Charles Barkley on Kyrie Irving: ‘The objective is to win.’

NBA Hall of Famer and Turner Sports analyst Charles Barkley doesn’t understand why Kyrie Irving would want to leave the Cleveland Cavaliers and LeBron James for a bigger role elsewhere.

“You want to be on a good team. You want to play with other great players. This notion where you want to be the man, I just think is so stupid,” he said during an interview on NBA TV. “If I got a chance to play with another great player, I want to do that. The objective is to win.”

“When he was on a bad team and he was the man, I guarantee you that wasn’t a lot of fun for him,” he continued. “And now you want to leave the best player in the world. And listen, I hear all of this stuff about how LeBron casts a big shadow. He should cast a big shadow.”

As Barkley noted, playing with any great player—he cited Michael Jordan, Larry Bird and Shaquille O’Neal—means living under their proverbial shadow. But that’s the price for giving yourself a chance to win championships.

“If you get a chance to play with great players, that’s half the battle,” Barkley noted.

Source: Charles Barkley on NBA TV via Timothy Rapp of Bleacher Report