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FIRST FAMILY: Hall of Famer Rick Barry talks collecting, being mistaken for Mickey Mantle, and his hoops-playing sons
Rick Barry was one of the greatest all-around players of his era and one of the most prolific scorers in basketball history.
A small forward from Roselle Park High School in New Jersey and the University of Miami, Barry is the only player in history to lead the NCAA, ABA and NBA in points per game during a single season.
Playing mostly for the Warriors, the eight-time NBA All-Star had a career scoring average of just under 25 points per game while also averaging nearly seven rebounds and five assists during his Hall of Fame career.
One of the most timeless aspects of Barry's impactful career was his signature underhand free throw. Although the style was unorthodox, it was wildly successful as he is considered one of the greatest free-throw shooters of all time.
As prolific as Barry was at the free throw line, he had an equally prolific gene pool. All five of his sons (Brent, Jon, Drew, Scooter, and Canyon) have played professional basketball.
The elite scorer's accolades stack up with anyone, from his Rookie of the Year award to MVP, league scoring titles, and world championships. He was named to the NBA's 50th Anniversary Team and 75th Anniversary Team.
In this exclusive interview with Sports Collectors Digest, Barry discusses being mistaken for Mickey Mantle, having his 1967 All-Star game uniform stolen from his car, his classic 1971-72 Topps rookie card, and more.
When was the first time someone asked you for your autograph?
Actually, the funny story about that is when I was in college, my roommate’s father was good friends with the owner of the Yankees at the time before Steinbrenner, and I went to a game, and we walked out of where the players came out, and some lady came up to me. I had a tan, and my hair was blonde. She said, “Mr. Mantle, Mr. Mantle, could you please sign an autograph?” I said, “Ma’am, I'm not Mickey Mantle. I'm sorry.” She kept doing it. A police officer walked over and asked if there was a problem. “No, no problem. This lady thinks that I'm Mickey Mantle and she wants me to sign an autograph for her son.” He says, “Oh, go on, Mick. Sign it for her.” I said to the lady, “Ma'am, I'm not Mickey Mantle, but I'm going to give you my autograph. Tell your son to keep it because someday it might be worth something.”
Your 1971-72 Topps RC is such a classic image of you holding the iconic red, white, and blue ball. The card font and bright colors are just beautiful and timeless. What was it like seeing yourself on a trading card for the first time?
They didn’t have them back when I first started. That card, it's a rookie card but I had been in the league two years and had sat out for a year, and then the Oaks were doing it. I was traded, and I played at Washington, and then I went to the Nets, so it was like four or five years into my playing career, and that was the first time anybody made a card up.
It was always baseball, which was the biggest thing going back in those days. Then they used to do some stuff with football, but basketball took a long time to get going, and now it's a big deal. The money that is being paid is crazy. I mean, the nutty thing about it is that I actually can make more money signing my name in one year than I did playing a full season of NBA basketball. That's crazy. The money they're paying now, if I was 30 years old today, I’d have a five-year, $300 million guaranteed contract, which is just mind-numbing. I can't even relate to something like that. Steph Curry and those guys, Jaylen Brown and all the guys that have the big contracts make as much money in playing one game than I made in my best full year I had playing in the NBA.
I hope they appreciate how fortunate they are to make the kind of money that they make because they're making more money than some countries have as their gross national product, for God's sake. I just hope they appreciate it.
Your 1972-73 Topps ABA All Stars card is one of the first, if not the first, to picture you using your classic underhand free throw. How often are you still asked about your free throw technique? What are your fondest memories using that technique to become quite possibly the greatest free throw shooter of all time?
It's just amazing to me that, because we are copycat society, everybody copies what somebody else does, or at least tries to. … I mean nobody wants to do it. One of my sons, Brent, he was really good at it, and then for some reason he stopped doing it. I never bothered him with it because he was always in the 80 percentile, so if you're 80 percent or better, you're a good free-throw shooter, and if you're not 80 percent, you're not a good free-throw shooter. It's just that simple. More games would be won. Teams that shoot a higher percentage are going to win more games during the season because so many games are decided by one, two or three points, and making your free throws is going to enable you to win a lot of those close games.
I just don't understand. It’s proven, proven by physicists that it's the most efficient way to shoot a free throw, and yet people don't want to do it. My youngest son, Canyon, does it. He has been as high as 90 percent. I actually still think I was the best because my last six years when I was shooting less free throws, it's easier to shoot a higher percentage when you are shooting more. I was shooting over 10 free throws a game. I can miss one or two [and] I can keep it at 90 percent or over very easily, but when you're only taking two or three shots at a game, it's hard. If you miss one, you've got to go weeks at a time without missing a free throw to get the percentage up. I was able to do that in my last years playing. My last six years I shot over 92 percent. My last two years I've shot over 94 percent, so I will brag about it because it's the only part of the game that you can be selfish and help your team.
In 1989-90 NBA Hoops released a set of announcer cards in which you're featured during your time as a TNT commentator. What was your experience like at TNT?
Unfortunately, just like everything else, that needed to change. Back then, TNT never, other than those card sets, they never promoted their announcers. They didn't do anything at all. Now ESPN promotes all of their different announcers that they have and now TNT does big time. It's a different world. It's the same thing, we didn’t get promoted a lot. People didn't know about it. You didn't have ESPN. You didn't have all of the sports broadcasting stuff that’s out there like Fox Sports. We almost didn't exist. I mean, our 1975 NBA Finals, one of the major sports in the United States, was on delayed television. We were on delayed television, so everything changed. I mean, I never heard the word million in my contract negotiations. It's a different world.
You mentioned your son Brent. There was actually a really cool card in 2008 produced by Topps. The set was called “In the Genes” and it pictures you and Brent. Each of your sons is a basketball stud. How special is it to be the patriarch of such a talented group of men?
It’s pretty remarkable, honestly. I was just hoping that one of them would be good enough to play basketball but all five of my boys have gotten Division I college scholarships. All five have played professionally. Why something hasn't been done, there has been nothing like it in any sport. I don’t know if it will ever happen again, that a father will be a Hall of Fame athlete and have five sons all play the same sport and play it on the professional level. I mean, I don't know if that's ever going to happen.
They never did anything really special. Brent really never got a whole bunch of stuff for winning the Slam Dunk contest. To not have a card with me and all of my sons on it, why would they not do that? It doesn’t make any sense to me. I have a cool thing made up that I may make available to people. I had an artist work on it. It has all five of us, now six of us, with me included, a nice drawing of all of us in our college uniforms. It's a pretty cool thing. I'm surprised that nobody has done more about that because it's basically the first family of basketball. You can talk about Kobe and his father and they had some stuff in the total number of points, or the different families or whatever it was, but the bottom line is nobody has had that many kids all play professionally. All five of them should have been NBA players.
Do you have a space in your home where you have memorabilia displayed from your lifetime in the sport?
I have kept a bunch of stuff. I had kept a bunch of other stuff that, unfortunately when I got divorced, my wife threw all of it out, which just crushed me and how much that stuff would be worth today, like my uniforms and all of the other stuff I had. It is what it is. I do have a number of things that are there that are pretty cool that I've collected of other athletes and things over the years, so that's going to be fun to see. My God, some of that stuff is so old it’s crazy. It's fun. The memorabilia world, who would have thought that this stuff would be as valuable as it is today? I wish that I had been able to keep more of my stuff. The value of it is insane. The prices people are paying for some of this stuff is crazy.
I have a lot of Olympic stuff that’s really cool because my wife ran the Olympics for women's basketball for like three different Olympic years—the Seoul Team, then the Dream Team, then the Atlanta Team. So she would get some really cool stuff that I have that is Olympics-related, like Olympic pins and all that because the Dream Team year in Barcelona I was out and about and the most fun I had was trading pins. People were coming up to me and they couldn’t believe I was out there trading pins. I had the hottest pins. I had all of the Dream Team pins. My wife got them for me. It was crazy. People were offering me five, six, seven pins to get one of the Dream Team pins. I got into the village, somebody from Brunswick got me in there. They were going nuts over getting the Dream Team pin, so I was able to collect a lot of cool country pins, which is what I wanted to try to get. That was as much fun as I've ever had, out there in the places where the people went to gather to trade pins in Barcelona. I was out there doing that and I've got all kinds of great pins and stuff. I got some great posters and stuff signed by Michael, Magic and Bird. I got some cool stuff.
Here’s a story for you. I still have my shorts from my All-Star game MVP during the 1967 season. Somebody stole my uniform from my All-Star Game MVP year. They broke into my car and stole it and years later they sent me back the shorts. They thought I might want to have the shorts back but they were not going to give my jersey back. It was pretty interesting. They broke into my car and stole my All-Star Game uniform.
The jersey swap is a new tradition across sports. Looking back at your great career, if you could stop anyone after a game and share that respect and honor with, who would you want to do a jersey swap with?
Hell, I would do that with a ton of guys. I have a lot of respect for any great player. I wish I had done stuff because I’d got to know and be friends with Willie Mays. I wish to hell I would have got one of Willie Mays’ baseball jerseys. That was why I wore number 24. Same thing with Elgin Baylor, he was my boyhood hero. I would have swapped with him. Jerry West, I mean come on. Oscar Robertson, Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, I could go on and on. I played against so many great players I would have traded jerseys all the time with them, no question about it.
I had great respect for those guys. In fact, I just got one because I got to be friends with him and I got a jersey somehow signed [before] he passed away [and] I got to be really good friends with Sam Jones, who was a wonderful man. All of those guys. I got to see Kevin McHale, a great guy. We got to do a few things together. All of those guys, Charles Barkley, come on. Why would you not want to go ahead and get a jersey from those guys? I would have gotten an amazing collection together.
I grew up watching and idolizing NBA players from the ’80s and ’90s like Michael Jordan and the greats of the time. The era prior, your era, the players were almost mythical. How do you feel looking back now?
I have a picture from the 1967 All-Star Game that was black and white and I think there are seven people in the picture, six or seven, and every one of them is on the Top 50. It was a pretty amazing team. Nate Thurmond was our center. I mean come on, Dave DeBusschere, Elgin Baylor and Jerry West and Oscar Robertson and Sam Jones. I mean you could just keep going on and on. Chet Walker, it’s just crazy how many guys I played against that were great basketball players. I even played against Magic and Bird when they were rookies.
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