Ailene Voisin: With heavy heart, Barnes follows mom's instructions

Matt Barnes needed to do this. Drive to Arco Arena. Change into his work clothes. Talk briefly about his late mother. Play passionately for his Warriors. Get on with his life.

He did what he was told.

He took her advice, one final time.

"Before she went into a coma, she told me ... 'This is a time to put the rest of the world aside,' " said the former Del Campo High School star, speaking in somber, thoughtful tones before Wednesday's 103-96 victory over the Kings. "This is a chance for me to be normal for a while."

For a short while, anyway. The shock and the grief and the reality would strike again three hours later. It had all happened so quickly, his wonderful life so harshly interrupted. Barnes, the area's most celebrated basketball product since Kevin Johnson, learned several weeks ago that his mother, Ann, was diagnosed with inoperable cancer. She was 50 years old. She was also his "best friend." Though fiercely protective of her three children, Ann Barnes certainly wasn't a coddler. A former elementary school teacher who supervised a dental office in Fair Oaks before her illness, she responded angrily when Matt was targeted with racial slurs and graffiti on a high school campus that, at the time, was predominantly white.

But she also urged her eldest son to concentrate on his dunks, his passes, his blocks and his game winners. Years later, when his NBA ambitions stalled, she didn't want to hear complaints about bad breaks and lousy coaches. Work harder, get in better shape, be persistent, she told him.

"These kids, when they first come into the league, it's all so new," Ann Barnes said one night last May. "But things have a way of working out. He turned 27, and his mind-set changed. We just saw this focus."

A skilled, athletic 6-foot-7 swingman, Barnes finally flourished in Don Nelson's up-tempo offensive scheme, and enjoyed a breakout postseason against the Dallas Mavericks. Suddenly, there was no more talk of giving up basketball and pursuing a day job.

There were no more one-month apartment leases, no more frustrated late-night phone calls home, no more trades to teams 3,000 miles from home. And the family members enthusiastically followed right along, attending the home games in Oakland's Oracle Arena, then gathering at Matt's house in Fair Oaks when the Warriors were on the road.

Beer and burger nights, they called them. Jason and Danielle, Matt's younger siblings, would arrive early and start the barbecue, maintaining a watchful eye on Danielle's 2-year-old son, Jaden. Matt's father, Henry, would ease onto the couch, his arthritic left knee resting on the coffee table. Matt's bulldog, Capone, often entertained in the backyard during timeouts. The dog – in all seriousness – scooted around the basketball court on a skateboard.

But Ann Barnes could never sit still. Dressed in one of Matt's oversized Warriors jerseys draped over a T-shirt, she nervously paced, often retreating to the kitchen, eager to make small talk. Warm and engaging, she was quick to laugh, and just as quick to laugh at herself. "She had the time of her life during the playoffs," recalled Nelson, who is a cancer survivor, as is his wife, Joy. " ... She got to see Matt at his best."

Barnes takes solace in that. Seated in the front row of the arena about two hours before tipoff, he spoke movingly of his mother, never losing his composure. "We knew she was going to die," he said, "but there's really no way to prepare for that. As she was dying, she was telling me, 'You need to get back out there, back with your team, and I'm going to be with you.' She was so proud ... "

Noting his recent five-game absence to be at his mother's side, he added: "It was an important time. I got to tell her how proud I was of her, thank her for everything she did for me and my family, and how much we're going to miss her ... She said she wanted to be buried in her jersey. We're not going to bury her in that, but we got a jersey for her, with her name on it."

Then he went out and did what he was told. He walked toward the court, blew a kiss onto his fingers and pointed to the sky, and went to work energetically, if not always effectively. Most importantly, he played.

"We stuck together like a family," he said. "And we won."

About the writer:

• Call The Bee's Ailene Voisin, (916) 321-1208.