![\"Rick](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/082326-life-barry-07-1024x698.jpg\")
Rick Barry and his wife, Lynn, often hit the pickleball courts to play with a group of pickleball friends, on Sunday, Aug. 6, 2026. (Jerilee Bennett, The Gazette)<\/p>\nThe boys here in a Colorado Springs neighborhood don\u2019t really know the man. They just know the basketball court in his backyard, where they are always welcome to play.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s Rick Barry now.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cYour wife said you were a pretty good basketball player,\u201d one boy says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd you won lots of awards.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
NCAA scoring champion and All-American, 1965.\u00a0<\/p>\n
NBA Rookie of the Year, 1966.\u00a0<\/p>\n
NBA scoring champion, 1967.\u00a0<\/p>\n
NBA All-Star, first in 1966, an eighth time in 1978.<\/p>\n
NBA champion and Finals MVP, 1975.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Basketball Hall of Fame, 1987.<\/p>\n
The accolades go on for the most accomplished basketball player living in this city.<\/p>\n
In the minds of these boys and the next generation, Barry is as distant as the underhanded free throw lending to his legend. The kids today call it a \u201cgranny shot,\u201d while onlookers of Barry\u2019s day called it automatic, reliably supplementing record point totals that made him among the all-time greats.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Barry is 82 and still striving for greatness. In pickleball, he has performed at a level few men his age dream of. He has used that 6-7 length, agility, footwork and hand-eye coordination to sweep the competition just as he did to sweep by defenders. Last year at the U.S. Senior Pickleball National Championships, he won all three events in his age group and added the game\u2019s elusive \u201cTriple Crown\u201d to a pile of gold medals.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Rick Barry and his wife, Lynn, often hit the pickleball courts to play with a group of pickleball friends, on Sunday, Aug. 6, 2026. (Jerilee Bennett, The Gazette)<\/p>\n
It\u2019s getting to the point where competition is running thin, at least the competition Barry prefers: the kind he has always sought to test himself, the kind that satisfies a soul not easily satisfied. This explains why he had to step away from golf a while back.<\/p>\n
The four World Long Drive titles weren\u2019t enough. What he really wanted to do was improve his 1-handicap, which other golfers know to be elite. \u201cI just got so frustrated with it,\u201d Barry says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not that pickleball is frustrating in that way. Quite the opposite, Barry says: \u201cI\u2019ve accomplished everything I can accomplish in pickleball.\u201d<\/p>\n
Plus, the national circuit requires travel and long days and his wife prefers to spend the days differently at this stage of life. Also, she prefers not to play with him.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause he\u2019s so hard on himself,\u201d Lynn says. \u201cHe demands so much excellence of himself.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Their son, Canyon, credits his mom for trying to \u201ctone it down,\u201d as he puts it. \u201cSocial pickleball is a little different from tournament pickleball.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Barry has struggled to see it that way.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cI\u2019ve said, \u2018Honey, if we\u2019re going to play a sport, if we\u2019re going out to compete, I\u2019m only going for one reason: to win,’\u201d he says. \u201cI can be social after it\u2019s over, but don\u2019t ask me to be social on the court. I mean, I\u2019ll try to be nice and stuff. But I want to win. That is just part of my DNA.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lynn understands, a lifelong competitor herself. Her basketball number is retired at College of William & Mary, and she went on to coach and serve as an executive for USA Women\u2019s Basketball. (The job in the Springs brought Barry here 40 years ago.)<\/p>\n
The competitiveness is \u201cwhat drove his greatness,\u201d Lynn says. \u201cHe was unwilling to accept mediocrity in himself and others.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
But yes, \u201cthere is such a thing as social pickleball,\u201d she says. And even in social pickleball, \u201che gets a look on his face,\u201d she says. It\u2019s a look coaches, teammates, fans, foes and the press knew throughout Barry\u2019s mercurial basketball career.\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"*Golden](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/AP740314020-971x1024.jpg\")
*Golden State Warriors Rick Barry (24) drives past the New York Knicks Dave DeBusschere (22) in this file photo taken in Oakland, Calif., on March 14, 1974. (Associated Press file)<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you watch him close, you can see it come out in his eyes,\u201d Bill Sharman, his coach with the San Francisco Warriors, once said. \u201cYou can see the anger boil up and spill over. He tries to control himself, but it\u2019s beyond him sometimes.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The coach added: \u201cTo Rick\u2019s credit, the madder he got, the harder and better he usually played.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
So he\u2019d throw the ball sometimes and throw fists other times. He\u2019d argue with refs, his bosses and teammates. And a reputation would follow him to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, which remembers Barry as \u201can aggressive force\u201d with \u201can untampered desire to win.\u201d The Hall of Fame bio continues: \u201cOccasionally, his fiery competitiveness would grate on rivals \u30fc and teammates, too.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
A quote from one teammate, Mike Dunleavy, is often cited: \u201cYou could send him to the U.N., and he\u2019d start World War III.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Google Barry and these are some of the things you\u2019ll read, alongside mention of him being the only player ever to lead the NCAA, NBA and ABA in scoring \u30fc the ABA being another source of controversy that also rises to the top of search engines.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This bothers Barry, the things people read. That quote from Dunleavy, a friend who was being more funny than serious. That line from Bill Simmons\u2019 \u201cThe Book of Basketball,\u201d in which he refers to Barry as \u201ca d\u2014\u201d (this being the reason Barry isn\u2019t properly credited as a trailblazer for players seeking new contracts today, in Simmons\u2019 view).<\/p>\n
\u201cHow do you call yourself a professional journalist when you write a book and you have the audacity to call somebody a d\u2014 and you don\u2019t even know them?\u201d Barry says, his voice rising. \u201cI just get so tired of reading everybody bringing up all this stuff. Oh, Rick, he was hated, nobody liked him, blah, blah, blah.\u201d<\/p>\n
He sighs. \u201cLook, I\u2019m not the greatest person in the world. I have my shortcomings for sure. But I\u2019m not a bad person. And so I\u2019m trying to let people realize that\u2019s not who I am.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
It seems this is his goal after pickleball. This is the reason why he\u2019s been filming for a documentary on his life and career. \u201cThere\u2019s too much of a perception about me out there,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"NBA](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/082326-life-barry-02-554x1024.jpg\")
NBA Hall of Famer Rick Barry holds a sculpture he had commissioned of his hands wearing a replica of his NBA Championship ring, which he is wearing in the photo. Barry won an NBA Championship with the Warriors in 1975. He was named the NBA Finals MVP after they swept the Washington Bullets. (Jerilee Bennett, The Gazette)<\/p>\n
***<\/p>\n
Barry was recently seen in another documentary. \u201cSoul Power: The Legend of the American Basketball Association\u201d chronicled the league that rose in 1967 to rival the NBA before merging about 10 years later.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The ABA countered the NBA with a fast, high-flying, three-point-shooting brand of basketball personified by the likes of Julius \u201cDr. J\u201d Erving and Pat Boone, the celebrity entertainer and owner of the Oakland Oaks. NBA executives shrugged off the upstart, empowered as they were with tradition, media rights and the best players under contract.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was truly David and Goliath,\u201d Boone said in the documentary, \u201cand we put a wonderful stone in our sleeve named Rick Barry.\u201d<\/p>\n
Barry had followed up his Rookie of the Year campaign by leading the NBA in scoring in the 1966-67 season. His 35 points per game were better than Oscar Robertson, Jerry West, Elgin Baylor and Wilt Chamberlain, whose Philadelphia 76ers bested Barry and the Warriors in the Finals.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It seemed unlikely the rising star would flip to the ABA. But Barry\u2019s college coach was slated to lead the Oaks, the man who also happened to be his father-in-law at the time.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was branded money hungry,\u201d Barry says now, his voice rising again. \u201cHad nothing to do with money.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
But of course he had every right to take more money from Boone and the Oaks. Or at least he thought he had every right.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Warriors ownership sued Barry, claiming he was violating his contract. A judge ruled in the Warriors\u2019 favor, giving Barry the option to return to the team or sit out a season.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI said, Oh, great, I will choose not to play,\u201d Barry said in the \u201cSoul Power\u201d documentary. \u201cWhy? Because I will control the destiny of my basketball career.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Destiny, what was and what could have been, would be contemplated later. <\/p>\n
The season missed was the first in a series of unfortunate events for Barry in the ABA \u2014 a four-year period he has remembered as \u201cgreat in a lot of ways\u201d and \u201chorrible in a lot of ways.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/AP911957576445-722x1024.jpg\")
The ball hits the lower supports of the basket as Rick Barry (24) of the Golden State Warriors is cut short by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (33) of the Milwaukee Bucks in Milwaukee, Wis., April 1, 1973. (Associated Press file)<\/p>\n
Great for the championship the Oaks won in Barry\u2019s season back, horrible for the bruising style of play that often sidelined him with injury. He was limited to 35 games in which he averaged a league-leading 34 points. But he would not wear the ring, \u201cbecause I don\u2019t feel like I was an integral part of the team.\u201d<\/p>\n
The next season, the Oaks became the Washington Caps \u30fc much to Barry\u2019s dismay.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I wanted to go to Washington, I\u2019d run for president,\u201d he said in what was only the next comment to rub people the wrong way.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A year later, as the Caps were moving again to Virginia, his comments appeared in Sports Illustrated: \u201cMy son Scooter is supposed to go to nursery school \u2026 I don\u2019t want him to go down there to school and learn to speak with a Southern accent.\u201d<\/p>\n
Barry was successful in getting himself traded to the New York Nets for two more high-scoring seasons in the ABA through 1972. That year, \u201cConfessions of a Basketball Gypsy: The Rick Barry Story\u201d was published.\u00a0<\/p>\n
By then, the writer Bill Libby found a player who \u201cwas only 26 but seemed much older. His face seemed tired, his body pale. His bad knee was bound in a heavy brace.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The knee was left with no cartilage, but Barry continued regularly outscoring everyone else. He continued traveling with different teams, continued court battles with employers; the one with the Warriors was just the first. \u201cI cannot keep the cases straight anymore,\u201d he said in the book.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Barry was \u201ca complex man\u201d in Libby\u2019s view, \u201ctrapped by his own decisions, those of his owners, managers and lawyers and the complexities of big business athletics.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
He was \u201ca pain in the pocketbook and backside,\u201d according to another writer. \u201cI feel sorry for him,\u201d wrote another.\u00a0<\/p>\n
To his wife at the time, it all seemed to weigh on him back home. \u201cHe\u2019s terribly moody,\u201d she said in the book, swinging between joy and silence. \u201cFew people go to such extremes. Few people are harder to get to know.\u201d<\/p>\n
***<\/p>\n
When Clifford Ray was traded to the Warriors in 1974, Barry went to pick him up at the airport.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhich was interesting,\u201d Ray recalls with a chuckle. He was well aware of the fiery star who was back in the NBA ruffling feathers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt took a bit, but after a while it got to where we understood one another,\u201d Ray says, \u201cand then the only thing I had to worry about was talking to the young players who had never played alongside Rick Barry.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Yes, Barry would push them to be better, but never more than he would push himself. This might have been best showcased that first season with Ray, culminating in a 4-0 sweep of the Washington Bullets in the Finals \u30fc considered one of the biggest upsets in championship history.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That Barry finished fourth in MVP voting that season might have been a hint at how peers felt about him. A friend for life has always known Barry to be misunderstood, the person mistaken for the intense competitor.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think every great player has an edge,\u201d Ray adds. \u201cBut man, if you went to Roselle Park in New Jersey where he\u2019s from, you can\u2019t tell me you wouldn\u2019t understand him. They all got an edge in that part of New Jersey.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"University](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/AP6412180124-1-654x1024.jpg\")
University of Miami\u2019s ace, Rick Barry, in Miami, Dec. 18, 1964, who holds the national collegiate scoring with a 37.8 average. (AP Photo)<\/p>\n
Barry was born there in 1944, named Richard III after his father, who scraped a living at Western Electric and coached his boy\u2019s basketball team. The man was a stickler when it came to fundamentals. Dribbling with the wrong hand, not boxing out for a rebound or a bad pass could result in a benching.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was a perfectionist,\u201d Barry says. \u201cAll that stuff I got from him.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
He did not discipline much off the court, Barry recalled in his book. \u201cBut when he did, I was well aware that I had been disciplined.\u201d<\/p>\n
This included soap in the mouth for cussing. And this included a belt after the boy cussed his dad out for putting that soap in his mouth.<\/p>\n
\u201cConfessions of a Basketball Gypsy\u201d recounts other fits of anger. One involved a nun at school: \u201cI had done something and she grabbed me, and when she did I punched her in the arm.\u201d Barry was relegated to the principal\u2019s office for two months while refusing to apologize.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And yet that attitude was in stark contrast to the \u201cvery sensitive and very shy\u201d kid Barry knew himself to be. He recalled feeling \u201cawkward\u201d due to his appearance: gangly, fast-growing limbs and crooked teeth.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt influenced his personality development more than anything else,\u201d his brother said in the book. \u201cWhen he smiled, he didn\u2019t smile. Soon he had forgotten how to smile, to laugh. He got the reputation of being moody. People thought he was stuck up, but he was just shy.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
He was not shy on the basketball court. Not with the high school coach he bickered with and not with coaches and team owners to come, along with any ref or player he deemed in his way.<\/p>\n
Maybe he was not confident off the court. But on the court, he knew he had to be confident, fiercely confident.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And maybe that confidence looked arrogant to some, angry to others.\u00a0\u201cI tried to get him to control his temper,\u201d his dad once said, \u201cbut it\u2019s hard to change people.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
***<\/p>\n
![\"When](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/082326-life-barry-05-1-794x1024.jpg\")
When Rick Barry retired, the Warriors made this collage as a present to him, depicting the highlights of his career with them. Barry won an NBA Championship with the Warriors in 1975. He was named the NBA Finals MVP after they swept the Washington Bullets. (Jerilee Bennett, The Gazette)<\/p>\n
Barry has changed, friends and family say. At least slightly.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cFriends that have known him for years and years say to me, \u2018Lynn, he\u2019s just mellowed out so much,\u201d his wife says. \u201cAnd I\u2019m like, What? What could he have possibly been like before? Because he\u2019s still very Type A.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
That\u2019s just how she has known him since 1986. He was retired from basketball by then, calling games on TV and going through a second divorce. He had four kids.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s a lot of baggage,\u201d he says. \u201cLynn was even told by her boss, Well, you know, he\u2019s got a reputation, you need to be careful, blah, blah, blah. Fortunately, she got to know me as a person.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
She got to know him as \u201cvery generous\u201d and \u201cvery kind.\u201d He would donate his time and money to charity events. He would rush to a friend and former teammate in need, Ray being one. \u201cI can tell you so many stories like that,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
His son, meanwhile, can\u2019t tell you how many birthday texts he sends. \u201cEvery time he meets someone, he asks them when their birthday is and he puts their birthday in his phone,\u201d Canyon says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the thoughtful person Lynn got to know. And yes, she says, he was \u201cvery competitive.\u201d And \u201cbrutally honest.\u201d<\/p>\n
Maybe that\u2019s why broadcasting didn\u2019t work out. \u201cAccentuate the positive, not the negative,\u201d Barry recalls as the expectation. \u201cBut any good play that happens, something bad happens, and that\u2019s how you teach the game, by talking about both.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Watch the guys on TV today, Lynn says. \u201cMy god, brutal. He was ahead of his time in that regard as well, with his broadcasting.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
And in terms of his playing, other onlookers have said. This includes the man behind the NBA logo, Jerry West.<\/p>\n
\u201cRick Barry could be, or could have been, the greatest forward in the history of basketball,\u201d he once said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
If it weren\u2019t for the move to the ABA, what could have been?\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cRick gambled and lost,\u201d a friend and teammate, Nate Thurmond, once said. \u201cHe most definitely made a mistake.\u201d<\/p>\n
Maybe, Barry has thought. Maybe not.\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"Rick](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/082326-life-barry-06-1-2-1024x948.jpg\")
Rick Barry and his wife, Lynn, at the pickleball court Aug. 6, 2026. (Jerilee Bennett, The Gazette)<\/p>\n
He often references Star Trek. \u201cThe space-time continuum would be screwed up if I didn\u2019t go\u201d to the ABA, he says, \u201cand there\u2019s a good likelihood I never would have met my current wife and I would not give that up for all the money in the world.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Here is someone who understands him. Lynn wants others to understand him.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe wants to be the best at everything he does, and how do you fault that? But how do you go about it? How do you portray that drive and that thing?\u201d she says. \u201cThat\u2019s where I\u2019ve just tried to make him more aware.\u201d<\/p>\n
To not be so intense on the pickleball court, to be more encouraging. To just relax on fly-fishing trips. Fly fishing is another hobby-turned-competition.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe call our dad a catcherman. If he goes fishing, he wants to be catching fish,\u201d Canyon says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He has returned from trips with \u201ca full stat breakdown,\u201d the son says \u30fc fish spotted, hooked and landed. As in those trips, family game nights have gotten heated.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cFor people who don\u2019t know him, that competitiveness can come off as a little harsh or brash,\u201d Canyon says. \u201cBut growing up around it, we always knew he meant the best and loves you.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"In](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/082326-life-barry-09-1024x768.jpg\")
In 2011, Cheyenne Mountain High School guard Canyon Barry signed his National Letter of Intent to play NCAA Division I basketball at the College of Charleston. He clowns around with his mom and dad, Lynn and Rick Barry, after the ceremony. Canyon became the next member of his immediate family to play Division I basketball. (Jerilee Bennett, The Gazette)<\/p>\n
He talks about his kids like they are his greatest accomplishment. \u201cFor all five (sons) to get Division I college basketball scholarships, are you kidding me? What are the odds of that?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
He\u2019s asked about odds a lot. About his legacy and what could have been. He thinks about another game he loves, bridge.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to play the bad hands as well as the good hands, because there\u2019s strategy involved,\u201d he says. \u201cYou get dealt good cards and bad cards, and you got to learn to play both of them, to make the most of them. That\u2019s what I try to do in life.\u201d<\/p>\n
Anyway, \u201cI don\u2019t live in the past,\u201d he says, \u201cand I don\u2019t worry about the future.\u201d Better to live in the present, he knows.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Not that he\u2019s good at sitting still. If he is, he\u2019s usually playing some game on his phone to sharpen his mind.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s not good at just sitting alone with his thoughts,\u201d Lynn says. \u201cHis mind is just too active to allow that.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
And so it seems unlikely that he would love cruises. But he loves the wide-open water and the wide-open sky, loves the excursions and seeing the world. Yes, he loves cruises.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd a lot of them have soft serve machines,\u201d he says. \u201cI love soft-serve ice cream.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Lynn](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/082326-life-barry-08-1024x873.jpg\")
Lynn and Rick Barry are avid cyclists and were cycling at Glacier National Park in the Summer of 2026. (Courtesy photo)<\/p>\n
![\"NBA](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/082326-life-barry-04-1024x752.jpg\")
NBA Hall of Famer Rick Barry was the fourth Warrior to have his number retired by the franchise. Barry won an NBA Championship with the Warriors in 1975. He was named the NBA Finals MVP after they swept the Washington Bullets. (Jerilee Bennett, The Gazette)<\/p>\n
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