It might be safe to say that when you have a child, there seems to form a certain set of expectations that you wish them to fulfill. While many choose to walk on their parent’s desired path and carry their legacy, others make them proud by simply achieving success in a different field. It is no secret that NBA veteran Charles Barkley‘s daughter chose to do the latter, but how did her dad initially feel when Christiana decided to venture on a different path? The Phoenix Suns legend recently revealed in an exclusive interview how devastated he was when his daughter decided to walk away from basketball.

Christiana Barkley is the one and only child of Charles Barkley and his wife Maureen. Despite having an NBA great for a dad, Christiana never found the appeal in becoming a basketball star and instead chose to pursue a career in the corporate world.

Charles Barkley had to accept the bitter truth

In a recent interview with Jon Wertheim of CBS’ 60 Minutes, Charles Barkley opened up about his daughter’s ‘aversion’ towards the sports he loves so dearly. When Wertheim reminded him of the fact that his daughter was not a basketball player like him, Chuck’s disappointment was evident. In fact, the 11x NBA All-Star had quite a bit to say on the matter.

Remembering the dreams he had for his daughter, Barkley replied, “That was, that was brutal. She was 6 feet tall from, from birth (laughter). I’m gonna have the best female basketball player in the world. I can’t wait till she’s old enough. I’m gonna teach her everything.”

He then added, “And then we start playin’ and I’m sittin’ in the stands, and I’m sayin’ to myself, ‘Oh, man. She is not aggressive at all‘ (laughter). So I ask her one day, I says, ‘you don’t like basketball, do you?’ She says, ‘Oh, Dad, I hate basketball.’ And I said, ‘Oh, okay (laugh).’ And it took me a little while to get over that…”

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Despite failing at shaping his daughter into an athlete, Chuck is a proud dad to a straight-A student who got married to the love of her life in 2021 and made Barkley a happy grandpa. Other than being a wife and a mom, Christiana is working as the director of writing and senior account manager at the Koppelman Group.

Chuckster takes a playful jab at his daughter

The Inside the NBA analyst became a proud grandfather in 2022 when Christiana welcomed her first child with her husband Jeff Hoffman. The happiness doubled in less than a year when Barkley announced that his daughter was pregnant with her second child. While Chuck was ecstatic about the news, he couldn’t help but tease his daughter a little.

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In a recent episode of The Steam Room podcast, Barkley didn’t hold back when he said, “She is pregnant again; yeah, they are getting it in. Henry’s [Barkey’s first grandson] is like 10, 11 months, and she’s like five months pregnant. I mean, damn, take a night off yall.”

One can only imagine what Christiana’s reaction to her father’s public declaration would have been.