Charles Barkley believes LeBron James can surpass Michael Jordan

Charles Barkley has long maintained LeBron James can’t catch Michael Jordan in the GOAT debate, but he’s finally willing to reconsider.

Throughout this latest summer of LeBron, Barkley has insisted he should return to the Cleveland Cavaliers for one last go-around with his hometown team. Championships and money be damned, the only good story for LeBron James would have been finishing out his career in the place it started. Because according to Barkley, there was no way for LeBron to catch the ghost of Michael Jordan, certainly not by winning another championship or two with a stacked team.

Barkley joined Stephen A. Smith on his SiriusXM Radio show to react to the news of James signing with the Philadelphia 76ers Friday afternoon. And now that James is set to play the final season or two of his career on a team that, if healthy, is stacked, Barkley is softening on the idea of Jordan’s legacy being untouchable.

“If he wins back-to-back championships to walk away from this thing at 44 or 45, I’ll say something I ain’t never said before,” Barkley told Smith. “I think I just saw the greatest basketball ever.”

Smith pressed Barkley, questioning if he would really give LeBron James the title of “GOAT” with two more championships on his resume.

“I probably would,” Barkley admitted. “It ain’t no shame saying he’s the third best basketball player you’ve ever seen. But if he can win two more now, I didn’t say one more, you said two more. If he wins two more, you’d have to be kinda crazy not to say he’s the best to ever do it.”

Most reasonable NBA fans and analysts would have to agree LeBron James should be the undisputed GOAT with two more championships. Many fans and analysts can already point to his four championships, four regular-season MVPs, 22 All-Star selections, and most points in league history to say he deserves to be considered the best ever. But Barkley has famously ranked James seventh on his all-time list, sitting behind Jordan, Oscar Robertson, Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bill Russell and Kobe Bryant.

Earlier this offseason, Barkley said there’s nothing LeBron could do to catch Jordan, criticizing him for always chasing rings by stacking super-teams. What changed now that James is attempting to stack another super-team by joining Joel Embiid, Jaylen Brown and Tyrese Maxey in Philadelphia? Maybe Barkley just never really considered the idea that LeBron could win two more championships in his 40s.

And while that’s the scenario Stephen A. Smith created, winning two championships in Philadelphia is still a long shot. The 76ers have to prove they can stay healthy. They also have to prove they can gel immediately. No team has won back-to-back championships since the Golden State Warriors in 2017 and 2018. And LeBron only accomplished the feat once in his career during his second and third seasons with the Miami Heat. Believing he can do it again while playing for a new team in his 40s seems farfetched, regardless of how much talent the 76ers are boasting.

So, yes, Charles Barkley believes there’s an avenue for LeBron James to surpass Michael Jordan as the greatest of all time, but it would only come under unlikely circumstances. Hopefully Jordan doesn’t take this too personally. Barkley and Jordan just reconciled after a 14-year estrangement; it would be a shame if this put them back on bad terms.

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