Charles Barkley Hope on the city of San Francisco after he said during the NBA All-Star Game broadcast that he met Mayor Daniel Lurie.
The city was the host for the 2025 NBA All-Star Game. Barkley had been in the city’s case because of the crime and homeless population. During the broadcast he expressed some optimism that the city would start to clean up.
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Chuck’s Global Stars General Manager Charles Barkley watches during introductions before the NBA All Star Game 2025 in Chase Center in San Francisco on February 16, 2025. (Cary Edmondson-Imagn images)
“Shoutout to the people of San Francisco, especially the mayor. I met the mayor a few times. He has been huge and hopefully we can do something about the homeless population,” Barkley said during a match between Team Shaquille O’Neal and Team Candace Parker.
Barkley said last month that he would skip to the game because it was in San Francisco.
“He is going to make the All-Star team,” Barkley said at the time. “I’m not going. I am not going to that with rats affected in San Francisco.”
Barkley responded to one of his colleagues who called San Francisco ‘Beautiful’.
“San Francisco is not a beautiful city. Rats. Cats. You won’t make me like San Francisco. No. No, no, no”
From left to right, Shaquille O’Neal, Ernie Johnson and Charles Barkley are halfway through the judge to be honored during the NBA All-Star Basketball match on Sunday 16 February 2025 in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez)
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However, it was far from the first time he had criticized San Francisco. Last year he tore the city during the alternative broadcast of the NBA of the All-Star game, which took place in Indianapolis.
Barkley asked Reggie Miller that he would choose: playing in the cold in Indianapolis-where Miller spent his entire 18-year-old NBA career or “around a set of homeless crooks in San Francisco.”
Golden State Warriors star Drayond Green called Barkley “Crazy” and said that Barkley was not “welcome” in the city. Parker said, “We love San Francisco,” but Barkley offered an answer.
“No, we don’t do that,” he said. “… you can’t even walk around there.”
He later suggested that you could walk through the city with a bulletproof vest.
Dan Super Bowl 50 Host Committee Chairman Daniel Lurie speaks 50 Host Committee Press Conference in the Moscone Center in San Francisco on 1 February 2016 during the Super Bowl. (Jerry Lai-usa Today Sports)
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Lurie has sworn San Francisco’s streets safe, build “enough housing to tackle our affordability crisis” and “tackle our drug and behavioral health crisis.”
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