Rick Barry

• 1. Introduction

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  Rick Barry holds a record that no other basketball player in history can claim. He is the only person ever to lead the NCAA, the ABA, and the NBA in scoring in a single season each. That triple crown places him in a category entirely alone. Yet Barry spent much of his career as one of the most polarizing figures the sport has ever produced: a player whose talent was beyond question and whose temperament was almost always in question.

  He shot his free throws underhand, in what opponents and commentators dismissed as a grandmotherly style. He feuded with teammates, alienated broadcasters, and once left a job because a television network would not rehire him. He wore the number 24 his entire career not because of any basketball significance, but out of devotion to a baseball outfielder he idolized as a child. The questions worth sitting with are these: how did a player capable of scoring 64 points in a single game come to be remembered as much for controversy as for brilliance, and what does his story reveal about the price of being exactly who you are?

• 2. A Boy from Roselle Park

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  Barry was born on the 28th of March, 1944, in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and grew up in the nearby town of Roselle Park. By fifth grade he was already playing with the varsity basketball team that his father, Aldo, coached. Baseball, though, was his first love. He was devoted to Willie Mays, the New York Giants outfielder who wore number 24, and once skipped school entirely to shake Mays's hand at the Polo Grounds in Upper Manhattan. Barry wore that same number throughout his basketball career as a direct tribute to the man.

  He graduated from Roselle Park High School in 1962, having collected more than 30 scholarship offers. He chose the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida, drawn by the up-tempo, pro-style system run by head coach Bruce Hale. The choice was formative in more ways than one. Hale's daughter Pamela would become Barry's first wife.

• 3. The College Scoring Machine

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  As a junior at Miami, Barry averaged 32.2 points and 16.6 rebounds per game. Those numbers were already large enough to make him a preseason consensus All-American heading into his senior year. Coaches and writers who praised his unselfishness also noted a reputation as a hothead, particularly with referees.

  In December of his senior season, Barry scored 14 of his team's final 17 points in an 80-73 championship victory over Maryland at the Hurricane Classic and was named tournament MVP. He went on to lead the entire nation with 37.4 points per game that year, a mark that stood as the third-highest in NCAA history at the time. Included in that run were individual games of 59, 55, 54, 51, and 50 points. His 475 rebounds ranked fourth in the country.

  Miami went 22-4 but could not go to the NCAA tournament. The program was serving a one-season probation, which the source notes directly limited Barry's national recognition and his shot at being selected first overall in the 1965 NBA draft. He finished his college career with 2,298 points across 77 appearances. The university retired his number 24 jersey, one of only two it has ever honored that way.

• 4. The Reserve Clause Battle

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  Barry was drafted second overall by the San Francisco Warriors in 1965. In his first professional season he averaged 25.7 points and 10.6 rebounds per game and won the NBA Rookie of the Year Award. The Bay Area broadcaster Bill King nicknamed him the "Miami Greyhound" for his lean build and whippet-like speed.

  When the American Basketball Association offered Barry a deal with the Oakland Oaks, he signed for $75,000 plus 15 percent ownership of the team and 5 percent of gate receipts above $600,000. The Warriors sued to enforce the reserve clause in his existing contract, and courts ordered him to sit out the entire 1967-68 season. He spent that year broadcasting Oaks games instead of playing in them.

  Barry's legal challenge to the reserve clause came two years before Cardinals outfielder Curt Flood brought his own far better-known case, which eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court. The source states plainly that Barry was the first American professional athlete to bring a court action against a major league over the reserve clause. When asked about leaving the Warriors, he was direct: "I know what a lot of people think of me. They call me a traitor. Is that fair? If they would just look at it the same way they do their own businesses."

• 5. The ABA Years

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  When Barry finally took the court for Oakland in the 1968-69 season, he immediately led the entire league in scoring with 34.0 points per game. On the 27th of December, 1968, a player named Ken Wilburn blindsided him on a drive to the basket late in a game against the New York Nets, tearing the ligaments in his left knee. Barry attempted a comeback in January 1969, aggravated the injury, and missed the rest of the season. He played in only 35 games yet was still named to the ABA All-Star team.

  The Oaks, operating without their star for most of the year, still won the ABA championship under coach Alex Hannum, finishing 60-18 and sweeping through the playoffs to beat the Indiana Pacers four games to one. Barry was watching from the bench.

  His next stop was Washington, then New York. With the Nets in the 1971-72 season, he led the ABA in scoring with 31.5 points per game and also set the league record for consecutive free throws made in a single game with 23. His career ABA postseason average of 33.5 points per game remains the all-time ABA record. In Game 7 of the 1970 Western Division semifinals, playing through a knee injury, Barry scored 52 points for Washington against Denver, a record for any seventh and deciding game in professional basketball history.

• 6. The 1975 Championship

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  Barry returned to the Warriors in 1972 after a federal court prohibited him from playing for anyone else, citing a five-year contract he had signed in 1969. On the 26th of March, 1974, he scored a career-high 64 points and grabbed 10 rebounds in a 143-120 victory over the Portland Trail Blazers.

  His teammates elected him captain before the 1974-75 season. He responded with the best all-around year of his career, averaging 30.6 points per game while leading the league in both free throw percentage (.904) and steals per game (2.9). He also ranked sixth in the NBA in assists per game, the only forward in the top ten.

  In the 1975 NBA Finals, the Warriors faced Washington, a team anchored by future Hall of Famers Elvin Hayes and Wes Unseld. Golden State swept them in four games. Barry was named Finals MVP after averaging 29.5 points, 5.0 assists, and 3.5 steals per game. His career NBA Finals scoring average of 36.3 points per game remains the highest in Finals history. In his first season with Houston, Barry set what was then an NBA record with a .947 free throw percentage while becoming the first true small forward to record 500 assists in a season.

• 7. The Underhand Free Throw

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  The technique that made Barry famous and infamous in equal measure was the underhanded free throw, a style most players had long abandoned by the time he reached the pros. Barry used it his entire career. His ABA free throw percentage of .880 is the best in league history. His .900 percentage at the time of his NBA retirement in 1980 was the best of any player who had played in the league.

  The irony is that basketball has largely ignored the lesson. Barry's sons, several of whom became professional players themselves, did not adopt the technique. Barry has been vocal throughout his post-playing career about the stubbornness of players who shoot conventional free throws poorly when the data from his own career is sitting plainly in front of them.

  Barry is the father of Brent, Jon, Drew, Scooter, and Canyon Barry, all of whom played professional basketball. He is the only NBA player to have three sons play in the NBA simultaneously. When Brent won the NBA championship with the San Antonio Spurs in 2005, Rick and Brent became just the second father-son pair to each win an NBA title as players, following Matt Guokas Sr. and Matt Guokas Jr.

• 8. Controversy and Broadcasting

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  Barry's broadcasting career began the same season his legal troubles kept him off the court, and it followed him with the same mixture of achievement and turbulence that marked his playing days. He had his own radio show in San Francisco while still an active player, then worked with CBS.

  During Game 5 of the 1981 NBA Finals, while working as a CBS analyst, Barry made a remark about a photograph of colleague Bill Russell that drew immediate controversy. He later apologized, saying he had not recognized the racial connotations of the reference. Russell said he believed Barry was sincere about his attitudes, though the source notes the two were not particularly friendly for reasons unrelated to that incident. CBS did not renew Barry for the following season. Producers later cited the general negative tone of his commentary as the primary reason.

  He hosted the pilot for a mid-1980s game show called Catch Phrase, but when the series debuted in the fall of 1985, game show veteran Art James replaced him. In September 2001, Barry began hosting a sports talk show on KNBR in San Francisco. That show lasted until August 2006, when he left the station abruptly under circumstances never disclosed publicly. In 1996 he was named one of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA History, and in October 2021 he was named to the NBA 75th Anniversary Team.