Traded to the Rockets, Barkley joined two other aging superstars, Hakeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler, in his quest for a championship. But Olajuwon and Drexler already had their championship rings and didn't seem as committed as Barkley, who cut down on his drinking, started lifting weights and even offered to come off the bench for the good of the team in the 1997-98 season. But he was a shadow of his former self. "I'm the artist formerly known as Barkley now," he told me in 1998. "Once in a while, I get flashbacks." Indeed, his own self-analysis was typically blunt. "I'm still a good player, not a great player," he said. "I can score 15 points and get 10 rebounds." Yet the ceaseless questions about never having won a title carried the implication that he'll be remembered as less of a winner than his more hallowed contemporaries. He began to think of himself in relation to those who have won rings. "I've never played with a great player in his prime while I've been in my prime," he said. "Michael has had Scottie [Pippen]. Bird had Kevin [McHale] and Robert Parish. And Magic, shit, Magic had everybody. When I came into the league, Doc and Moses were winding down. And Hakeem and Clyde, same thing."

Toward the end, as a merely good player, it became easy to forget what the younger Barkley once was. More than a great player, he was, like Jordan, a wonder on the court: You'd watch and not quite believe it. He was a jumping jack who was too quick for other power forwards, too strong for small forwards and too visionary a passer for the double-team. And it was all done with an in-the-moment passion missing from today's scowling, dour-faced jocks.

Off the court, ironically, Barkley became the league's elder statesman these last few years, a respected spokesman for tradition and the status quo. At times, he'd sound like Paul Lynde from "Bye Bye Birdie," wringing his hands over "these kids today." When it was written that the cornrowed, tattooed Allen Iverson travels with a "posse" -- friends from back home -- Barkley admonished him: "Your teammates should be your posse." When I offered that guys like Iverson see the league's crackdown on droopy uniform shorts as a sign of hostility toward black culture, he demurred: "They're wrong," he said. "The shorts now are getting to the point where they don't even look like shorts. I think the NBA has to be concerned with a lot of black guys getting arrested, me included, doing drugs, wearing shorts down to their ankles. That's not hostility to black culture. That's just reality."

Still, though the volume came down a bit, Barkley continued throughout his final years as a player to challenge the predilections and prejudices of the men who present him to the world. He calls the journalistic pack "flies," because they're always buzzing around, annoying. One day, in front of his locker, I witnessed pure Barkley. Before the throng could lob its first question at him, Barkley singled out a Houston television reporter. "Would you suck a cock for a million dollars?" he asked. A roomful of men all instantly looked at their shoes.

"No," came the cracked-voice reply.

"A billion?" Barkley challenged.

"No," said the reporter, stronger now.

"Well, how much then?"

"I wouldn't do it for anything!"

Barkley grinned widely. "Well, if you'd do it for free, come on over here then," he said, while nervous laughter filled the air around him. "Tell y'all what, I would. If I was poor, I'd suck a cock for a million dollars."

He paused and looked at his audience. "And all you muthafuckas would do the same, you just scared to admit it," he said. "Like, remember when that movie 'Indecent Proposal' came out? Oprah had on three couples who said they wouldn't let their husband or wife sleep with someone for a million dollars. Couldn't help but notice that they all had money already."

After an awkward moment of silence, the flies started buzzing again, shouting basketball questions over one another's still trembling voices. I remember standing there, feeling lucky as hell to have seen this guy in action. After all, anyone who appears so utterly joyous exercising free speech, anyone so OK with his life as a very public work-in-progress and anyone in the insular, often homophobic world of jockdom who points out class distinctions by challenging the media to suck cock for money, well, that's a role model worthy of emulation.

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