Charles Barkley is going to sell all his awards and trophies

Why is he doing this? Is Sir Charles in financial trouble? Did he make some bad real-estate investments like so many of his contemporaries?

Fortunately none of those are the case. Charles Barkley is a very rich man. He has a net worth of around $50 million and is still a sought after commentator for all things NBA and of course, for humorous golf videos from time-to-time.

You see, Charles isn't just the least useful player on every NBA2K "classic Dream Team" squad, but he also a very sensible and generous dude. He wants to sell all of his memorabilia, except for one Olympic Gold Medal (because his daughter wants it) in order to start a project to build housing for low-income families in his hometown of Leeds, Alabama.

In a recent radio interview with WJOX 94.5 (based out of Birmingham, Alabama) Charles stated his intention to sell almost all of his trophies and awards from his prime which he refers to as "30 or so eyesores" at auction in order to fund a pet project to the help the needy in his childhood city. He went on to say that most of the awards aren't even at his residence but are in storage at his grandmother's house.

In his prime Barkley was quite the force to be reckoned with. He is more well-known for being a beast on the boards and on defense, but somehow people tend to overlook the fact that he averaged more than 20 points a game as well until his waning years with the Rockets. Not so suggest that he was a slouch at Houston, in his first game with the Texas side he pulled down a career high 33 rebounds. However, his reliability became problematic as he was plagued with constant injury and was averaging less than 50% on shots.

He retired in Houston at the age of 37.

Although the footage is quite grainy you get a good idea of his offensive prowess, which was mostly in his powerful short game.

Just on a whim Barkley asked some people who worked for Panini when he was doing an autograph tour with them when he asked "how much do you think i could get for [the memorabilia]? The response was vague but basically it came down to "a lot." It is estimated that the MVP trophy alone is worth nearly half a million dollars.

So this is the feel-good story of the week for me. Barkley was known as a bit of a bad boy during his basketball days but maybe underneath that tough exterior there was always a heart of gold.