For those too young, Barnes was DennisRodman before Rodman.
http://www.boston.com/sports/college...news_bad_news/
Good news, bad news
Barnes in ongoing struggle to overcome checkered past
By Stan Grossfeld, Globe Staff | January 6, 2006
PROVIDENCE -- By the time Marvin ''Bad News" Barnes, the flashy two-time All-American at Providence College and former American Basketball Association All-Star, made it to the Celtics in 1978, he was seeing red. Not Auerbach.
Blood.
''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."
Archibald, the former star point guard, does not remember the incident, but says the flamboyant Barnes was once a ''great player. He had all the talent and ability in the world, then he got caught up in the hype."
Barnes bounced around the NBA, playing on four teams from 1976-80, averaging just 9.2 points. His life was spiraling out of control because of drugs, alcohol, and all-night partying. He went from nothing but net to simply nothing at age 28, when he was out of the NBA forever.
''I have never seen a player lose so much talent so fast," Rod Thorn, president of the New Jersey Nets, said at the time.
''My body just deteriorated," said Barnes. After an unsuccessful comeback attempt in Italy and the Continental Basketball Association, things got worse. Much worse.
Barnes moved in and out of prison for seven years (three stints) and was homeless in San Diego for five years, doing drugs, drinking, pimping, and robbing to pay for his habit. Barnes makes no excuses. ''The talent I wasted," he confessed. ''Drugs destroyed my life."
But three years ago, ''Bad News" got some good news.
After treatment in 19 rehab programs and a religious reawakening, he started reaching out to troubled youth in the Providence neighborhood where he grew up. As founder and president of The Rebound Foundation -- a nonprofit, community-centered organization that provides youth substance abuse and education talks, legal assistance, and mentoring -- he's been spreading the light of hope into the shadows of trouble.
Barnes, 53, has done that by buying sneakers for kids, setting up basketball camps, and trying to help stop violence in Rhode Island.
''I want to make a difference," he said.
Kevin Stacom, a former Providence College teammate and ex-Celtic, is on the board of directors of The Rebound Foundation. ''Marvin is brutally honest, he's a great speaker, and the kids pick up that," Stacom said.
But Barnes's past still seems to haunt him. On the afternoon of Dec. 22, police arrested Barnes at his Warwick address for domestic disorderly conduct. Last Friday, Barnes pleaded not guilty in Kent County District Court in West Warwick.
According to Warwick police, officers responded to a report of a home invasion and found Barnes naked on the balcony. Police observed Barnes dragging a woman, who, police said, was mouthing, ''Please help me," back into the residence. Police said Barnes admitted he had been drinking that day and arguing with the woman, whom he identified as a friend. Barnes said the incident was ''a misunderstanding."
Police said they found no intruders, no drugs, and no outward signs of violence. In a telephone interview, the woman said Barnes is not a batterer. ''He's not like that at all."
A hearing was set for Jan. 16 on the disorderly charge, which is a misdemeanor and carries no jail time.
Police said Barnes has not been arrested since 1982. But Warwick police officer Stephen A. Lombardi wrote in his report that Barnes admitted that he used cocaine ''a few days ago."
Barnes said, ''That didn't happen. I think that cop got everything misinterpreted. I've been clean 2-3 years."
Barnes said he will wait until his name is ''squeaky clean" before working with kids again. He said he is currently attending a 12-step program.
''I'm putting everything off until this is all resolved," he said. ''I never claimed to be perfect. I'm human. People make mistakes. The demons are still out there in all shapes and forms.
''Things get off-track and you just regroup. This is nothing. I just want to help kids. It's not about Marvin Barnes, it's about helping kids."
Message to deliver
Barnes, a grandfather, is in remarkably good shape for his age, having survived liver problems associated with alcoholism. He works out regularly at the local YMCA, but never plays basketball. At 6 feet 9 inches, the bald man with the flashy smile is impossible to miss in the neighborhood. He patrols the city in an SUV, his old ABA Spirits of St. Louis jersey with just ''Marvin" on it in the back seat. He shows it to kids and uses it in fund-raising pitches. Following him around for two days in November, it seems as if he is running for mayor.
Gang members wave at him as he drives by. Cops stop him to shake his hand. Chefs come out of kitchens, their smiles as big as their hats. Girls who stand barely above his belt buckle reach up to hug him and thank him for helping their brothers. One teenage girl says he paid for a plane ticket so her brother could get a baseball tryout.
Surrounded by the early darkness, when South Providence looks gray and raw, Barnes bumps into Josh Beeman on the street. Beeman, 24, is a boxer who served time for armed robbery. He credits Barnes for helping him fight his way out of trouble.
''He's a great man," said Beeman, a bandage on the bridge of his nose. ''His foundation helped me out when I needed money. He's a great motivator. When I needed someone, he was there. I respect him because I know all the troubles he's been through and he overcame that. Everything he does is pure from the heart."
At his ''Men to Men" program held after high school at the innovative Metropolitan Regional Career and Technical Center in South Providence, a dozen teenage students, some wearing hooded sweat shirts, others wearing attitude, are silent as Barnes tells them not to repeat his mistakes.
''I've been to prison three times," said Barnes, citing his incarcerations for drug trafficking, theft, and the parole violation for carrying a handgun.
Then Barnes shows them a documentary of a black man being stabbed 67 times by a white inmate. It is a gruesome scene, but Barnes rewinds the tape and shows it again. The boys want to go home.
Barnes, like a preacher nearing the end of his sermon, raises his voice.
''Life is no dress rehearsal," he says. ''You get one shot and it's over. You can make a silly decision in five seconds and throw your life away."
Trouble on horizon
Marvin Barnes always believed he would die young in a hail of bullets.
''My father was an alcoholic," he recalled. ''He beat my mother, he beat me. When I was 16, I got my 22-[caliber gun] out and said, 'You ain't gonna beat me no more. You got your gun, I got mine. Draw.' "
Barnes's mother jumped in the middle to keep the peace. When he first signed his ABA contract in 1974, he bought her a house in the neighborhood. She still lives there.
Jim Adams, Barnes's coach at Central High School, remembers Barnes as ''a natural athlete. He didn't know how to play, but he was easy to coach."
Central went undefeated and won back-to-back state championships in 1968 and '69 with Barnes at center.
''He wasn't afraid to work," said Adams, who now helps Barnes mentor kids.
At Providence, Barnes led the Friars to the Final Four in 1973, and led the nation in rebounding the following season (18.7 per game). He still holds team records for points (52), rebounds (34), and blocks (12) in a game.
But his troubles often haunted him.
In 1972, he was charged with assault after allegedly hitting teammate Larry Ketvirtis with a tire iron. Barnes said he punched Ketvirtis, a backup center, after he was elbowed in the mouth during a scrimmage. Barnes said that when Ketvirtis appeared unhurt, he left the court and returned with the tire iron in case there was further ''discussion."
''I never used the tire iron," he said.
But in a bizarre turn in court in 1974, Barnes pleaded guilty, but proclaimed his innocence in a statement. He says he only agreed to a plea bargain because that would guarantee he would be placed on probation (he received a suspended one-year prison sentence and three years' probation). It also cleared the way for a lucrative bidding war for his services between the Philadelphia 76ers and the fledgling American Basketball Association.
Barnes, who had been selected by the 76ers with the No. 2 pick in the April NBA Draft behind Bill Walton, opted to shun the NBA and sign with St. Louis for a reported $2.2 million.
Away from home for the first time, he became a big-time drug trafficker and user, despite having tremendous success on the court. Barnes was named rookie of the year in 1975, beating out Moses Malone. He averaged 24.1 points in his first two seasons and was a rare combination of power forward, shot blocker, and rebounder. The Spirits tolerated his strange behavior; on one occasion in 1974, he had expressed dissatisfaction with his contract by suddenly leaving the team -- he surfaced a few days later at a pool tournament in Dayton, Ohio.
When the ABA folded in 1976, Barnes seemed to fold with it. He carried loaded pistols into NBA locker rooms, routinely missed practices and planes, and was arrested in 1977 for carrying a gun in his luggage, a parole violation from his earlier assault conviction. Former Spirits and then-Detroit Pistons teammate M.L. Carr bailed him out. Barnes went from the Pistons to prison in Rhode Island and served five months of a year's sentence.
Upon release, he left in a Rolls-Royce.
'I ruined my own life'
Barnes estimates he spent ''millions up my nose," noting he was using cocaine before games, even at halftime. ''What I spent, and what I could've earned, you can't even estimate," he lamented. ''It was my attitude and thinking. I was a gangster, a hustler, a pimp. I dealt with drug dealers and traffickers and I never really mingled with the other players. I was selfish, I wanted to be a thug. I ruined my own life; the league never put penalties on me. I did it to myself."
Stacom, who replaced Barnes on the Celtics in 1979, remembers what could have been. ''He had strength and timing," Stacom said. ''He was not selfish. He could beat anybody with his speed and quickness. He was the quintessential power forward. There's nobody like him now in the NBA. The closest to him was Karl Malone. You couldn't help but like him."
But Barnes was hiding something behind that effervescent personality. ''You could tell something was wrong," remembered Stacom, who says he was clueless back then about drug use. ''Guys were doing coke but I wasn't aware of it for a long time. I thought they were sniffling and had the longest colds in history."
Today, Barnes sees the NBA as troubled.
''Ron Artest wants to be the bad guy, the tough guy, the guy who didn't conform to the white establishment," Barnes contended. ''It's not worth it, but you've got to have somebody who went through it go back and tell these guys that. Not somebody who never challenged the establishment. You can't have a Dr. J [Julius Erving] talk to a Ron Artest. What's the point? You're an apple pie-and-ice cream guy talking to a thug. He ain't gonna listen to you. It ain't gonna register.
''You've got a lot of players that are selfish in the NBA, that forgot their roots and don't know how to deal with their success. When I got successful, I would sabotage myself."
In the NBA, Barnes played for Detroit, Buffalo, Boston, and San Diego.
''When I got to the Celtics, I was a shell of myself," he admitted. ''I was doing drugs all night long. I was running the streets. I wasn't the real Marvin Barnes. When I was playing with the Celtics, I was at my high point in using. I was like a drug addict."
And not even the championship banners and the retired numbers of Celtics greats in the rafters of the Garden could inspire Barnes to prevent self-destructing.
''Growing up, I dreamed of playing for the Boston Celtics," he acknowledged. ''But a drug addict don't give a damn about Celtic Pride, Bill Russell, or Red Auerbach. I was trying to get high. Period. I didn't care about looking up into the rafters. It didn't mean nothing to me. There was no cocaine in those rafters. Drugs warp your thinking. I wanted to be a thug, I wanted to be the bad guy, and that's what happens when you want to be the bad guy."
Barnes finished his NBA career as a clipped Clipper after 20 games in 1980.
He went from expensive threads to retreads out on the West Coast. He wound up homeless.
''I lived on the streets of San Diego, in cars and abandoned buildings," he said. ''It was warm. I robbed, I stole."
Barnes said he used to rob cash registers and tell the merchant his name and where he was headed. ''I wanted to get caught," he admitted.
Now he wants to put to rest the notion that his life was cool.
''I should be one of the 50 greatest players in the NBA, no doubt," he said. ''I should be worth $100 million-$200 million, easy. I don't glamorize how dumb and stupid and ridiculous it was. It made no sense at all. It'll haunt me the rest of my life.
''I'll never know how good I could've been."
© Copyright 2006 Globe Newspaper Company.
http://www.boston.com/sports/college...news_bad_news/
Good news, bad news
Barnes in ongoing struggle to overcome checkered past
By Stan Grossfeld, Globe Staff | January 6, 2006
PROVIDENCE -- By the time Marvin ''Bad News" Barnes, the flashy two-time All-American at Providence College and former American Basketball Association All-Star, made it to the Celtics in 1978, he was seeing red. Not Auerbach.
Blood.
''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."
Archibald, the former star point guard, does not remember the incident, but says the flamboyant Barnes was once a ''great player. He had all the talent and ability in the world, then he got caught up in the hype."
Barnes bounced around the NBA, playing on four teams from 1976-80, averaging just 9.2 points. His life was spiraling out of control because of drugs, alcohol, and all-night partying. He went from nothing but net to simply nothing at age 28, when he was out of the NBA forever.
''I have never seen a player lose so much talent so fast," Rod Thorn, president of the New Jersey Nets, said at the time.
''My body just deteriorated," said Barnes. After an unsuccessful comeback attempt in Italy and the Continental Basketball Association, things got worse. Much worse.
Barnes moved in and out of prison for seven years (three stints) and was homeless in San Diego for five years, doing drugs, drinking, pimping, and robbing to pay for his habit. Barnes makes no excuses. ''The talent I wasted," he confessed. ''Drugs destroyed my life."
But three years ago, ''Bad News" got some good news.
After treatment in 19 rehab programs and a religious reawakening, he started reaching out to troubled youth in the Providence neighborhood where he grew up. As founder and president of The Rebound Foundation -- a nonprofit, community-centered organization that provides youth substance abuse and education talks, legal assistance, and mentoring -- he's been spreading the light of hope into the shadows of trouble.
Barnes, 53, has done that by buying sneakers for kids, setting up basketball camps, and trying to help stop violence in Rhode Island.
''I want to make a difference," he said.
Kevin Stacom, a former Providence College teammate and ex-Celtic, is on the board of directors of The Rebound Foundation. ''Marvin is brutally honest, he's a great speaker, and the kids pick up that," Stacom said.
But Barnes's past still seems to haunt him. On the afternoon of Dec. 22, police arrested Barnes at his Warwick address for domestic disorderly conduct. Last Friday, Barnes pleaded not guilty in Kent County District Court in West Warwick.
According to Warwick police, officers responded to a report of a home invasion and found Barnes naked on the balcony. Police observed Barnes dragging a woman, who, police said, was mouthing, ''Please help me," back into the residence. Police said Barnes admitted he had been drinking that day and arguing with the woman, whom he identified as a friend. Barnes said the incident was ''a misunderstanding."
Police said they found no intruders, no drugs, and no outward signs of violence. In a telephone interview, the woman said Barnes is not a batterer. ''He's not like that at all."
A hearing was set for Jan. 16 on the disorderly charge, which is a misdemeanor and carries no jail time.
Police said Barnes has not been arrested since 1982. But Warwick police officer Stephen A. Lombardi wrote in his report that Barnes admitted that he used cocaine ''a few days ago."
Barnes said, ''That didn't happen. I think that cop got everything misinterpreted. I've been clean 2-3 years."
Barnes said he will wait until his name is ''squeaky clean" before working with kids again. He said he is currently attending a 12-step program.
''I'm putting everything off until this is all resolved," he said. ''I never claimed to be perfect. I'm human. People make mistakes. The demons are still out there in all shapes and forms.
''Things get off-track and you just regroup. This is nothing. I just want to help kids. It's not about Marvin Barnes, it's about helping kids."
Message to deliver
Barnes, a grandfather, is in remarkably good shape for his age, having survived liver problems associated with alcoholism. He works out regularly at the local YMCA, but never plays basketball. At 6 feet 9 inches, the bald man with the flashy smile is impossible to miss in the neighborhood. He patrols the city in an SUV, his old ABA Spirits of St. Louis jersey with just ''Marvin" on it in the back seat. He shows it to kids and uses it in fund-raising pitches. Following him around for two days in November, it seems as if he is running for mayor.
Gang members wave at him as he drives by. Cops stop him to shake his hand. Chefs come out of kitchens, their smiles as big as their hats. Girls who stand barely above his belt buckle reach up to hug him and thank him for helping their brothers. One teenage girl says he paid for a plane ticket so her brother could get a baseball tryout.
Surrounded by the early darkness, when South Providence looks gray and raw, Barnes bumps into Josh Beeman on the street. Beeman, 24, is a boxer who served time for armed robbery. He credits Barnes for helping him fight his way out of trouble.
''He's a great man," said Beeman, a bandage on the bridge of his nose. ''His foundation helped me out when I needed money. He's a great motivator. When I needed someone, he was there. I respect him because I know all the troubles he's been through and he overcame that. Everything he does is pure from the heart."
At his ''Men to Men" program held after high school at the innovative Metropolitan Regional Career and Technical Center in South Providence, a dozen teenage students, some wearing hooded sweat shirts, others wearing attitude, are silent as Barnes tells them not to repeat his mistakes.
''I've been to prison three times," said Barnes, citing his incarcerations for drug trafficking, theft, and the parole violation for carrying a handgun.
Then Barnes shows them a documentary of a black man being stabbed 67 times by a white inmate. It is a gruesome scene, but Barnes rewinds the tape and shows it again. The boys want to go home.
Barnes, like a preacher nearing the end of his sermon, raises his voice.
''Life is no dress rehearsal," he says. ''You get one shot and it's over. You can make a silly decision in five seconds and throw your life away."
Trouble on horizon
Marvin Barnes always believed he would die young in a hail of bullets.
''My father was an alcoholic," he recalled. ''He beat my mother, he beat me. When I was 16, I got my 22-[caliber gun] out and said, 'You ain't gonna beat me no more. You got your gun, I got mine. Draw.' "
Barnes's mother jumped in the middle to keep the peace. When he first signed his ABA contract in 1974, he bought her a house in the neighborhood. She still lives there.
Jim Adams, Barnes's coach at Central High School, remembers Barnes as ''a natural athlete. He didn't know how to play, but he was easy to coach."
Central went undefeated and won back-to-back state championships in 1968 and '69 with Barnes at center.
''He wasn't afraid to work," said Adams, who now helps Barnes mentor kids.
At Providence, Barnes led the Friars to the Final Four in 1973, and led the nation in rebounding the following season (18.7 per game). He still holds team records for points (52), rebounds (34), and blocks (12) in a game.
But his troubles often haunted him.
In 1972, he was charged with assault after allegedly hitting teammate Larry Ketvirtis with a tire iron. Barnes said he punched Ketvirtis, a backup center, after he was elbowed in the mouth during a scrimmage. Barnes said that when Ketvirtis appeared unhurt, he left the court and returned with the tire iron in case there was further ''discussion."
''I never used the tire iron," he said.
But in a bizarre turn in court in 1974, Barnes pleaded guilty, but proclaimed his innocence in a statement. He says he only agreed to a plea bargain because that would guarantee he would be placed on probation (he received a suspended one-year prison sentence and three years' probation). It also cleared the way for a lucrative bidding war for his services between the Philadelphia 76ers and the fledgling American Basketball Association.
Barnes, who had been selected by the 76ers with the No. 2 pick in the April NBA Draft behind Bill Walton, opted to shun the NBA and sign with St. Louis for a reported $2.2 million.
Away from home for the first time, he became a big-time drug trafficker and user, despite having tremendous success on the court. Barnes was named rookie of the year in 1975, beating out Moses Malone. He averaged 24.1 points in his first two seasons and was a rare combination of power forward, shot blocker, and rebounder. The Spirits tolerated his strange behavior; on one occasion in 1974, he had expressed dissatisfaction with his contract by suddenly leaving the team -- he surfaced a few days later at a pool tournament in Dayton, Ohio.
When the ABA folded in 1976, Barnes seemed to fold with it. He carried loaded pistols into NBA locker rooms, routinely missed practices and planes, and was arrested in 1977 for carrying a gun in his luggage, a parole violation from his earlier assault conviction. Former Spirits and then-Detroit Pistons teammate M.L. Carr bailed him out. Barnes went from the Pistons to prison in Rhode Island and served five months of a year's sentence.
Upon release, he left in a Rolls-Royce.
'I ruined my own life'
Barnes estimates he spent ''millions up my nose," noting he was using cocaine before games, even at halftime. ''What I spent, and what I could've earned, you can't even estimate," he lamented. ''It was my attitude and thinking. I was a gangster, a hustler, a pimp. I dealt with drug dealers and traffickers and I never really mingled with the other players. I was selfish, I wanted to be a thug. I ruined my own life; the league never put penalties on me. I did it to myself."
Stacom, who replaced Barnes on the Celtics in 1979, remembers what could have been. ''He had strength and timing," Stacom said. ''He was not selfish. He could beat anybody with his speed and quickness. He was the quintessential power forward. There's nobody like him now in the NBA. The closest to him was Karl Malone. You couldn't help but like him."
But Barnes was hiding something behind that effervescent personality. ''You could tell something was wrong," remembered Stacom, who says he was clueless back then about drug use. ''Guys were doing coke but I wasn't aware of it for a long time. I thought they were sniffling and had the longest colds in history."
Today, Barnes sees the NBA as troubled.
''Ron Artest wants to be the bad guy, the tough guy, the guy who didn't conform to the white establishment," Barnes contended. ''It's not worth it, but you've got to have somebody who went through it go back and tell these guys that. Not somebody who never challenged the establishment. You can't have a Dr. J [Julius Erving] talk to a Ron Artest. What's the point? You're an apple pie-and-ice cream guy talking to a thug. He ain't gonna listen to you. It ain't gonna register.
''You've got a lot of players that are selfish in the NBA, that forgot their roots and don't know how to deal with their success. When I got successful, I would sabotage myself."
In the NBA, Barnes played for Detroit, Buffalo, Boston, and San Diego.
''When I got to the Celtics, I was a shell of myself," he admitted. ''I was doing drugs all night long. I was running the streets. I wasn't the real Marvin Barnes. When I was playing with the Celtics, I was at my high point in using. I was like a drug addict."
And not even the championship banners and the retired numbers of Celtics greats in the rafters of the Garden could inspire Barnes to prevent self-destructing.
''Growing up, I dreamed of playing for the Boston Celtics," he acknowledged. ''But a drug addict don't give a damn about Celtic Pride, Bill Russell, or Red Auerbach. I was trying to get high. Period. I didn't care about looking up into the rafters. It didn't mean nothing to me. There was no cocaine in those rafters. Drugs warp your thinking. I wanted to be a thug, I wanted to be the bad guy, and that's what happens when you want to be the bad guy."
Barnes finished his NBA career as a clipped Clipper after 20 games in 1980.
He went from expensive threads to retreads out on the West Coast. He wound up homeless.
''I lived on the streets of San Diego, in cars and abandoned buildings," he said. ''It was warm. I robbed, I stole."
Barnes said he used to rob cash registers and tell the merchant his name and where he was headed. ''I wanted to get caught," he admitted.
Now he wants to put to rest the notion that his life was cool.
''I should be one of the 50 greatest players in the NBA, no doubt," he said. ''I should be worth $100 million-$200 million, easy. I don't glamorize how dumb and stupid and ridiculous it was. It made no sense at all. It'll haunt me the rest of my life.
''I'll never know how good I could've been."
© Copyright 2006 Globe Newspaper Company.
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