Count Charles Barkley among those worried about Bill Belichick, so much so that the North Carolina football coach could soon be hearing from him.
During an appearance on "The Dan Patrick Show" Wednesday, Barkley said he has been friends with Belichick since Belichick coached with the Cleveland Browns more than 30 years ago. But the TNT NBA analyst expressed "concern" for the six-time Super Bowl-winning coach in the aftermath of a "CBS Sunday Morning" interview with Belichick that went awry due to an incident involving his 24-year-old girlfriend, Jordon Hudson.
From what I'm hearing, it's starting to be a very slippery slope," Barkley said. "And I never talk about people's personal relationships. That's another rule I got. But I will admit I'm a little concerned with some of the stuff that's going on, and I might actually reach out to him and make sure everything is good. But I am concerned from what I'm hearing because, yeah, it's not a good look right now. I'll admit that."
Belichick's relationship with Hudson has come under national scrutiny again in recent days after what happened during the CBS interview went viral and The Athletic reported she was "instrumental" in HBO's 'Hard Knocks' backing out of its planned involvement with North Carolina in March.
The eight-minute CBS segment that originally aired on April 27, included a tense moment in which Hudson shut down a question asked to Belichick by reporter Tony Dokoupil about how he and Hudson had met. Hudson also stopped Dokoupil's line of questioning several other times, according to CBS. She later posted a screenshot of emails sent by Belichick following the interview (accompanied by Taylor Swift's "Look what you made me do") in which he criticized how CBS edited the segment and the direction being taken in the promotion of his new book.
Belichick subsequently issued a statement through the University of North Carolina on Wednesday afternoon in the wake of the reaction to his "CBS Sunday Morning" appearance and emphasized Hudson only became involved once Dokoupil ignored Belichick's repeated requests to keep the conversation centered on the new book.
"After this occurred several times, Jordon, with whom I share both a personal and professional relationship, stepped in to reiterate that point to help refocus the discussion," Belichick said in his statement. "She was not deflecting any specific question or topic but simply doing her job to ensure the interview stayed on track. Some of the clips make it appear as though we were avoiding the question of how we met ...
The final eight-minute segment does not reflect the productive 35-minute conversation we had, which covered a wide range of topics related to my career," Belichick continued. "Instead, it presents selectively edited clips and stills from just a few minutes of his interview to suggest a false narrative – that Jordon was attempting to control the conversation – which is simply not true."
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