“If I was LeBron James, I would shut the hell up,” Barkley said. “I’m a big LeBron fan. He’s a stud. You gotta give him his props. I’m getting so annoyed he’s talking about what he’s going to do in two years. I think it’s disrespectful to the game. I think it’s disrespectful to the Cavaliers.”

LeBron said he would do what is best for his career

“I think you do what is best for you, and you do what is best for your career. I go out, and I play hard, and that’s loyalty,” James said in that controversial interview. “It’s hard because it’s a business. [The] franchise is going to do what is best for the franchise, you know. When a player does what is best for the player, it always comes back on us. I am going to look bad. If a franchise decides to give up on a player, it’s OK. So we have to do what is best for us.”

Barkley eliminated LeBron from the GOAT debate in 2010

“He’ll never be Jordan,” he said. “This clearly takes him out of the conversation. He can win as much as he wants to. There would have been something honorable about staying in Cleveland and trying to win it as ‘The Man’… LeBron, if he would’ve won in Cleveland, and if he could’ve got a championship there, it would have been over the top for his legacy, just one in Cleveland. No matter how many he wins in Miami, it clearly is Dwyane Wade’s team.”