In the lead-up to this strangest of NBA seasons, the Philadelphia 76ers unveiled a bronze statue outside their practice facility. It was an image of Charles Barkley, the Hall of Fame forward, cocking back a trademark two-handed slam dunk. And if the pose was iconic, the silhouette was eye-catching. Barkley — known during his career as the Round Mound of Rebound — was, in the artist’s rendering, an impossibly svelte specimen.
As even Barkley quipped at the unveiling: “I don’t know if I’ve ever been that skinny.”
But skinny, if it was never Sir Charles’s natural state, has been the NBA trend for a while now.