When Charles Barkley landed on his knee after a midair collision last Wednesday in Philadelphia, he knew his season, and career, were over.

What he probably didn't expect was the raucous standing ovation the Sixers fans, in an enemy stadium, gave him when they realized they had seen one of the NBA's 50 greatest players play his last game.

And last Friday, at the FleetCenter in Boston, Barkley also got a ten-minute ovation from Celtics fans after he delivered what amounted to a farewell speech.

My question is, why? Why do all these people love Barkley, who has insulted, annoyed, perplexed and disappointed them?

I have to admit I never liked Charles Barkley. I saw him play several years ago in his first year with the Houston Rockets, and I wasn't overly impressed. His overweight body stumbled and bumbled across the court, he seemed to play offense with his elbows and what could be characterized as an overall sense of laziness. "Sir Charles" was a goon.

His ex-teammates have said that even though he wanted to win, he never gave enough effort in games or practice to make them think he actually cared enough about basketball.

He never gave me any reason to like him. Whenever he opened his mouth, only dumb or offensive comments followed. Whenever reporters asked him for his opinion, his answer was usually a snide remark towards another player or the refs.

One time, he even threw a man through a plate-glass window after an altercation at a bar.

But I guess everybody else saw something I was missing. Otherwise, why would they all clap for a man who's paid more money in the form of NBA fines than everybody except for Dennis Rodman?

The answer is that Barkley, more than anyone, revolutionized the power forward position and gave the NBA a fresh, honest and funny voice. He gave the fans somebody to laugh at, but he wasn't a goof-off. He was the anti-Jordan, a player who played with neither swagger nor grace.

When he came out of Auburn as a junior in the 1984 draft, he was called the "Round Mound of Rebound" for both his size (6'6, but a hefty 252 lbs.) and his ability to fight under the basket for boards. The 76ers picked him fifth, two spots behind Michael Jordan. Jordan would be both Barkley's best friend and his greatest opponent, the reason Charles could never win a championship.

After Julius Erving retired and Moses Malone was traded, the young Barkley was forced to accept both a leadership role and the fact that he was the only star on the team. He always made the All-Star team, but his Sixers teams never went far in the playoffs. In 1992 Barkley took his game and by then infamous outspoken comments to Phoenix.

It was there where he came the closest in his career to winning an NBA title. But in the 1993 finals his Suns ran smack into the dynasty that would be the Chicago Bulls, and Barkley could only look at his MVP trophy from that season for consolation. In 1996, after contemplating retirement due to an aching back, he decided to give it one more try, this time going to the Rockets where he hoped he could put it all together with Hakeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler.

In those last years with Houston, many of the negative aspects of Barkley's personality shined through. His growing frustration with his inability to win an NBA title, coupled with his decreasing skills, made him the type of player who was liable to burst at any minute.

And he did. In one season, he was suspended three different times. He stopped passing the ball to better teammates and got into loud arguments with both his coach and the referees. Even Scottie Pippen didn't want to play with him anymore and left the Rockets.

Before the 1999 season began, Barkley announced his retirement after the season was over. I think he realized it was his time. His friends had left- Michael, Larry, Magic. He was playing for a team that was going to feature mostly rookies. I don't think Sir Charles wanted to suffer for more than one year.

He may not have won a championship, probably the only accolade he cared about. But the rest of his accomplishments are impressive: 22.2 points per game lifetime average, 11.7 rebounds, 1993 MVP award, 11-time All-Star and winner of two Olympic gold medals.

I think people like Charles Barkley for the same reasons they like Jesse Ventura or Howard Stern: those guys appear to tell it "like it is", to be honest with their feelings, to hold nothing back. Barkley never held anything back.

I like him now because I realize that he accomplished everything as a misfit. He was from Alabama when most players were from the cities. His size made him too short to be a power forward and too fat to be a small forward. But he learned to shoot the jumper, to take the ball down low in the post, and to make the steal or the block.

On that last fateful play where Sir Charles hurt his knee, he was jumping up in the hopes of blocking a much bigger player from making a layup. Barkley got knocked down but the shot never got off.

That's how Charles Barkley played the game of basketball. He didn't care if he was going down, as long as the other guy was, too.