There was a day, early in the 1984-85 season, when Billy Cunningham did something that for the then-76ers coach was unprecedented.

He told us that he would be closing practice to reporters.

He told us it had nothing to do with us.

It had to do with his rookie forward.

It had to do with Charles Barkley.

"It was the only year I ever did it, and it was surely worth it," Cunningham recalled.

Those were still the Sixers of Julius Erving, Moses Malone, Bobby Jones, and Maurice Cheeks, but the new kid-the 6'4" power forward-wasn't wasting any time making inroads.

"The first time I saw him, I just couldn't believe his basketball skills, even in an individual workout," Cunningham said. "I just couldn't believe one man could do some of those things."

But Barkley could. In 1986-87, he became the shortest player in modern NBA history to win a rebounding championship. In 1996, he was named to the NBA's 50th Anniversary All-Time Team. In 1992 and 1996, he helped the United States win Olympic gold medals. He was selected as an All-Star 11 times in his 16-season career, finishing his NBA career in 1999-2000 with regular-season career averages of 22.1 points, 11.7 rebounds and 3.9 assists.

This was his remarkable career path, from the unbridled, unexpurgated days of practice behind closed doors to today, when Barkley - part of TNT's broadcasting team since 2001 - was named to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall Of Fame in his first year of eligibility.

"It was," Cunningham said wistfully, "definitely a challenge to get him on the right page."

To be fair, Barkley has made a career of being on a page of his own. He might be the only person in history to claim he was misquoted in his autobiography. To be just as fair, when the Sixers made Barkley the Number 5 overall pick in the 1984 draft, the late, great superscout, Jack McMahon, told us he would be the first player of his body type and size to reach superstardom.

"I'll give him credit that, he first came in at 280-285 and got down to 260 and always competed hard," Cunningham said. "When I quit coaching (after that season), I thought there was so much potential there that it was hard to leave. He had to be pushed, but once he had a taste of success, he would keep on going.

"I don't know if he would be drafted as high today, because of his size.

"Everyone's looking for that 6-10 power forward. But he was a great player. I don't know if I ever saw a power forward pass in the manner he did. He had such soft hands."

When Cunningham made the decision to close practice, "the other players were very happy. I didn't have time to yell at anybody but Charles. I knew this is what it would take," said Cunningham, himself a member of the Hall Of Fame. "I knew it would take 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I remember, when I was working for CBS, I saw Sonny Smith, his coach at Auburn, at the Final Four. Sonny said 'You did a great job with Charles.' I thanked him, then asked how he knew that. Sonny said 'He came by my office one day and I asked him how he liked playing for you, and he said 'I hate his guts.' That was when I knew you did a great job."'

Barkley spent eight often tumultuous seasons with the Sixers, playing for Cunningham, Matt Guokas and Jim Lynam. When Lynam became the general manager, Doug Moe became the coach. Lynam, Moe and owner Harold Katz sent him to Phoenix for Jeff Hornacek, Tim Perry and Andrew Lang, one of the darker days in franchise history; in his first season with the Suns, Barkley helped drive them to the Finals, where they lost to Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls. It was to be his only appearance in the championship series. He completed his career with four seasons with the Houston Rockets. He was done playing. But he wasn't done.

These are the days and nights of Charles Barkley, player, personality, entertainer. At any given moment, he could be any-or all-of those. There was, for example, Mary from Trenton. The year doesn't matter. The story does. "Mary from Trenton" called a Philadelphia radio station from her home in New Jersey to complain that Charles Barkley was a "mean, miserable person."

Barkley wanted to clear that up, and taped a promo for the station, saying, "Mary this is Charles. I'm looking for you."

Mary misunderstood. Her son called the station, saying his mother was frightened. No, no. Barkley and the Sixers were inviting Mary to be Barkley's guest at a game.

She came. He brought her roses.

Fiction: Barkley thoroughly dislikes the media.

Fact: Some of his closest friends are members of the media, including Neil Hartman, now an anchor with Comcast SportsNet in Philadelphia. "I've never understood the premise that the media in Philly were bad guys," Hartman said. "I think we understood better than most what he was all about. I hear the talk about how he never won a championship, but he was the All Star MVP in '91, the league MVP in '93, but he never had that single defining moment. To be named to the Hall Of Fame the first time he was on the ballot represents a culmination of all that he has done." Hartman, like virtually everyone Barkley has touched through the years, has a story to tell.

"I was working at Channel 17 in Philly in the early 90s, and Charles had come to the studio to visit, to help with a story I was working on," Hartman said, warming to the memory. "When he arrived, they noticed that our security guard, on his lunch break, was eating chicken gizzards. Charles asked where the guard had gotten them, and how far away was the store.

"The next thing I knew, he was taking me with him, in a Mercedes convertible, driving 15 minutes to a spot in West Philly under the overhead train. By now, people had seen him coming, and it's as if he's the Pied Piper. By the time he parked, there must have been 100 people there. He orders the gizzards, looks at the woman who has been doing the cooking and says 'I feel like I'm back home.' To me, that just exemplified who he is. It was a surreal moment, but it was clear he had no problem being out there with the people."

He was the kid from Leeds, Alabama. In many ways, even at 43, he still is. "All the things he did, he did them pretty good," said Maurice Cheeks, then a Sixers teammate, now their coach. "I'm underestimating the word 'good.' You hear coaches talk about needing a rebound; if you needed one, he'd go get one, and you knew he was going to get it. That was not a question. He'd get it, whoever was in his way."

From '86-87 through '88-89, Barkley led the league in offensive rebounding. "When he first got (to the Sixers), he was about 285 (pounds) and always told me he could play at 285," said Moses Malone, Barkley's teammate, currently a rebounding consultant with the team and a 2001 inductee into the Hall Of Fame. "I said, 'The only way you can play at 285 is if you play for the Philadelphia Eagles."

Cheeks was Barkley's teammate for five seasons. It didn't take the point guard with the Sixers' 1982-83 championship team long to understand that Barkley would speak his mind, and that there was never any way to edit what might be coming. "He was a great teammate," Cheeks said. "Ask anybody who played with him; you'd get the same answer. He cared about his teammates. That didn't stop him from going to the papers to talk about his teammates, but that was because he wanted to win that badly. He did all those things, and his teammates still loved him. He once went to the papers talking about guys, excluding me, being wimps; no one ever went to him and said anything like 'Charles, why did you say that?' He'd take you out to eat, to do whatever. And you knew he was coming on the court to play."

In 123 playoff games, he averaged 23 points, 12.9 rebounds and 3.9 assists. He was named to the All-League First Team five times, to the Second Team five times, and to the Third Team once.

"The only thing I didn't like about him is his golf game," Malone said, laughing and savoring the punch line. "He called me the worst golfer of all time, but I think he's got me."

Charles Barkley was named to the Hall of Fame April 3, 2006. When the announcement was made, he said he had never been to the Hall in Springfield, Mass.

"I have superstitions," he said. "I would never touch the NBA championship trophy. And I wasn't going to go to the Hall Of Fame until I got in." He looked at his audience that day, in the midst of the NCAA Final Four in Indianapolis, and said "A little kid from Leeds, Alabama is going to the Hall of Fame. That's pretty cool."

And even as he was entering the Hall, he couldn't help himself, insisting that the Rockets still "owe me $3 million . . . Any time they want to pay me, they can send it to me."

But he was serious, too.

"I want people to say I didn't squander my talent, and I gave something back to the game," he said. "My original game plan was to go to the NBA, get 10 rebounds a night, play for 10 years, make a million dollars, and live happily ever after. I never knew how good I was until it happened." But he had an idea.

"When we signed him to come to Auburn, it was his intent to leave as a junior," Sonny Smith recalled. "That was his request. I don't believe any other player I ever had requested that. I thought he had a chance as a pro, but I never thought about the Hall of Fame."

He should have known.

"I was a little hard on the kids," Smith said. "I would always tell them why they couldn't do something. One night, during the Southeastern Conference Tournament, I said something like that and Charles said, 'Coach, why not tell us we're going to win the game?' He didn't have any doubt, but that was his way of telling me to tell the other guys."

Again, he should have known.

"When he made his official visit to Auburn as a high school senior, he never left our home," Smith said. "He said he wanted to get to know us. I thought it was a put-on."

During Barkley's career there, Smith's wife, Jan, suffered a stroke. "He was the first person at the hospital," Sonny Smith said.

Ask anyone who has spent even one moment around Barkley, and there will be an anecdote.

Here's mine:

During the 1998-99 lockout, my son was working in Scottsdale, Arizona. My mom, then in her 80s, wanted very much to see her grandson, Andy, but didn't feel comfortable making the trip alone. So we went as a family: me, my wife Susie and my mom. It was the weekend of Thanksgiving, and after we checked in to our hotel, I left a message for Charles, who had a home in the area. I told him we'd be going out each day for breakfast and dinner, and that we'd love to have him join us.

The next day, I got a return message: We were to meet him at a nearby Japanese restaurant. During most of the four hours we were together, Susie, Andy, Charles' wife, Maureen, and I were involved in discussions on various subjects. In the meantime, Charles was locked in a long, deep discussion about education with my mom, who had been a teacher in the Philadelphia Public School system for more than 40 years. My mom couldn't wait to get home to tell her friends about this wonderful young man she had shared dinner with.

Today, Charles Barkley is Mr. Entertainment.

"I always felt like he was going to be a success, although not to the extent he has been, and not even necessarily in basketball," said Glen Guthrie, a longtime friend and associate. "I just felt he was going to better himself; he was bound and determined. He had his mind made up, and he improved every year after he left college.

"To me, he was a better college player than he was a high school player, a better pro player than he was in college, and-listen to what I'm saying-better at TV than he was at basketball."

Billy Cunningham watches him on TNT, and "I just laugh."

"He's found a shtick," Cunningham said. "He gets away with saying outlandish things, but he's entertaining. I didn't watch him much this season, but I did the night they were picking the next 10 greatest players after the 50 greatest in history. If he hadn't been on that set, it would have been the most boring thing ever. He's a bright man; he figured out a great shtick. He probably gets more publicity now than when he played."

Phil Jasner, a staff reporter with the Philadelphia Daily News since 1972 and the 2004 winner of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame's Curt Gowdy Award for outstanding lifetime coverage in print journalism, has covered the NBA on a fulltime basis since 1981. He covered Charles Barkley's eight seasons with the 76ers and has lived to tell about them.