Marvin "Bad News" Barnes RIP
Rockadelic
Out Digging 13,993 Posts
One of the greatest I ever got to see play the game...his raw talent was next next level...watched him lead Providence to a Final Four....watched him in his prime in the ABA of which there is unfortuntaely very little video....his life was a circus...here are some examples
Barnes had earned the nickname ???Bad News??? for some of his off the court actions. Barnes once robbed a liquor store in broad daylight. If a being a 6???9??? Black male didn???t make Barnes stick out enough ??? the fact that he was wearing a basketball jersey with his name on the back was the clincher.
Teammates try to awaken Barnes to keep him from missing a team flight, Barnes snaps back, ???News will catch a later flight!??? Five minutes before tip-off the locker room door swings open and there???s Barnes in a full length mink coat, Big Mac in hand with just his uniform on underneath. Upon entering he bellows out, ???Have no fear??? Bad News is here!???
For the record he dropped 44 points that night.
My favorite Barnes story involves a road trip where the team is flying from Louisville to St. Louis. The flight leaves Louisville at 11am and is scheduled to arrive in St. Louis at 11am. Upon reading the flight itinerary Barnes becomes confused and asks how can this be, someone breaks down the time zones and how St. Louis is an hour behind Louisville. Barnes says that they can cancel his ticket because ???I ain???t gettin??? on no time machine!???
The Spirits has lost six straight to the Nets, but that didn???t seem to bother the rookie, as he went on to write this poem:
There once was a doctor named Erving,
Whose slam dunks were especially unnerving,
But when Marvin gets movin???,
And the crowd gets to groovin???,
For the doctor a hospital bed they???ll be reserving.
He recalls in graphic detail an incident that occurred of all places on the team bench while spending a season in Boston:
???I remember this one game, I was sitting at the end of the bench,??? he recalled. ???I had a towel over my head and I was snorting coke and my nose was bleeding. Don Chaney and Nate Archibald moved all the way up to the front and I had four or five seats between me and the next player. I was snorting coke and it was tearing my membranes up. Snorting it and blowing my nose. It was like my brains were coming out in the towel and I couldn???t stop snorting it anyway. It was terrible, man. I was addicted.???
Barnes had earned the nickname ???Bad News??? for some of his off the court actions. Barnes once robbed a liquor store in broad daylight. If a being a 6???9??? Black male didn???t make Barnes stick out enough ??? the fact that he was wearing a basketball jersey with his name on the back was the clincher.
Teammates try to awaken Barnes to keep him from missing a team flight, Barnes snaps back, ???News will catch a later flight!??? Five minutes before tip-off the locker room door swings open and there???s Barnes in a full length mink coat, Big Mac in hand with just his uniform on underneath. Upon entering he bellows out, ???Have no fear??? Bad News is here!???
For the record he dropped 44 points that night.
My favorite Barnes story involves a road trip where the team is flying from Louisville to St. Louis. The flight leaves Louisville at 11am and is scheduled to arrive in St. Louis at 11am. Upon reading the flight itinerary Barnes becomes confused and asks how can this be, someone breaks down the time zones and how St. Louis is an hour behind Louisville. Barnes says that they can cancel his ticket because ???I ain???t gettin??? on no time machine!???
The Spirits has lost six straight to the Nets, but that didn???t seem to bother the rookie, as he went on to write this poem:
There once was a doctor named Erving,
Whose slam dunks were especially unnerving,
But when Marvin gets movin???,
And the crowd gets to groovin???,
For the doctor a hospital bed they???ll be reserving.
He recalls in graphic detail an incident that occurred of all places on the team bench while spending a season in Boston:
???I remember this one game, I was sitting at the end of the bench,??? he recalled. ???I had a towel over my head and I was snorting coke and my nose was bleeding. Don Chaney and Nate Archibald moved all the way up to the front and I had four or five seats between me and the next player. I was snorting coke and it was tearing my membranes up. Snorting it and blowing my nose. It was like my brains were coming out in the towel and I couldn???t stop snorting it anyway. It was terrible, man. I was addicted.???
Comments
Yeah, Marvin 'Bad News' Barnes was a beast! But for cocaine addiction and related erratic behavior, he would have been an NBA all-time great. I loved watching the Buffalo Braves play as a little kid. To put it in context, I used to have the old NBA bedspread and curtains (that listed all the NBA team logos such as the Buffalo Braves and Kansas City Kings :real_headz: ) as a kid in Aberdeen, MD. It's a great loss to the NBA community as he was a hell of a player and a larger-than-life personality. RIP, 'Bad News'!!!
Peace,
Big Stacks from Kakalak
So many great and somewhat forgotten players from the old ABA that never got their due. Some that jump to mind are Larry Kenon, the poor man's Dr. J who insisted that the Nets list him as Dr. K in their press guide. My boyhood idol Levern Tart who was as smooth as Clyde. Willie Somerset who like fellow ABAer Rick Barry took free throws underhanded with such a spin on the ball it was a purple blur. Rick Mount and Louie Dampier who both shot the "3" as well as anyone ever has. 6:2 Ollie Taylor who played Center at The University Of Houston and would outdunk Doc in warmups every night. And of course The Hawk, who might have been the best of them all ....even Julius has said that. The NBA was still a staunchy and conservative holdover from the 50's and the ABA was treated like a 3 ring circus but some of those dudes could BALL!!!
They had to enlist/pay for Dr. J to get their brand rebooted.
The Hall is just now (since inducting B-level stars) are now mining the ABA greats.
No question....The ABA saved the NBA from extinction.
There were plenty of players that started in the ABA and later played in the NBA that will make the HOF
But here are a few lesser known dudes that were ABA stars that people should know about.
Warren Jabali - Jabali won Rookie of the Year honors in the 1968-1969 season as a member of the Oaks, and decimated the Indiana Pacers in the playoffs when he averaged 33.2 PPG in the 1969 ABA Finals. Injuries cut his career short.
Mel Daniels - Consistent 20/15 dude who had legendary battles with Artis Gilmore
Louie Dampier - This is the guy that really made the 3 Point Shot popular
And then there's.......
Connie Hawkins - Played most of his career in the NBA but his stint in the ABA was where he did his thing. I know some serious hoops heads who will swear The Hawk could have been the greatest forward to ever play the game. What's undeniable is that he was the first one in an organized league to do the stuff that Doc and MJ would perfect later on. Possibly the biggest innovator in basketball history considering how the game was played before he arrived.
The players that Stacks and I grew up watching were like Chuck Berry....like James Brown....playing the game like no one ever had before....doing things that no one had ever seen before....these were the dudes that took a boring ass game and turned it into Rock & Roll....into the funkiest Funk...it was a time of innovation, a hyper-speed evolution from slug to butterfly. There was no one to compare them to.....Dr. J and Connie Hawkins weren't the second coming of anyone. The only place this stuff existed was in the streets and these dudes facilitated the transition into the Pros. Sure there are better players today.....better athletes....but they are not originals...Lebron is the Robert Cray to Elgin Baylor's Robert Johnson. Basketball in the 60's was like the invention of color TV. These were men walking on the moon that George Mikan could only see through a telescope. They invented swag. They brought grace to a sport that had been dominated by lumbering lummox's. Very rarely do you see things in today's game that are new and exciting...back then every night you saw some shit that was never done before. Watch the below clip and recognize that what was going on then was so new and so special that it will never be duplicated. Look at those crowds at Rucker, there to see a nationally unknown kid named Julius, and know that this was something that could only happen in that time and place.
My coach was the son of Micky Fisher who coached Hawk in Brooklyn.
He said he would have snatching quarters off the top of the backboard contests BITD.
Yes, the ballers back in the day were the truth, for real! I remember David 'Skywalker' Thompson coming across the lane doing leg-scissor dunks way before Michael Jordan and 'em. I remember cats like Walt Bellamy and Connie Hawkins giving hell in the paint before Hakeem, Patrick Ewing, etc. Oscar Robertson averaged a triple-double for a whole season! Basketball did not start in the 80s like cats try to suggest. I watched the triple-overtime finals game between Boston and Phoenix in 1976. I remember the shot Gar Heard made to send it to the third overtime. 70s basketball was off the wire, both in the ABA and NBA.
Peace,
Big Stacks from Kakalak
Dr. J and David Thompson were the ones that changed everything from my perspective. I'm a little bit younger than y'all. But I clearly remember how in my neighborhood we all tried to emulate their up-in-the-air, above-the-rim style of play.
Those were the days...
I take it most of you guys have read this book, but if you haven't it is a great read. So many awesome stories in here:
What are you saying, Harvey? Pistol Pete was a beast!!! I watched him torch the Knicks for 68 points back in the day. Some other forgotten cats from that era are:
-Dave Bing
-Phil Chenier
-Purvis Short
-Walter Davis
-Randy Smith
-Jo Jo White
-Marques Johnson
-Paul Westphal
-George McGinnis
-Elmore Smith (defensively)
-Spencer Haywood
-Austin Carr
-Charlie Scott
-Geoff Petrie
That's it for now, I'll add on some more later.
Peace,
Big Stacks from Kakalak
I'll help...
-Cazzie Russell
-Chet Walker
-Bob "Butterbean" Love
-Dick Barnett
-Nate Thurmond
-Bob McAdoo
-Elvin Hayes
-Sweet Lou Hudson
-Dave Cowens
-Bill Bridges
I gotta add some more:
-Norm Van Lier
-Jerry Sloan (heads know what's up, don't sleep!)
-Gus Johnson
-Steve 'Snapper' Jones
-Alvan Adams
-Campy Russell
-John Drew (damn, if it weren't for the coke)
-Kevin Grevey
-Danny Roundfield
-Terry Furlow (RIP, tragic car accident)
-Ray Williams (Gus' little brother)
-Otis Birdsong
-Kent Benson (I used to like the Bucks back then)
-Robert Reid (I used to wear the long socks like him)
-Jack Sikma (reverse pivot move!)
-Freeman Williams
-Mike Mitchell
-Billy Ray Bates (damn that cocaine again!)
Peace,
Big Stacks from Kakalak
Only if you forget the existence of Elgin Baylor. Hawkins' tragic bio makes people exaggerate his place in history. Hawkins only weighed about 200 pounds and he wouldn't have dominated in the real league the way he did in the ABA.