Auburn Basketball: The Importance of Charles Barkley

Here we discuss the impact of Auburn basketball legend Charles Barkley on the basketball culture in Auburn, Alabama.

Sometime later this year or maybe in 2018, a statue of Auburn basketball legend Charles Barkley will be erected outside of the Auburn Arena, making him just the fourth Auburn athlete to receive such an honor.

The other three are football players — Pat Sullivan, Bo Jackson and Cam Newton. This is a football school, remember?

While many Auburn fans are aware of Barkley’s NBA career — he’s one of just four players with 20,000 points, 10,000 rebounds and 4,000 assists — and his work as a television basketball analyst on TNT, few actually realize what Barkley meant to the Auburn basketball program.

Before Barkley played at Auburn, the school had never been to the NCAA basketball tournament. (The team could have gone dancing in 1960 but the school was on probation.) He might never have played at Auburn if he hadn’t caught the eye of its coaches during the high school state semifinals his senior year at Leeds High School.

Barkley made Auburn basketball relevant for the first time in more than 20 years when he walked onto campus in 1981. He led the SEC in rebounding in each of his three seasons that he played for the Tigers, and he was named the conference Player of the Year for 1983-84 — the first Auburn player to win the award — when he averaged 15.1 points, 9.5 rebounds and shot 63 percent from the field.

More importantly, Auburn went to the NCAA tournament after the 1984 season. Although it was upset by Richmond, the team began a five-year streak of making the Big Dance thanks to the Round Mound of Rebound.

In addition, Barkley’s arrival at Auburn allowed coach Sonny Smith to attract other high-level high school basketball players to the Plains as the school was now a prominent basketball program. Barkley was soon followed by Chuck Person and Chris Morris, two players with long NBA careers, and other talent such as Frank Ford and Gerald White.

He was listed at 6-foot-6, which made him one of the smaller centers in the SEC, but Barkley’s leaping ability made him a fan favorite. Often he’d grab a defensive rebound at one end of the court and dribble the length, ending his foray through the defense with an emphatic dunk.

Under Bruce Pearl, Auburn is on the verge of becoming an SEC basketball power once again with Austin Wiley and Mustapha Heron.

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But Charles Barkley showed us 30-plus years ago that Auburn could be a basketball school.