Dick Barnett, Knicks legend who was part of two NBA championship teams, dies at age 88
Hall of Fame inductee and former New York Knick Dick Barnett during a timeout on Nov. 10, 2019, at Madison Square Garden. Credit: AP/Mary Altaffer
Dick Barnett won two NBA championships with the Knicks and spent decades during and after his playing career as one of the most interesting men in basketball — from his natty attire to his Ph.D. in education.
But for fans old enough to have watched him play, there is one memory that lingers above all about Barnett, who died on Sunday at age 88: He had one of the most unorthodox jump shots in the history of the sport.
In early 1966, during his first season with the Knicks, Sports Illustrated wrote that it “seems to attack all the basic laws of basketball, human coordination and aerodynamics.”
Pretty much. It was a sight to behold, a lefthanded shot put in which Barnett kicked up and tucked under his legs behind him.
So confident was he in the result that early in his basketball life, he would say, “Too late; fall back, baby” upon releasing the ball, meaning it was time for his team to head to the other end of the floor to play defense.
Lakers announcer Chick Hearn later picked up on that and turned “Fall Back, Baby” into a signature nickname for Barnett and his famous jumper.
Barnett, born on Oct. 2, 1936, in Gary, Indiana, was the oldest member of the Knicks’ 1969-70 championship core.
He had been the fourth pick in the 1959 NBA Draft by the Syracuse Nationals after leading Tennessee State to three NAIA titles.
Syracuse — too small, too remote, too cold — was not Barnett’s style, to put it mildly. After two seasons, he left for the Cleveland Pipers of the rival ABL, where he played for his college coach, John McLendon, and a young owner named George Steinbrenner and was part of a championship team.
Asked in 1990 what Steinbrenner was like then, Barnett said, “George was as volatile then as he is now.”
When Barnett returned to the NBA, it was to Los Angeles, where he spent three seasons, mostly as a productive sixth man on a Lakers team that featured Jerry West and Elgin Baylor.
The Knicks traded for him before the 1965-66 season, having finished 31-49 and in last place in the Eastern Conference the year before. He joined young Willis Reed as the first two pieces of what would be a championship team.
Barnett immediately added juice to the franchise, even though the Knicks went 30-50 and again finished last. A 6-4 guard, he averaged 23.1 points and 3.5 assists and, as SI put it in a headline, “has come along to provide the style, wit and excitement missing for so long in New York’s Madison Square Garden.”
(The article also called the Garden of the mid-1960s “the Pompeii of sport.”)
But the Knicks were building something special. They won 36 games the next season, then 43, then 54. In 1969-70, they won 60 and finally captured their first title. Barnett scored 21 points in Game 7 of the NBA Finals against the Lakers.
He was 33 by then, and he averaged 14.9 points that season, his lowest total to date as a Knick. But that was all the team needed, given the talent now around him — notably backcourt mate Walt Frazier.
When Earl Monroe arrived via a trade with the Bullets in 1971, Barnett’s role further diminished, and he was a mere role player on the Knicks' second NBA championship team in 1973.
After initially retiring before the 1973-74 season to serve as an assistant to coach Red Holzman, he returned to the court when Monroe was injured. But he re-retired after five games, with 15,358 career points, and rejoined Holzman on the bench.
Barnett, whose personality was quiet and enigmatic, was far from the biggest Knicks star of that era, but on a team that was famous for being more than the sum of its parts, he was a crucial component.
In 1990, the Knicks retired his No. 12, meaning all five starters from the ’69-70 team were so honored.
But the end of Barnett’s playing days hardly were the end of his life journey.
In 1974, working with teammates Bill Bradley and Phil Jackson, he became president of the Athletes for a Better Urban Society.
“New York is comprised of the good, the bad and the ugly,” he said around that time. “I’m interested in the social concerns. Most people think athletes are one-dimensional, and a lot have failed to stand up and be counted.”
At a 2019 event to promote an SNY documentary about that era in New York sports, Barnett called the 1969-70 Knicks “the smartest sports team that has ever been put together.”
And Barnett proved it off the court. After having been an indifferent student in college, he got a new outlook when he suffered a torn Achilles tendon late in the 1966-67 season. He recovered, but he got serious about educating himself.
Barnett earned a master’s degree in public administration from NYU, then a doctorate in education at Fordham, with a thesis on athletes serving as role models for African-American students — thus becoming “Dr.” Dick Barnett.
He later became a professor of sports management at St. John’s, wrote nearly two dozen books and was a busy public speaker.
“I do a lot of public speaking,” Barnett told Newsday in 2020. “I often tell my audience that in my basketball career, the best thing that happened to me was having a ruptured Achilles tendon. That was a wake-up call to get prepared for the future.
“I wasn’t Dr. Barnett at that time. I wasn’t even a college graduate. I made a transformative decision at that time when the doctor walked in, when the chickens came home to roost at Madison Square Garden in 1967 and said, ‘Mr. Barnett, you might not play any more professional basketball.’
“That was a wake-up call. Whether I could play professional basketball or not, I’ve got to go back to school.”
Barnett certainly forged a meaningful, impactful life after basketball. But that crazy jumper also endures.
Upon being honored with his retired jersey in 1990, Barnett again was asked about the style he picked up as a child and never altered.
He said, “I never saw anyone shoot like that before or since.”
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.
