Going Their Own Way : The Barry Brothers--Including Clippers’ Brent and Warriors’ Jon--Succeeded Despite, Not Because of, Their Father Rick

Rick’s kids, Rick’s kids, Rick’s kids, they can’t get away from it.

So what if Rick Barry divorced their mother, wasn’t around when they were growing up, didn’t coach them, teach them to shoot free throws or instill that preternatural court sense they all share? Everyone always says the same thing whenever Brent, Jon, Scooter and Drew do anything on a basketball floor:

Just Like Rick.

It’s been years since Scooter played on Kansas’ 1988 national champions, starting the next wave--Jon and Brent were No. 1 draft picks, Drew is a well-regarded college senior--but even in the family where everyone knows it’s a barbed compliment, they still remark on it.

“Even my mom’s mom,” says Brent, now a Clipper rookie, “my grandmom, Doris Hale, she was remarking when she saw the Sacramento game when I was out on the floor, how much I looked like my dad. And probably of all the brothers, I probably resemble him the most.”

The Clippers had Scooter in last fall. Bill Fitch says he might have kept him if he weren’t committed to guaranteed contracts. Fitch saw it too.

“I think they all have some of Rick’s characteristics,” says Fitch. “They all have his physique and carriage. This kid [Brent], probably as much as any of them, has his size.

“I tell you this, they’re all great kids. You have to give Pam a lot of credit. They’re really great kids. They’re gregarious, they’re thoughtful, they’re well-mannered.”

Those weren’t adjectives that popped up in stories about Rick. His was an All-American fable gone awry: the marriage at 21 to Pam Hale, the beautiful daughter of his college coach; the stardom, the end of his career and their marriage.

He left town to pursue a second career: announcing, acting, whatever. She stayed in the Bay Area where their four sons grew up. When they became basketball players--Scooter plays in Germany, Jon’s with the Golden State Warriors, Drew is a senior at Georgia Tech--and people said the things they always say, the sons felt funny about it.

They were Pam’s kids too, more so since she raised them. It was a weird world in which no one seemed to appreciate a fact so basic.

“That was the difficult thing growing up,” Brent says. “I chose to play this sport and, during the time when I was between 12 and 20, here I am playing high school basketball and trying to earn a scholarship and I’m playing in college, trying to improve myself and trying to get a shot to play professionally, and during all this time, when I’m having success, it would be, ‘This is Rick Barry’s son.’

“Our dad wasn’t around. We didn’t have the type of relationship where it would be him and I out on the basketball court, working on things and doing things in the back yard that, you know, maybe fathers and sons do. Or even just throwing the baseball around.

“That didn’t happen for me so it was difficult for myself and Drew and Jon to be playing the game and to have my dad’s name synonymous with any type of success we were having, when he wasn’t really around. So that was kind of the tug of war that was going on for all of us during that time. . . .

“People think that we were in the back yard for 16 hours a day and we couldn’t come in and eat unless we made 20 free throws in a row. It was nothing like that.

“We didn’t really see him that much. He was in and out of town and doing certain things so the relationship there was real stagnant. It just became that we were dependent on each other and my mom.”

Brent doesn’t think the brothers look much alike, nor does he see their games as similar.

A resemblance to their father? He doesn’t know and, if the truth be known, may not care for a while.

“Everybody talks about my father being such a great competitor,” says Brent, “being fiery and all that stuff. But when you’re 4-5-6-years old, you don’t understand what that means. The game is different when you’re 4 and 5. It’s just a basketball and a hoop and a couple guys out there running around so all the stuff I keep hearing about, I guess I’ve got to go back to the videotape and see how much of a jerk he was while he played.

“I don’t really remember how he played, but he’s got some old videotapes of when he played so maybe I need to pull those out and check those out.”

Rick’s court persona was so demented, he, himself, once noted, “I was a jerk on the court.” As a father, it might be said that he had all he could do to grow up, himself, a process deferred until he left basketball.

Until then, his foibles and fury were forgiven. If he was demanding, impatient or petulant, they were seen as a star’s prerogatives.

Retired, he found himself called to account for everything. Though incisive, he didn’t last as a TV analyst. He coached a Continental Basketball Assn. team trying to get back into the game; there was a requisite press flurry but nothing more.

“Rick was so hungry for fame,” former teammate Tom Meschery once told Sports Illustrated, “that when he got it, it was easy for him to get lost in it.

“He was so caught up in image that he probably lost sight of himself. People were eager to make allowances for everything he did, and so there was never any reason for him to stop doing them. He was constantly told--so naturally he came to believe--that life on a pedestal was reality. In fact, it wasn’t.”

If it can be difficult being a star, or his son, it is doubly so when the story turns sad.

The Barrys are trying to re-establish connections as best they can. But the situation is at once painful and precarious. Pam does not speak to Rick.

When Brent began shooting his free throws underhanded, like his father, the other brothers were quoted as criticizing him for being insensitive to his mother.

Brent now shoots them one-handed again. Gracious in the face of repeated inquiries about it, he will nevertheless be happy when the story is old and forgotten.

“I don’t even like talking to the press about the relationship,” he says. “Because it’s really, who cares? It’s time for us to move on now, we’re all grown up and it’s all in the past. . . .

“The relationship [with his father] is great. Probably since my freshman year in college, it’s been improving and we talk about things in a different level. I think it continually improves.

“I think the main fact is, you can’t go back and relive those moments that you’ve already missed. Now it’s time to build on the relationship and we’ve been able to do that.”

Tuesday in Oakland, Brent and the Clippers played Jon and the Warriors. Jon is now famous, at least among the Lakers, for exploding that three-point shot on them at the end of garbage time last Saturday to buy the crowd free hamburgers, then pantomiming taking a bite of a burger.

It’s not everything Jon would like but at least it’s his, alone.