Kori Ellis
01-08-2005, 02:11 AM
Brent Barry :: The Problem is the Solution
WORDS :: MICHAEL WEINREB
http://slamonline.com/magazine/features/Bones85/
Brent Barry, high-priced offseason free-agent acquisition of the San Antonio Spurs, would like you to know that, in addition to his wife and 4-year-old son, he has a girlfriend in every Western Conference city and a set of 22-inch spinners on his ride.
There is only one problem with this: Brent Barry is lying. And he’s doing a poor job of it, too. No doubt, he would like to make more of an effort to fit what he thinks of as the SLAM stereotype, and he’d like to do a better job of forcing his ego upon us—to insist that he’s not happy coming off the bench for what may be the League’s deepest team, and to assure us that almost a decade after he became the palest man to win an NBA Dunk Contest, he can still throw down with the best of them.
But the truth ain’t quite so sexy. The truth is this: Brent Barry drives a Volkswagen Euro Van with a surfboard in tow. The truth is, Brent Barry’s got no issues being a sixth man, especially if it means he’s got a shot to win a ring (and we are convinced he actually means this). The truth is, Brent Barry attempted a routine dunk in practice a couple of days before we spoke to him, at the start of ’04-05 season, and Tim Duncan, having witnessed the ugliness that ensued, said, “You’re the same guy who won the Dunk Contest?”
So how, exactly, did this happen? How did a 34-year-old California beach bum with sporadic knee tendonitis become one of the League’s most coveted free-agent prizes, eventually signing a four-year deal with the Spurs worth about $23 million? How is it that so many intelligent people in this League are convinced a shaggy-haired 6-6 swingman might be the difference between a team that falls short just like last year and a team that wins its third NBA title since 1999?
“I don’t know, but it’s kind of flattering,” Barry says. “It’s flattering to hear from a lot of people in the offseason, to hear from teammates you used to play with, and to realize that people in and around the NBA appreciate the kind of game you have. Then again, a lot of people are talking about how I can get this team over the hump, but they were only a few seconds away [from beating the Lakers in the Western semis] last season. That sounds more like an anthill than a hump to me.”
And Barry thinks he can manage that. It’s apropos of the kind of player he is: He makes a difference without anyone realizing he’s made much of a difference—at least, not until it’s too late. He can penetrate and score, and he can penetrate and dish. He can play the point, and he can play on the wing. And he’s one of the most accurate three-point shooters in the League because he knows how to pick his spots; because he’s a shooter, and not a “chucker.”
“Not like my dad,” Bones says. “My dad was a chucker. No matter how many times it took him to score, he was going to shoot.”
There was a time, of course, when Brent Barry was known almost solely because of his dad, when he was just one of the Sons of Rick, offspring of the only man to lead the NCAA, NBA and ABA in scoring, the Hall of Famer who never met a jumper he didn’t like. Of the Sons of Rick, there was Drew (who played in the League from ’97-00), there was Scooter (who’s been playing in Europe for more than a decade), there was Jon (who’s still hanging around with the Hawks) and there was Brent, the tallest of them all, who came out of Oregon State in 1995 and, in February of his rookie year with the Clippers, threw down a smirking dunk from the free-throw line that seemed like it might be his 15 minutes of fame. His was an unconventional family dynamic, and it was exposed publicly in a 1991 Sports Illustrated story that detailed his parents’ divorce and the family divisions it created, and portrayed Rick—who called the article a “hatchet job”—as an aloof father. Brent, the story went, was the one who “likes being Rick Barry’s son,” according to Drew.
But instead of getting caught up in the considerable shadow of his father’s legacy (“I don’t think I’d use the word ‘burden,’” he says), something happened to Brent Barry over the years. People began to realize certain things about him: That he had an array of skills, that he wasn’t just a white boy with hops and good bloodlines, wasn’t just a rampant shooter like his dad. After his first four journeyman seasons, he became a valuable man over the course of five years in Seattle, so valuable that Sonics coach Nate McMillan, in the midst of last season, called Barry “the glue to our team.” And so it goes with the Spurs, who will use Barry to spell Manu Ginobili and Bruce Bowen, who will use him as an outside shooting threat when teams collapse on Duncan, and who will use him at point guard when Tony Parker needs a blow. Which has Bowen saying things like, “With his athleticism out there on the wing, he can really create something very positive for the city of San Antonio.”
And we all know what that means, don’t we?
It could be argued that Brent Barry didn’t need San Antonio as much as San Antonio needed him. He didn’t have to take up a spot on the bench for a team that has more than its share of established talent. He could’ve started somewhere else, could have put up better numbers and more shots in another city. But Barry’s been around long enough to recognize this as a pivotal moment in his career, as a chance to win a title, a chance to branch off from the family name and establish his own legacy. And so he waited until all the big names on the market had made their decisions, and then, when it was over, he couldn’t stop thinking about the Spurs.
“There’s a viability here,” he says. “It’s a different sense of team than what I’ve been a part of in the past.”
What does that mean, exactly? Well, it took some time for Barry to straighten that out himself. And then one day last summer, it came clear. This was on a July afternoon in San Antonio, and all things being equal, Barry would rather have been surfing. Four or five days a week in the offseason, he’s at the beach, and each summer for the past few years he’s gone to Costa Rica to surf and relax and get the taste of, say, a frigid December road trip to Milwaukee out of his mouth.
But Barry had just agreed to his deal with the Spurs, and there were papers to be signed, details to be worked out, and so he sat in an office with the general manager, RC Buford, and the director of basketball operations, Danny Ferry, next to a window that overlooked the SBC Center floor. The blinds were pulled low, but Barry peeked out, and he could see a pair of legs out there on the court, a pair of legs sheathed in rubber bands, doing defensive slide drills. The Spurs’ new prize poked a finger between the slats, and there was Tim Duncan, the best player in the League, maybe the best player in the world, sweating through a hellish summer routine.
“Yeah, he had the Olympics to get ready for, but still, I’m thinking, What’s going on in the other gyms in the middle of July?” Barry says. “And here he is, doing the most monotonous, most boring, shittiest drill you can be doing.” So this is what Barry means by viability. This is what he means when he says there’s an “understanding” among the players on the San Antonio roster, that a championship is one of those unspoken goals that lingers during each and every practice. This is all new for Barry, and he’s soaking it all in, step by step. In Seattle, he was the crux of a young team aiming for the playoffs, and before that, he was in transition in Chicago and Miami, and before that he was with the Clippers, where he channeled most of his talents into finding a way to survive. “I’ve missed out on the winning,” he says. “And I know the opportunity is going to be there this time.”
For more on Brent Barry, pick up SLAM 85
WORDS :: MICHAEL WEINREB
http://slamonline.com/magazine/features/Bones85/
Brent Barry, high-priced offseason free-agent acquisition of the San Antonio Spurs, would like you to know that, in addition to his wife and 4-year-old son, he has a girlfriend in every Western Conference city and a set of 22-inch spinners on his ride.
There is only one problem with this: Brent Barry is lying. And he’s doing a poor job of it, too. No doubt, he would like to make more of an effort to fit what he thinks of as the SLAM stereotype, and he’d like to do a better job of forcing his ego upon us—to insist that he’s not happy coming off the bench for what may be the League’s deepest team, and to assure us that almost a decade after he became the palest man to win an NBA Dunk Contest, he can still throw down with the best of them.
But the truth ain’t quite so sexy. The truth is this: Brent Barry drives a Volkswagen Euro Van with a surfboard in tow. The truth is, Brent Barry’s got no issues being a sixth man, especially if it means he’s got a shot to win a ring (and we are convinced he actually means this). The truth is, Brent Barry attempted a routine dunk in practice a couple of days before we spoke to him, at the start of ’04-05 season, and Tim Duncan, having witnessed the ugliness that ensued, said, “You’re the same guy who won the Dunk Contest?”
So how, exactly, did this happen? How did a 34-year-old California beach bum with sporadic knee tendonitis become one of the League’s most coveted free-agent prizes, eventually signing a four-year deal with the Spurs worth about $23 million? How is it that so many intelligent people in this League are convinced a shaggy-haired 6-6 swingman might be the difference between a team that falls short just like last year and a team that wins its third NBA title since 1999?
“I don’t know, but it’s kind of flattering,” Barry says. “It’s flattering to hear from a lot of people in the offseason, to hear from teammates you used to play with, and to realize that people in and around the NBA appreciate the kind of game you have. Then again, a lot of people are talking about how I can get this team over the hump, but they were only a few seconds away [from beating the Lakers in the Western semis] last season. That sounds more like an anthill than a hump to me.”
And Barry thinks he can manage that. It’s apropos of the kind of player he is: He makes a difference without anyone realizing he’s made much of a difference—at least, not until it’s too late. He can penetrate and score, and he can penetrate and dish. He can play the point, and he can play on the wing. And he’s one of the most accurate three-point shooters in the League because he knows how to pick his spots; because he’s a shooter, and not a “chucker.”
“Not like my dad,” Bones says. “My dad was a chucker. No matter how many times it took him to score, he was going to shoot.”
There was a time, of course, when Brent Barry was known almost solely because of his dad, when he was just one of the Sons of Rick, offspring of the only man to lead the NCAA, NBA and ABA in scoring, the Hall of Famer who never met a jumper he didn’t like. Of the Sons of Rick, there was Drew (who played in the League from ’97-00), there was Scooter (who’s been playing in Europe for more than a decade), there was Jon (who’s still hanging around with the Hawks) and there was Brent, the tallest of them all, who came out of Oregon State in 1995 and, in February of his rookie year with the Clippers, threw down a smirking dunk from the free-throw line that seemed like it might be his 15 minutes of fame. His was an unconventional family dynamic, and it was exposed publicly in a 1991 Sports Illustrated story that detailed his parents’ divorce and the family divisions it created, and portrayed Rick—who called the article a “hatchet job”—as an aloof father. Brent, the story went, was the one who “likes being Rick Barry’s son,” according to Drew.
But instead of getting caught up in the considerable shadow of his father’s legacy (“I don’t think I’d use the word ‘burden,’” he says), something happened to Brent Barry over the years. People began to realize certain things about him: That he had an array of skills, that he wasn’t just a white boy with hops and good bloodlines, wasn’t just a rampant shooter like his dad. After his first four journeyman seasons, he became a valuable man over the course of five years in Seattle, so valuable that Sonics coach Nate McMillan, in the midst of last season, called Barry “the glue to our team.” And so it goes with the Spurs, who will use Barry to spell Manu Ginobili and Bruce Bowen, who will use him as an outside shooting threat when teams collapse on Duncan, and who will use him at point guard when Tony Parker needs a blow. Which has Bowen saying things like, “With his athleticism out there on the wing, he can really create something very positive for the city of San Antonio.”
And we all know what that means, don’t we?
It could be argued that Brent Barry didn’t need San Antonio as much as San Antonio needed him. He didn’t have to take up a spot on the bench for a team that has more than its share of established talent. He could’ve started somewhere else, could have put up better numbers and more shots in another city. But Barry’s been around long enough to recognize this as a pivotal moment in his career, as a chance to win a title, a chance to branch off from the family name and establish his own legacy. And so he waited until all the big names on the market had made their decisions, and then, when it was over, he couldn’t stop thinking about the Spurs.
“There’s a viability here,” he says. “It’s a different sense of team than what I’ve been a part of in the past.”
What does that mean, exactly? Well, it took some time for Barry to straighten that out himself. And then one day last summer, it came clear. This was on a July afternoon in San Antonio, and all things being equal, Barry would rather have been surfing. Four or five days a week in the offseason, he’s at the beach, and each summer for the past few years he’s gone to Costa Rica to surf and relax and get the taste of, say, a frigid December road trip to Milwaukee out of his mouth.
But Barry had just agreed to his deal with the Spurs, and there were papers to be signed, details to be worked out, and so he sat in an office with the general manager, RC Buford, and the director of basketball operations, Danny Ferry, next to a window that overlooked the SBC Center floor. The blinds were pulled low, but Barry peeked out, and he could see a pair of legs out there on the court, a pair of legs sheathed in rubber bands, doing defensive slide drills. The Spurs’ new prize poked a finger between the slats, and there was Tim Duncan, the best player in the League, maybe the best player in the world, sweating through a hellish summer routine.
“Yeah, he had the Olympics to get ready for, but still, I’m thinking, What’s going on in the other gyms in the middle of July?” Barry says. “And here he is, doing the most monotonous, most boring, shittiest drill you can be doing.” So this is what Barry means by viability. This is what he means when he says there’s an “understanding” among the players on the San Antonio roster, that a championship is one of those unspoken goals that lingers during each and every practice. This is all new for Barry, and he’s soaking it all in, step by step. In Seattle, he was the crux of a young team aiming for the playoffs, and before that, he was in transition in Chicago and Miami, and before that he was with the Clippers, where he channeled most of his talents into finding a way to survive. “I’ve missed out on the winning,” he says. “And I know the opportunity is going to be there this time.”
For more on Brent Barry, pick up SLAM 85