CHICAGO — The good news is Charles Oakley’s new memoir, “The Last Enforcer: Outrageous Stories From the Life and Times of One of the NBA’s Fiercest Competitors,” comes with a six-page index, for easy perusal. The bad news — particularly if you played in the NBA during the power forward’s 19-year career, from his 1985 debut alongside Michael Jordan on the Chicago Bulls, to his 2004 retirement from the Houston Rockets — is if you find your name in the book. I hope not. I mean, after a light, laudatory forward by Jordan himself (“He truly was my enforcer”), Oakley begins, in the first sentence, with direct words for Charles Barkley. No, he never punched Charles Barkley, he explains:
“I did, however, slap the (expletive) out of him.”
Barkley — who would become the Joker to Oakley’s Batman, or perhaps vice versa — gets dozens of references, not one pleasant. “Mention my name to Barkley today,” he writes, “and he’ll go the other way.” Oakley does not mince words, on and off the court. During a Toronto shootaround, he barks at Lamar Odom (“You want some of this?”); in Derrick Coleman’s Detroit restaurant, he pushes TV’s Judge Mathis (“real hard”).
