NBA commissioner Adam Silver recently spoke on a panel where he noted that he saw that a number of NBA players were truly unhappy, so he wanted to figure out ways to address the issues athletes face in the social media age.
Charles Barkley saw those comments and referred them as “totally bogus,” citing how much money NBA players make now and how impossibly it is to be sad when making millions of dollars.
On Thursday morning, ESPN analyst Jay Williams decided to respond to those comments on Get Up!, explaining why his comments seriously upset him and how they cause people with anxiety and depression to not speak on it, rather keep it inside, because they’ll get publicly ridiculed for it.
“I fervently disagree. There are times where Charles Barkley can say whatever he wants on TV and he’s Teflon Don, I get it, it doesn’t matter what he says, but he’s wrong on that one. Adam Silver was talking about anxiety and depression. I feel like it’s an older generation thing where they equate happiness to the amount of money you make. People all have internal struggles, and what happens with that, when he says things like that, that automatically challenges people opening up to talk about things that are driving them to whatever those issues are in their life and that forces people to shut down.
“So instead of just attacking people by saying, ‘Oh you have no problems in the world.’ You don’t walk in their shoes. You may have made money and been a superstar, but you don’t walk in their shoes of those individuals. You weren’t raised in the age of social media and don’t know how that can affect you and how you’re raised with that. So show empathy towards that and let’s help people saying that, ‘I have issues,’ instead of attacking them. I get pissed off about that.”
Charles Barkley has yet to comment towards Williams, but if you know anything about Sir Charles, you know he’s going to come firing back.
