PHOENIX SUNS
Charles Barkley on Suns moving on from Eric Bledsoe: ‘It’s his fault’
Oct 25, 2017, 12:13 PM | Updated: Oct 26, 2017, 11:33 am
Some choose to blame the Phoenix Suns management. Others might choose to blame Eric Bledsoe after the team sent him home following his tweet that may or may not have to do with a bad trip to the hair salon.
Count former Suns forward, current TNT analyst and always-opinionated Charles Barkley among the latter.
“It’s his fault,” Barkley told TMZ in a video interview.
“Somebody is paying you 15 million dollars a year, you shouldn’t say, ever, ‘I don’t want to be here.’ Listen, you shouldn’t have said that. If you don’t want to be there, you go to them quietly, you don’t put it on the internet.”
Bledsoe tweeted “I Dont wanna be here” on Sunday, hours before the Suns fired head coach Earl Watson.
The point guard claimed the tweet had nothing to do with the Suns.
Bledsoe had met with Phoenix prior to the year, asking to be traded, Phoenix general manager Ryan McDonough confirmed Monday. McDonough also said he didn’t believe Bledsoe’s explanation for his cryptic tweet over the weekend.
“He said he was at a hair salon with his girl and he didn’t want to be there anymore,” the general manager said on Monday. “I don’t believe that to be true.”
Barkley, apparently, doesn’t believe Bledsoe, either.
Like McDonough did on Tuesday by further criticizing Bledsoe’s leadership and obligation to play under the two years left on his contract, the former Suns All-Star believes Bledsoe’s move was the wrong move.
“I like Bledsoe a lot, but that’s not cool,” Barkley said.