Sacramento native Matt Barnes has words for you (on ESPN): ‘Half love me, half hate me’
Matt Barnes isn’t for everyone, as a player in his day or one who breaks down players now as an NBA analyst.
He’s either an acquired taste or not at all, and he’s OK with that. Barnes reveled in his role as an antagonizer during his 14-year NBA playing career, the banger you might boo lustily if he played against your team but you’d defend him with all manner of pride when he played for your club. He was a Dennis Rodman sort, but not nearly as crazy.
A Sacramento product by way of Del Campo High School, Barnes didn’t fade to oblivion when he retired from pro ball in 2017. He’s more visible than ever, neck deep in projects. He’s an analyst on ESPN radio for the Warriors-Nuggets playoff series; he makes ESPN “SportsCenter” appearances. ESPN is giving him a trial run as a radio analyst. Barnes is a natural, informative, punchy, opinionated without dragging down a broadcast.
Barnes also did Kings pregame, halftime and postgame work on TV this season. He is the co-host on the wildly unpredictable and entertaining “All the Smoke” podcast, raw and unfiltered. He is the owner of a cannabis brand named Swish — yes, he smokes the green and he isn’t going to apologize for it — and he is the founder of Athletes vs. Cancer, something dear to him since he lost his mother to the disease during his NBA career.
The more of Barnes, the better. Give Barnes a peek or a listen. He might win you over, or you might curse him all the more. He’s OK with either result. He might even curse right back. You either like the guy or you don’t, with no real middle ground. He takes in equal parts adoration and heat on social media — and sometimes even in person.
“Some people still hold grudges for how I played, hard, and that doesn’t bother me,” Barnes said in a phone interview this week as he was hustling from Point A to Point B. “Fans will say anything. They’re fans. They either say stuff because they like us as players or former players, or they don’t like me, and they want a reaction. It comes with the territory with what I do and who I am..”
Barnes on the Kings
Barnes was solid with his Kings work, but one thing irked me. I told him so. He offered a hearty laugh and reasoning.
If you are not on payroll for a sports team, then that team is “they” or “them” and not “we” or “us.” Barnes regularly said on his Kings breakdowns that, “We have to rebound better”, or, “we can’t expect to make that many mistakes and win.”
We? Yes, Barnes had two stints with the Kings, but is that enough to justify an overuse of “we”?
With ESPN, Barnes doesn’t play favorites. He’s firm and fair. Though he won an NBA championship as a reserve with the 2017 Warriors, Barnes doesn’t refer to Golden State as “we” or “us” on the air. Before Game 1 of that Warriors-Nuggets series, Barnes was greeted on the Chase Center floor by Warriors forward Draymond Green, who hugged him like a long-lost pal. They were teammates. During the ESPN radio broadcast, Barnes said Green acted as if he’d never committed a foul in his life, adding that he played the same way: relentless, but flabbergasted at calls.
“When I talk about the Kings on the air,” Barnes explained, “I say ‘we’ because I’m from here, and I’m working for that team as an employee. So I can say ‘we.’ When I’m on ESPN, no. I don’t do that. I agree that some don’t like when I say, ‘we’, but I feel it’s OK. I’m one of the most notable players to come out of Sacramento, and Sacramento will always be part of me, so that’s part of why I say ‘we.’
Barnes added, “I’ll always love Sacramento, though I know that it’s 50-50 — half love me, half hate me. Most hate me because I did something bad to them, even as a player, or I’m doing well.”
Barnes at Del Campo
I first met Barnes when he was 14 years old. It was 1995. He was a long-limbed freshman starter on the Del Campo varsity team, every bit of 6-foot-5, with arms to the rafters. Freshmen just didn’t play varsity in those days, or you had to be exceptional.
Barnes was exceptional. He had skills. He was tenacious. He told me then that he would land in the NBA. A lot of kids say that. I didn’t laugh, pat him on the head and say, “Sure, kid.” Barnes spoke with conviction even then. Barnes also discovered football at Del Campo, where weight room sessions under the eye of influential football coach Steve Kenyon helped toughen him up. Before Barnes did all the pushing and shoving in competition, he was the recipient of such tactics.
Barnes became a receiver to behold when he wasn’t flattening linebackers across the middle with pancake blocks. He caught a regional record 28 touchdown passes in 1997, stretching his 6-7 frame in the corner of end zones. Not bad for a national basketball recruit who was named our Bee Player of the Year his junior season.
He didn’t earn that honor after his senior year. Typical Barnes, even then. He questioned my logic. My response was that he missed too many games as a senior due to injury, and he and his team were not as good in the playoffs as the season before. He accepted it. He still returns my calls.
Barnes made sports look easy in high school, but life wasn’t always easy outside competition. Here was a kid from an interracial marriage, the son of a Black father, Henry, a former NFL player, and a white mother, Ann, a beloved teacher. Barnes took a lot of grief on a Fair Oaks campus thin on minorities. Losers once spray-painted messages on campus that read, “Matt Barnes must die!”
Barnes’ mother pleaded for him not to go to school until things simmered down. Barnes was never one to sit idle. He went back to school. He later defended his sister Danielle when she was bullied on campus, either offering to stuff mouthy sorts into a trash can or actually doing so. Barnes was called into the principal’s office for being a bully himself. Some believe he was a bully and still is. For years, Barnes didn’t want anything to do with his alma mater, but time soothed any ill will.
One of the most disturbing stories came when Barnes was a Del Campo senior. Playing at a rival school in the San Juan Unified School District, rival students waved bananas at him as he attempted free throws. It took restraint for him not to charge into the stands to see if they’d do that to his face.
“Some things, you never forget and forgive,” Barnes told me years later.
‘I’m just me on the air’
After his UCLA career, Barnes set out to make his mark in professional basketball. He played inspired. He played angry. He was a scorer in high school, a stopper in college, a hustler in the NBA.
He went from second-round pick in 2002 to the Memphis Grizzlies to playing minor-league ball for obscure teams such as the Fayetteville Patriots and the Long Beach Jam. There were stops with nine NBA teams, including two stints with the Kings. Barnes averaged double-figure scoring in four NBA seasons, with seasons of 9.8 and 9.9 sprinkled in. He played in 929 NBA games, starting 359, including 95 playoff games, with 48 starts.
Barnes is at peace with who he was as a player and who he is now. He is the father of three and has to check his calendar to squeeze everything in. He hasn’t changed much.
“I’m just me on the air,” Barnes said. “Now that I’ve crossed over to the media space, I can relate to players. I’ve been in those locker rooms. I have an obligation now to let (viewers and listeners) know what players are thinking and going through. There are times I have to critique athletes, but I can do so without being disrespectful. I’m off the cuff sometimes. I always have to be me and never anyone else.”
Barnes is too engaged in his new life to miss his playing days. But he does miss his mother, always a calming influence. Ann Barnes died of lung cancer in 2007, weeks after her diagnosis. This was early in his first Warriors stint. Barnes’ twin sons — Carter and Isaiah — were born a year later. His biggest regret is his mother never got to meet them. And yeah, tough guys cry.
“It’ll be 15 years this November since Mom passed,” Barnes said. “I think of her all the time. I try to make her proud.”
This story was originally published April 22, 2022 at 5:00 AM.