will always be the most important place in my life, to be honest with you. And he still keeps a home there? You lived a few feet away.

This is like your backyard. Those are the projects where everything started. I told you that. He still hangs out with his old high school friends and tells sports war stories. Talk about this guy, Hook, I used to put on all of y'all. Karim got 38,000 points. You got like 3,000.

So you weren't sky hooking that much. Every time we get together, we ride each other about who had the best high school team, and it never gets old. Never gets old. We played against the best high school player in the country. And at that point, I had never gotten a letter from a major school. This is Christmas of my senior year. It's like he's too short.

He's going to go to junior college or a smaller level school. And everybody's like, well, maybe he can play against bigger people. And then from that point on, I started getting some. That's when the attention came? But I had never got a major college offer until that Christmas tournament. Coming from where he came from and having the life he had. This is someone who lives their life with gratitude. Because I got to live my dream.

I mean, I got to play 16 years. He sees firsthand what investment and what attention and what devoted resources, what a difference that makes. I'm struck by what you were saying before. You're in high school. Yes. You said you had one pair of shoes. We had to pool our money.

So I got one pair of shoes. So my mom bought them to the game. And right after the game, she knocked on the door and took them home. I could only wear them during the season. You had to keep these shoes the whole season? Yeah, it was kind of weird and embarrassing in the beginning when your mom's knocking on the door like, hey, who's knocking on the door? Oh, it's your mom with your shoes. And then after the game, who's knocking on the door? It's your mom to get the shoes. And a few years later, Nike's calling you saying.

We'll send you enough pair of shoes. Probably last about a week. And I'm like, what? Yeah, I'm like, are y'all serious right now? They're like, yeah, probably a pair of shoes or probably last you a week. I was like, this is amazing. And then I told y'all, I was like, wait, y'all going to pay me too? I said, this is the greatest job in the world. I'm really struck by the fact that your mom cleaned houses, your grandma worked at a meat packing plant, you're living this life you do. Are you ever able to get past that? Just how crazy this whole journey is? I never get past that fact how lucky I've been.

That's how you look at it? I do. I got picked to be Charles Barkley. When I'm at a hotel, those people who clean hotels work three times as hard as me and any other jock in the world. We just got the lucky straw. And if you think I'm better or I work harder, you're just stupid. This is one of these times when you sort of have to stop yourself and say, wait, wait a second, I'm doing a job here because it was just such a, it was a real pleasure to talk to you. There's two things that are important.

Number one, you want to make your parents proud. And the second thing is when you die, you don't want them saying, I'm glad that SOB is gone. You've heard that said? I've said it about people before. And everybody has. Stop lying out there. Everybody's had people that are like, yeah, I'm glad he's gone. I'm not going to miss him at all.

Have you ever been to a funeral and you're like, hey, we at the right place? Let's go up there and check in that cabinet. I don't think they got the right person in there. I want them to say, man, I'm going to miss Charles.

60 Minutes, CBS News, basketball, sports, nbm, charles barkley, hall of fame, career