Two years into his NBA career, Charles Barkley saw the Philadelphia 76ers make a questionable trade by sending superstar big man Moses Malone to the then-Washington Bullets for Jeff Ruland. The complete trade was sending Malone, Terry Catledge, and two first round picks to Washington for Ruland and Cliff Robinson.
In that same 1986 offseason, the Sixers sent the No. 1 overall pick to the Cleveland Cavaliers in exchange for Roy Hinson. That pick was then used on North Carolina big man Brad Daugherty who turned out to be a star in the league.
Barkley, a budding superstar in the league, was upset with what happened. He hopped on “The Bill Simmons Podcast” to recall the night (h/t Yahoo! Sports):
I’m being serious for one second now… I’ve been bitter and angry because that cost me at least one Championship, probably two. Because, I was just becoming a star, we had the number one pick in the draft, and me and the guys went out to celebrate that night. This is night before the draft. And we got drunk as hell…
Barkly then recounted a story about talking with a legendary Philadelphia sports writer by the name of Phil Jasner:
Phil, there is no way the Sixers are that stupid to trade away the No. 1 pick in the draft. He says, ‘And it gets worse.’ ‘Well, it can’t get any worse than that…”
“It was about 5:30 in the morning, ‘Phil, explain to me what’s going on,'” Charles continued the story. “He says, ‘You guys have just traded the No.1 pick in the draft to Cleveland… And you guys traded Moses Malone to the Washington Wizards–Bullets at the time–for Jeff Ruland.’ I said ‘Jeff Ruland didn’t play in two years!'”
Barkley would go on to spend eight seasons with the Sixers and doing enough to have his No. 34 retired by the franchise. He was then traded to the Phoenix Suns in the offseason of 1992 and went on to win the MVP in his first season with the Suns and led them to the finals that same season before falling to Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls in six games.