Former NBA swingman Matt Barnes is media's next big thing (2024)

The toughest questions, the harshest commentary, tends to happen in front of mirrors. Proverbial or actual.

Matt Barnes found himself in front of one in 2020. And the man who once clashed with Kobe Bryant and defended LeBron James had to face his most daunting opponent. He focused his steely eyes on the man looking back at him and asked the tough questions. Of himself.

Who do I want to be?

“I mean, obviously, I’ve been through some sh*t — and I caused some sh*t, some sh*t had come to me.”

Yeah, but what was my role and why didn’t you handle it better?

“I think that was the first time I really looked in the mirror and tried to find my fault in the drama in my life.”

What kind of father do your boys deserve?

“Trying to hold myself more accountable, be able to understand where my mistakes were in that situation and be able to forgive myself and move past it.”

The occasion for Barnes’ man in the mirror moment was turning 40 back in March. Something about reaching that stage of life drew him into some self-reflection. His improvement as a person, as a man, as a father, is contingent upon the realest analysis of himself. That’s why this honest conversation, with himself, hasn’t really stopped.

“You know, looking in the mirror is a mothaf*cka and a lot of people can’t do it,” Barnes said. “If you could do it, if you look in the mirror and see your soul, you’re on the right path. I’ve never been perfect, but I’ve always been real. And now I’m to the point where I’m really trying to hold myself accountable for the dumb sh*t I pull or the sh*t I get into. I know it hasn’t been much of late, but I’m sure it’ll still happen. So just kind of having a better understanding of who I am.”

Barnes has eased into his second act much smoother than the first. His NBA career misfired so much in the beginning he was close to trying out football as a wide receiver before he finally stuck on with the Warriors in 2006, his fifth team in three years. But after carving out a 14-season career, Barnes has entered the media space like a first-round pick and future star.

The career combo forward is the point guard on All The Smoke, the podcast from Showtime that’s grown into a must-listen for sports fans. Barnes handles it with a deftness he’s not supposed to have. He throws proverbial lobs to co-host Stephen Jackson, while getting off his own takes and still managing to keep the show on track.

“Well it was crazy, too, because when I came in, like you said, we went on a cool little run,” Barnes was saying in a conversation with Stephen Curry, one of their most-watched episodes. “Not because of me. It was just because of what that team was and …”

“We know that,” Jackson interrupted, prompting Curry to bust out laughing. “You didn’t even have to, I mean, is a pig puss* pork? Is a pig puss* pork? We know you ain’t have nothing to do with it. f*ck out of here.”

“But the record was good though,” a smiling Barnes responded. “What I meant to say was …”

“Way to not contribute,” Jackson interjected again.

“In the playoffs, I didn’t do sh*t,” Barnes confessed. “That’s why I don’t even count that championship ring. We’ll get into that later. But I appreciate the free ride. What I meant to say was …”

And the show was right back on track after the comedic aside.

They’ve got the NBA cache as former players to get people on. Still, not many can get Kobe Bryant, or get Curry to talk about weed, get Travis Kelce to discuss work in the Black community, or reveal Rajon Rondo as a wise and hilarious OG. All The Smoke is exactly what other outlets have tried to be: the extra special look at athletes you normally don’t get from mainstream media. A big part of that is Barnes’ excellence at manufacturing good conversation, even from athletes you wouldn’t expect to go there. Watch enough and you’ll start to wonder how in the world is Barnes so good at this? He did some time as a talking head for ESPN and Fox. But how can he weave in and out of tough conversations and jokes, pry into personal business and bring up old stuff, all while keeping the guest in good spirits?

Ask Barnes, and he will tell you it’s easy. He’s been uniquely groomed to be good at this.

“I’ve been through so much it’s just relatable,” Barnes said. “There are no skeletons in my closet. My past is out there and people respect the way I’ve dealt with it. So they know when they talk to me that we’re going to talk about some real sh*t because I’ve never shown them anything but that.”

“Real one” is a term that gets thrown around a lot. But the colloquialism has robbed some of the meaning. The concept is about having the ability and courage to see what is real, face what is real, address what is real, endure what is real. It’s about not needing the Pollyanna or being governed by niceties, about not running from what is uncomfortable or looking away from what hurts. And Barnes has had a life full of such. The kind of hard that chisels jaws and steels nerves.

He grew up in San Jose, the oldest of three children to Henry and Ann. His dad was a butcher who sold drugs on the side. One night, he was in the car when two dudes tried to rob his father. His seven-year-old eyes watched in astonishment as his dad beat up both of them and took their guns. That night, the family moved to Sacramento. That night, Barnes’ awakening began.

Some fake story about why they were moving wasn’t going to work. He saw it with his own eyes. Violence. What was happening in his life, what was real, was far from hidden.

Barnes said he watched his parents use drugs and knew it wasn’t sugar they were snorting. When his dad was beating up his mom, he knew that wasn’t just a grown-up game they were playing. Barnes was exposed early to the reality his life wasn’t sweet. He saw the police take away his dad for domestic violence. He remembers his dad getting high and going ham on carpentry work in the garage.

And then he hit middle school.

“I’ve seen sh*t as a child that normally you don’t see until you’re a little bit older.”

He and his father bonded over fighting and sports, back before gunplay was common and men used their hands. It was nothing to see his dad throw from the shoulders at a rec league football game or the flea market. Barnes was enamored with his dad’s bare-knuckle success. And he took to heart his father telling him to protect his younger siblings. Part of him appreciated how his parents’ penchant for partying didn’t deprive the family of what it needed. Barnes had seen addicts and how their children lived, and his life was nothing like theirs.

When they moved to Sacramento, that’s when he had to deal with racism. In the late ’80s, early ’90s, Sacramento was a different place. The migration of many from the Bay Area hadn’t happened yet. It was known as a cow town.

Their family fit in with the diversity of San Jose. A Black father, a White mom, mixed-race kids — that was nothing in San Jose. But in Sacramento? They were targets. He was ostracized because of his Blackness and his Whiteness. He’s been called everything. They threw bananas on the court at basketball games.

But nothing made Barnes snap like when they came for his sister Danielle. Once a 10-year-old Barnes and his siblings were mowing lawns to earn some money and someone rode by and called her an epithet. Barnes chased down the kid on the bike, beat him up and returned to mowing the lawn. He was a senior at Del Campo High in 1998 and by then a 6-foot-7 local star heading to UCLA, when someone did it again and also spit on her. Traumatized, she told her brother who did it and he beat the breaks off the guy. He was suspended for a week as school officials didn’t buy their story and it sparked a racial firestorm that had skinheads spray painting swastikas and “Die Matt Barnes Die” on the walls and Confederate flags being planted.

All of it feeds into the man, which fed into the player, which informs the burgeoning media professional.

The willingness to fight created a love of physicality, made him an ideal NBA goon. His protective nature made him a beloved teammate.

Barnes cemented himself in the NBA with the “We Believe” Warriors in 2007. He fit right in with the disruptive rebel vibes of those teams, led by Baron Davis and Stephen Jackson. A skilled enough small forward, he was tough enough to play the big man in a small lineup. His best years were arguably his three-year stint with the Lob City Clippers when he earned a starting role. He averaged 10.1 points, shot 35 percent from three and was a defensive specialist.

He started his career as a bit player on Chris Webber’s Kings and Allen Iverson’s 76ers before earning a larger role on the Warriors. After two years in the Bay Area, where he signed his first seven-figure contract — one year, $3 million — he went to Phoenix to play with Steve Nash and Shaquille O’Neal. After that, he joined Kobe Bryant’s Lakers. Two years later, he joined Chris Paul and Blake Griffin on the Clippers, his longest stretch with one team. He went to bruise with Marc Gasol, Zach Randolph and Tony Allen before spending one last season with Curry and Durant.

At each stop, Barnes earned the respect of the superstar with whom he battled. When Kobe Bryant recruits you to join the Lakers, you know you’ve been anointed. Fittingly, Barnes said Kobe wanted him on the team because Barnes was crazy enough to taunt Bryant. Remember Kobe didn’t flinch when Barnes faked the pass towards Bryant’s face?

That’s a lot of superstar power he’s been around. A lot of being the man next to the man. That clout shines as Barnes is free to touch on just about any topic.

But Barnes said the experience of his ex-wife and the mother of his twin boys, Carter and Isaiah, being on the VH1 show Basketball Wives put him in a unique space. One that was even more Hollywood, even more hyper celebrity.

“I owe a lot to, although I didn’t like it, when we did the reality TV thing,” Barnes said. “It was a crazy situation, but it put me in that other, I guess what would call, mainstream media. Or whatever kind of media reality TV is. I crossed over. I wasn’t necessarily a superstar, but I was still in that space and I learned how to maneuver in that space as well.”

It also put him in front of a bigger audience for his biggest drama.

The Memphis Grizzlies’ 2015 training camp was at UC Santa Barbara. Barnes was there when he found out from his sons that Derek Fisher was at his old house with his former wife. So Barnes, incensed a former teammate would date his ex, drove the 95 miles to confront Fisher and do what his father taught him.

Barnes said he felt betrayed. Not just because his former teammate was dating his ex, but because his former teammate was around his sons and didn’t tell him. He thought it was sneaky. If you know Barnes, he’s a dad before anything else.

But when Barnes’ sons told him they love Derek and wanted them to be friends, Barnes had to be tough enough to forgive. When Fisher showed up to one of the boys’ games, he and Barnes stepped aside and had a hard conversation. The kind real ones have.

“I know it was a tough situation,” Barnes said he told Fisher. “You can’t help who you fall for. But there’s definitely a way you could have handled it. You could have come to me and been a man and we could have avoided a lot. I wouldn’t have liked it, but I would have definitely respected it. Because like I said, at the end of the day, my ex is beautiful, she’s gonna move on and find someone. So that happens to be you. That’s a tough conversation, but it’s better. It’s better than the alternative where I have to track you down and put hands on you.”

Barnes and his ex have moved past the drama, in part because Barnes had to interview himself in that mirror. His boys, Carter and Isaiah, have grown up in a world so far from his own. So is 2-year-old Ashton, his son with his girlfriend Anansa Sims. With Sims’ three children from a previous relationship, Barnes is now part of a family with seven kids. He wants them to be tough, to stand up for what they believe in, to know their dad would do anything for them. But what if he could also show them reconciliation? A safe community of blended families? The kind of love that douses tempers and massages out grudges.

Barnes’ father showed him how to use his hands, but never that kind of love.

“I mean, we’re at a great place. Now we see each other a lot. I coach the twins in football and basketball. Whenever he’s in town, he’s there. We look at it more as three adults trying to raise two young, Black biracial children in a time like this. It’s like our parents and grandpa used to say — it takes a village. You know what I mean? We have a great village to raise our boys.”

This type of texture is like an equivalency program in lieu of a journalism school. His checkered past removes even the hint of judgment. His personal growth adds to his perspective, helps him appreciate contexts and meanings. He spent two decades at a big-time college program and in the pro ranks, so he knows how players think and what to ask.

And he’s still the never-scared Matt Barnes who will go there.

“I think all of our guests know me and Jack’s track record,” he said. “We’re not out to try to get clickbait — although some of our conversations turn into clickbait. We’re just trying to have a real-life, kicked-back conversation. So we get Steph to let his walls down, and KD to let his walls down, and Kobe to let his walls down. Shannon Sharpe, Snoop, and so on and so forth. We’ve always been real and we’ve been able to transition that into talk radio and television. People f*ck with us, first and foremost, but then they feel very comfortable with us because we’ve always been this way. We’re not talking heads or talking for no one in particular. We’re talking for ourselves and what we feel like our fans and the culture wants to hear.”

(Top photo: Kelley L Cox-USA TODAY Sports)