Short answers, pulled from the story.
Charles Wade Barkley was born on the 20th of February 1963 in Leeds, Alabama, a town 17 miles east of Birmingham. He was the first Black baby born at the local hospital, which had previously been segregated, and was in the first group of Black students at his elementary school.
Barkley won the 1993 NBA MVP after leading the Phoenix Suns to an NBA-best 62-20 record in his first season with the team. He averaged 25.6 points, 12.2 rebounds, and a career-high 5.1 assists per game. He was just the third player ever to win the MVP award in the same season he was traded.
Barkley led the 1992 Dream Team in scoring, averaging 18.0 points per game on 71.1% field goal shooting. He set a then-Olympic single-game scoring record with 30 points against Brazil and set a U.S. Men's Olympic record for three-point field goal percentage at 87.5%. The Dream Team went 8-0 against Olympic opponents and averaged an Olympic-record 117.3 points per game.
In his 1993 Nike commercial, for which he wrote the text himself, Barkley argued that parents and teachers, not athletes, should be responsible for raising children. He contended that telling children to model themselves on professional athletes meant asking them to emulate people they could never realistically become. Former Vice President Dan Quayle called Barkley's message a family-values statement.
Barkley has been inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame twice. He was inducted in 2006 for his individual playing career and again in 2010 as a member of the 1992 U.S. Olympic Dream Team.
Barkley retired in 2000 as the fourth player in NBA history to accumulate at least 20,000 points, 10,000 rebounds, and 4,000 assists in a career. He also finished as the second player ever, after Wilt Chamberlain, to reach 23,000 points, 12,000 rebounds, and 4,000 assists. His career rebounding average was 11.7 per game and he totaled 12,546 rebounds.