Rick Barry Can’t Have
Anything Easy
Basketball at the professional level is chock full of amazing
athletes. Every year, the championship
is determined as much by luck and health as it is by talent. The luck of the draw matters so much for a
player’s success in the league simply because of the level of competition
around them. Some happen into perfect
situations, playing for years with a clean bill of health and never making any
mental mistakes, like murdering their driver or overdosing on cocaine.
Some don’t.
Sometimes, Lady Luck is really an asshole to people for no reason. It’s almost as if she weren’t really and that
luck is just a construct of the human psyche to try and justify that happening
around us. If anyone understands this,
it’s Rick Barry, Hall of Famer and victim of circumstance.
Barry had an amazing amount of success throughout his life
despite unfortunate happenings at every turn.
He had a level of basketball talent so overwhelming as to overcome most
of these circumstances, but still fell victim often enough to sow regret at
what could have been. He played two
seasons for the San Francisco Warriors before deciding to move to the ABA. Due to arguments about his contract, he
became the only player to ever have to sit out an entire season because of this
move. Considering that Barry averaged
35.6 PPG the year before and 34 PPG the year after, it is assumed that Barry’s
parks department team at least made it to the playoffs. Barry has alluded throughout his career to
this championship being his greatest achievement, though he has strangely
avoided answering whether or not his parks department title actually exists or
not.
Once in the ABA, it took Barry until his fourth season to
play without any sort of injuries. He
played in only 69% of his team’s games in his ABA career. He sat out two games his final year for the
New York Nets just to make sure that this percentage would be hilarious and
innuendous[1].
 |
| A courtroom sketch of Barry during his ABA years. |
Barry’s accomplishments were even more impressive
considering the era in which he played.
Teams played in whatever arena they could find and were rarely bothered
with maintenance of the visitor’s facilities.
The Boston Garden was known for its dead spaces and dangerous
floorboards, while the Spectrum’s AstroTurf caused the ball to take weird
bounces every dribble.
It wasn’t until Barry’s return to the NBA that he found his
greatest success. Barry took two years
to reacclimatize himself to the league, which lacked the three-pointer and
generally expected its players to work as a team. After two middling seasons, in which Barry
averaged just 22/9/5 and 25/7/6[2],
he decided to kick it up a notch, just as he often did when cooking. For you see, Barry had never won championship
in his life, always finishing second.
Even in elementary school, his youth soccer team lost in the
championship game to Tommy Heinsohn’s every year, thanks to Heinsohn being 10
years older and still insisting on playing in a youth soccer league. To this day, Heinsohn continues to win the
Elizabeth, New Jersey U10 Youth Soccer League every year, crushing the dreams
of young New Jerseyans repeatedly. He is
an awful human being.
 |
| Why do you hate these children, Tom Heinsohn? |
Barry, however, was not a bad person and was itching to
prove he could win it all at any level.
Unfortunately for Barry, he was given very little to work with. The Golden State Warriors hardly even fielded
a roster at that point. Barry was far
and away their best player, to the point that their starting lineup for most of
his career consisted of himself and Clifford Ray. The two-man starting lineup was innovative,
but still has not caught on as it is a terrible disadvantage for any basketball
team.
Barry was going to make the most of what he was given and
had learned how to by 1975. He averaged
over 30 PPG for the fourth and final time in his professional career, leading
the league in both free throw percentage and steals. Barry was known for his oddly effective free
throw routine: he would cradle the ball between his legs, whispering to it that
it was a good boy and could grow up to be anything it wanted, before flicking
it straight over his head. He would then
headbutt the ball into the hoop like a trained seal. This form has rarely been copied in the NBA
since despite Barry’s claims that it is a significantly more effective shooting
routine than the norm. In his NBA
career, Barry missed a total of 425 free throws, or 48 less than Shaquille
O’Neal missed in 2000-01.
This 1975 Warriors team was perhaps Barry’s weakest in terms
of his supporting cast, making it all the more impressive that he managed to
lead them to an NBA championship. The
team had four players average double figures: Barry at 31 a game, followed by
Jamaal Wilkes[3],
Butch Beard[4],
and Charles Johnson, who may or may not have been an NBA 2K randomly generated
player. The entire roster excepting
Barry had been thrown together from spare parts, as was literally the case with
Charles Dudley, a basketball automaton constructed of Bill Bridges’ old 1969
Chevy Nova.
Perhaps just to spite common sense, Rick Barry
dominated. He scored over 40 15 times in
the regular season, including a 55-point game against the Philadelphia 76ers in
which he accounted for over half his team’s scoring[5]
and laughed off every defense thrown at him.
Once the playoffs came around, Barry continued his roll: he scored under
20 just twice in 17 games, once when he fouled out and once when the Warriors
had gotten so far ahead of the SuperSonics that he forgot the game wasn’t over
yet. He missed nine free throws total
during the playoffs, he made double digit field goals in 10 games, and he
singlehandedly completed LBJ’s Great Society programs, ending all economic
disparity in America. Only a few years
later, during his Rockets years, did Barry reinstate economic disparity for the
hell of it.
Barry’s performance was perhaps the most dominant of any
individual on the way to a championship, with no one else on the roster ever
being confused for an elite player.
Barry essentially won a championship because he felt like it, an
accomplishment that was almost matched by Moses Malone in 1981 when he brought
the 40-42 Houston Rockets to the NBA Finals.
Barry put a stop to Moses’ run at that point, joining the Boston Celtics
under the guise of “Harry Turd” and dominating the Rockets. For whatever reason, Rick Barry has always
hated the Houston Rockets. He has always
been coy as to exactly why. Some believe
it to be because he is fundamentally opposed to space travel, others believe he
just didn’t like any other words starting with “R” being allowed in the
NBA. This would explain why Barry
insisted on calling Clifford Ray “Cliffay” the entire time they played
together.
Since his playing days, Barry has been known mostly for his
NBA spawn. Three of Barry’s four sons
played in the NBA. Only Scooter Barry
did not and has since been disowned and not allowed to return to the United
States until he wipes this tarnish from the family name. Jon, Brent, and Drew all played in the NBA,
with Brent’s 2005 championship making he and Rick the first father-son duo to
win NBA Championships. Rick Barry grew
all of his sons in a lap, cloning them from a single strand of hair plucked
from his horrible, horrible haircut. No
one knew for years that Barry had grown his awful hair out specifically to
clone his brood from and not because he thought it would look good. Anyone with a brain could see that his
haircut looked terrible and it does Barry a disservice to assume he did not
know this also.
Anyway, Brent Barry killed his father in 2008 and has
assumed the name, hoping to behead his other brothers and unlock the true power
of the Barry that has not been seen since Rick’s historic championship
run. Brent’s last remaining brother has
gone undercover as Christopher Lambert, training for the time he will have to
defend his father’s title.
Multiple members of the 1975 team would go on to play with
the Clippers franchise, a fate considered worse than death.
[1]
This is not a word but really sounds like one, right?
[2]
Truly embarrassing numbers.
[3]
Who was still at UCLA and could only make the few Golden State games played
before his bedtime.
[4]
The nickname given to Cliff Ray’s beard.
[5]
And an even higher percentage if you consider that Barry walked Wiles through
every one of the young man’s jump shots, caressing the rookie’s body much too
excitedly.
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