MARVIN "BAD NEWS" BARNES DEAD AT 62 

"I'm a basketball player, not a monk. I play the women, I play the clothes, I play the cars, I play everything I can play. There's players and there's playees. The playees are the ones who get played by the players. I am a player."

 

Marvin “Bad News” Barnes, one of basketball’s all-time great characters, has died at 62, according to Kevin McNamara of the Providence Journal.




Rod Thorn on Bad News "Marvin showed up for (The 1974) playoffs. He showed a great talent he was. But even then before one of the playoff games, Marvin ate a huge plate of Nachos in the dressing room while he was changing. Most guys would throw up doing that, but he went out and played like King Kong against us."

Barnes spent two years in the ABA with the Sprit of St. Louis and then four years in the NBA with the Detroit Pistons, Buffalo Braves, Boston Celtics and San Diego Clippers. In that time, he developed a heck of reputation.

Really, he entered pro ball with a rep coming out of Providence. There, he attacked a teammate with a tire iron. 

On not getting enough playing time as a Piston, he famously said "News did come here to sit on no wood."

As a Piston, he also went to prison for bringing a gun to an airport while still on probation from the tire-iron incident. When released after five months and declaring he’d stay out of trouble, Sports Illustrated profiled him:

But that was not the real Marvin. Not the Marvin who once said, “I sell more newspapers than a lot of people. I helped build the Providence Civic Center.” Not the Marvin who once missed a St. Louis team plane to Virginia, chartered one himself, arrived after the game had started and scored 53 points. Not the Marvin who once took 20 playground kids shopping and bought them all $30 sneakers and ice cream. People who know Barnes smile at stories like these, add a few more and say, “That’s Marvin.”
They would say the same sort of thing whenever Barnes got into trouble, which was often. The first time was during his senior year at Central High School. He was with a group of boys who decided to rob a Providence city bus. Aside from being 6’5″ and a local celebrity, Barnes had the bad judgment to be wearing a jacket that had “State Champions” and “Marvin” written in script across the front. 

Then Spirits Announcer Bob Costas on Barnes, "Once we got the itinerary for [a road] trip and noticed that the flight was exactly one hour. Because of the change of time zones our return flight would leave Louisville at 8 am and arrive in St. Louis at 7:59. Marvin looked at it an announced "I ain't gettin' on no time machine. I ain't takin' no flight that takes me back in time. "

Barnes kept getting multiple chances because he was so talented. He just liked money more than basketball, and that led him down some bad roads. Via Riverfront Times:

“I would have been one of the 50 greatest players of all time,” said Barnes, 57, who now works with at-risk teenagers in his Men to Men program in his hometown of Providence, R.I., telling them the pitfalls of drugs. “I was one of the five best players on the planet period (with St. Louis). Just ask anybody (from) back then … I was kicking some butt. … But I was going on a downhill spiral. I met drug traffickers in St. Louis and they showed me another way of life. And that was detrimental to my basketball career.”

In the 1975 playoffs he outplayed Julius Erving leading St. Louis to a huge upset of defending Champion New York. Barnes averaged 24-16-3 and 2 blocks as a rookie and his numbers slide after year after. His lifestyle destroyed his body and his talent and ended his career before it ever hit the heights it should have.

In return for $25,000 in cash, Barnes would receive 25,000 pounds of Colombian pot. Barnes would turn around and have people sell the pot on his behalf for $500 a pound (or “$300 if we like you”), bringing him more money than his ABA gig, which was a $2.1 million contract over seven years.

Despite all his demons, Barnes was immensely likable. As People magazine wrote in 1977:

“How could you not like Marvin?” asks his college coach Dave Gavitt in all seriousness. “If you get to know him, he’s a warm, wonderful human being.” Barnes’s lawyer, Neil Fink, admits, “I’ve almost quit on him five times, but the guy always charms me into staying on

For more on Marvin & the real-life inspiration for the Flint Tropics of Semi-Pro movie fame, check out the ESPN 30 for 30 on the St. Louis Spirits titled "Free Spirits."