{"id":616658,"date":"2026-02-21T23:48:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-21T23:48:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/616658\/"},"modified":"2026-02-21T23:48:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-21T23:48:10","slug":"luka-doncic-gets-brutally-honest-says-hed-cook-charles-barkley-in-his-prime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/616658\/","title":{"rendered":"Luka Doncic Gets Brutally Honest, Says He’d ‘Cook’ Charles Barkley In His Prime"},"content":{"rendered":"

Following the Lakers’ 125-122 victory over the Los Angeles Clippers, Luka Doncic<\/a> was doing a sideline interview<\/a> with ESPN. Inside the NBA analyst Charles Barkley’s birthday was on February 20th, and ESPN made a huge part of the programming around last night to highlight Barkley’s birthday.<\/p>\n

ESPN sideline reporter Jorge Sedano asked Doncic if Barkley and Doncic were in their prime, how Doncic would \u201ccook\u201d Barkley. Doncic facetiously replied:<\/p>\n

\u201cI would cook him for sure. I think he’ll talk a lot between us\u2026 I think it will be very fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although Doncic’s remark was in good birthday fun, perhaps it was a precursor to Barkley’s comments that the Lakers are not a championship contender and wouldn’t beat the Thunder or the top teams in the West.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt depends on the seeding because if they\u2019re six, seven or eight and they have to play Denver, Houston or OKC, they\u2019re not going to beat those teams. I\u2019m not even sure they can beat San Antonio,\u201d Barkely said following the interview.<\/p>\n

This led to a brief response by Lakers guard Austin Reaves<\/a>, who was being prepared to be interviewed by the Inside the NBA crew following the victory.<\/p>\n

Reaves replied, \u201cYeah, I heard a little bit. Everybody\u2019s entitled to their own opinion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, the hypothetical matchup between Doncic and Barkley would certainly be interesting. Ever since being drafted in 2018, Doncic has emerged as one of the best<\/a> one-on-one scorers in the NBA. He has a penchant for shooting unguardable shots and hitting three-pointers at a high volume. He also plays at his own pace, rarely ever being sped up and using his strength to effortlessly muscle to the basket and even get to the foul line.<\/p>\n

But Barkley in his prime was an anomaly. A 6’4\u2033 power forward, Barkley was a strong force under the basket and gave his team more life on the offensive end by nabbing a high quantity of rebounds. He was also an adept scorer with a bruising back-to-the-basket game and could hit mid-range shots as needed in the flow\u00a0of the offense.<\/p>\n

The Lakers host the Boston Celtics on Sunday at 6:30 p.m. The game will be broadcast on NBC and Peacock.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Following the Lakers’ 125-122 victory over the Los Angeles Clippers, Luka Doncic was doing a sideline interview with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":601502,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3790],"tags":[7,4034,1698,300,4044,251,150,4033,4043,368,6],"class_list":["post-616658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles-lakers","tag-basketball","tag-la","tag-la-lakers","tag-lakers","tag-lalakers","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-lakers","tag-losangeles","tag-losangeleslakers","tag-luka-doncic","tag-nba"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116111298154349753","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=616658"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616658\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/601502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=616658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=616658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=616658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}