cover image Bad News: The Turbulent Life of Marvin Barnes, Pro Basketball’s Original Renegade

Bad News: The Turbulent Life of Marvin Barnes, Pro Basketball’s Original Renegade

Mike Carey. Sports Publishing, $22.99 (224p) ISBN 978-1-6132-1963-8

Examining what happens when an up-and-coming sports superstar self-destructs before his career peak, Carey, a veteran journalist at the Boston Herald, connects the dots on the puzzling, exhilarating life of the late Marvin Barnes (1952–2014), a gifted basketball player with a host of personal demons sabotaging his life. Barnes was a timid boy who transformed into a troublemaker in high school; he was sentenced to three months of probation following a robbery. In short, dramatic scenes, Carey describes the “combative” youth during his Providence College days as an All-American player, leading his squad to NCAA tournament victories, and setting up two successful years with the Spirits of St. Louis in the now-defunct ABA. Drugs, orgies, and a corrupting friendship with a drug czar short-circuited Barnes’s supreme skills during his stop-start NBA journey with the Detroit Pistons, Buffalo Braves, Boston Celtics, and San Diego Clippers in the 1970s. With his drug buddies jailed and severely addicted, he ended up homeless and was sentenced to five years in a Texas prison for selling drugs. Brutally honest, tragic, and fascinating, Carey’s grim cautionary tale exposes the highs and lows of the complex basketball superstar. (Oct.)

This review has been updated to reflect that Barnes was sentenced to five years in jail rather than that he spent that time in jail.