That moment when former NBA superstar Charles Barkley shows up at your dads funeral, after no one really believed they were really friends.
A heartfelt story about the unlikely and enduring friendship between a cat litter scientist and NBA star Charles Barkley has gone viral.
Journalist Shirley Wang shared a tremendous personal story of her father Lin’s long friendship with Charles Barkley, and it might just be the best story you read all year.
Wang recalled her father talking about “his friend Charles Barkley.”
She said she finally asked her dad how this unlikely friendship began.
He showed her his phone with text messages to Barkley but she pointed out that the “conversation seemed pretty one-sided.”
Lin met Barkley while he was on a business trip in Sacramento years ago and decided to say hello and ask to take a picture with the NBA great.
Barkley recalled to Shirley that they decided to get dinner together after having a conversation.
“And, before we know it, we looked at each other, like, ‘Yo, man, I’m hungry. Let’s go to dinner,’” Barkley told Shirley.
“It turned into a two-hour dinner. And then we actually went back to the bar and just sit there and talked for another couple of hours. And the rest is history.”
The two men hung out the next couple of nights and would get together if they happened to be in the same city.
“I mean, it was just a fun time,” Barkley said of Lin. “My friends — Shaq, Ernie, Kenny — they enjoyed just meeting him.”
Lin told his daughter he thinks the two became friends because they had good conversations.
“I think we had a good conversation,” he said. “We agree with each other [on] a lot of point of views.
Lin attend Barkley’s mother’s funeral when she passed away in June 2015.
The funeral was held in Alabama. Barkley said his friend’s presence “meant a great deal to me.”
“For your dad to take the time to come to the funeral meant a great deal to me,” Barkley said.
Back home, Wang’s coworkers would tease him about Barkley and ask him about the story all the time.
“My dad didn’t mind that they didn’t believe him,” said Shirley.
“He even made a slideshow of photos of him and Barkley together for our community’s Chinese New Year celebration.”
My dad made a slideshow about this friendship. A slideshow!! @OnlyAGameNPR https://t.co/TSnWYCtDF8
— Shirley Wang ? (@shirleyshirlw) December 15, 2018
In 2016, Lin was diagnosed with cancer but didn’t tell the NBA star that he was sick.
“I called him and got mad at him when I found out,” Barkley told Shirley. “I was, like, ‘Dude, we’re friends. You can tell me. You’re not bothering me. You know me well enough — if you were bothering me, I would tell you you were bothering me.’”
This past June, Lin passed away.
The funeral was set near the outskirts of Iowa City in a house by the woods.
Shirley says she was talking to a childhood friend when she suddenly looked stunned.
She turned, and standing there — drenched in sweat from the Iowa summer, towering over everyone in the room at 6 feet, 6 inches tall — was Charles Barkley.
“I had not met anybody in your family,” Barkley said. “I didn’t know anybody there.”
Everyone watched, astonished, as this man — this man they only knew from TV, this worldwide celebrity — walked down the aisle, looked at the crowd and sighed.
“It gives me great memories and great joy to know that I was a friend of his.” -Charles Barkley
Here is video of Charles Barkley speaking at Lin Wang’s funeral.
Amazing story and powerfully written by the author: https://t.co/xVO22xP1mG pic.twitter.com/byCdYfAK7q
— Michael Blevins (@mikeblevins) December 15, 2018
Shirley asked Barkley: “Why my dad? Why did he matter so much to you?”
“Well, I think — first of all, clearly, he was a fan,” Barkley said. “But I think the main thing we talked about was you and your brother.”
The more Charles Barkley and Shirley talked, she realized just how close he and her dad were.
“It gives me great memories and great joy to know that I was a friend of his,” Barkley said. “Just hearing about him at the funeral — what he had accomplished and what he was trying to help other people accomplish, just made me even — I wished he bragged more about himself.”
Barkley told her that her dad was proud of his children and wanted to give them everything.
He concluded the conversation by telling Shirley he was “blessed to know” her father and told the family to keep in touch.