Walt Frazier recalls Dick Barnett: 'Such an impact on my life'
Former New York Knick Dick Barnett at MSG in 2023. Credit: AP/Adam Hunger
Walt Frazier said Monday was a day full of both tears and laughter as he recalled his friend and Knicks teammate, Dick Barnett, who died on Sunday at 88.
“He’s had such an impact on my life, man” Frazier told Newsday. “It's just incredible when I look back on it. Periodically, I have been crying when I think about it.”
Then Frazier added, “He was the funniest guy on the team. This guy was hilarious. He kept you laughing all the time.”
Barnett, a basketball Hall of Famer but the least heralded starter on the Knicks’ 1969-70 NBA championship team, had a dour image publicly. But Frazier said journalists and fans misunderstood him.
“He was always the guy that was overlooked,” Frazier said. “It was because of his persona when he presented himself to the media and to the public. They thought he was a laid-back, nonchalant guy who didn't really care.”
To the contrary, Frazier said, Barnett played a key role as a veteran leader for the team’s younger players.
That included Frazier, who was 22 when he joined the Knicks in 1967. Barnett was 31 and coming off what many thought would be a career-ending Achilles tendon tear.
“His locker was adjacent to my locker; they told him his career was over,” Frazier said. “No one had ever come back from that. I saw how diligently he worked.
“He didn't smoke, he didn't drink. His whole life was basketball, trying to prolong his career, and he did for another three or four years.”
Barnett told Newsday in 2020 that the injury was a blessing in disguise because it set him on a road to taking his education and health more seriously.
“I often tell my audience [as a public speaker] that in my basketball career, the best thing that happened to me was having a ruptured Achilles tendon,” he said. “That was a wake-up call to get prepared for the future."
Frazier saw that firsthand.
“He got me into vitamins,” Frazier said. “When I'm a rookie in college, you play 30 games. In the NBA, you play 40 and you’re halfway. I hit the wall. He said, ‘Hey, man, go take these vitamins,’ do this, do that.”
Barnett also was a famously sharp dresser who helped set Frazier on the path to the sartorial splendor that remains part of his brand to this day.
Frazier rattled off the names of places Barnett took him around Manhattan and Brooklyn to buy suits, shirts and shoes. “I can remember it like it was yesterday,” Frazier said, laughing.
Frazier said coach Red Holzman “loved” Barnett and catered to his aging body. “In practice, he ran me to death,” Frazier said. “Barnett, he only kept him tuned, practice 10 or 15 minutes and let him sit down and save his energy for the game.”
As for Barnett’s famously unconventional shooting style, in which he kicked his legs up behind him as he let the ball go, Frazier said, “If you look at it, he's facing the basket, his elbow’s straight, like you teach people to shoot. But the rest of it was unorthodox, the way he kicked those legs.
“That was him, man. He was eccentric, enigmatic, dramatic. But he was a fun-loving guy who kept us loose.”
Frazier remembered being in a timeout huddle and Phil Jackson being asked why he was shooting so much. “He said, ‘I’m open!’ ” Frazier recalled.
To which Barnett replied, “Hey, there’s a reason you’re open!”
Frazier said observing Barnett’s post-basketball life, including earning a doctorate in education, has inspired Frazier, now an MSG Networks analyst.
“It's no longer how long I live, but how I live,” Frazier, 80, said. “It’s giving back, following his example, just like Senator [Bill] Bradley, like Earl [Monroe] has his school.
“That’s what I'm doing now with my [children’s] book [‘Winning & Grinning’]. It’s giving me an entree into the schools, talking to the kids. So it's definitely helping me be more altruistic as well.”
Neil Best first worked at Newsday in 1982, returned in 1985 after a detour to Alaska and has been here since, specializing in high schools, college basketball, the NFL and most recently sports media and business.
