"Bad News"
The Turbulent Life of Marvin Barnes, Pro Basketball's Original Renegade
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- 12,99 €
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- 12,99 €
Description de l’éditeur
Marvin “Bad News” Barnes was considered a future Hall of Fame basketball player before he even graduated from college. A standout at Providence College, where he averaged 20.7 points and 17.9 rebounds per game, he was an All-American with the world at his fingertips.
Although Barnes enjoyed two highly successful years in the American Basketball Association with the Spirits of St. Louis (winning Rookie of the Year honors and twice being named an All-Star), his career fizzled in the NBA as he wore out his welcome with the Detroit Pistons, Buffalo Braves, Boston Celtics, and San Diego Clippers in four years. His immaturity, as well as a chronic losing battle with drugs and alcohol, turned a potential superstar into a has-been by 1979. By then, his swagger was gone. So too was his game.
Written by Mike Carey, who opened his house to Barnes later in his life, this is the story of a supremely gifted athlete whose self-destructive nature led to him living on the mean streets of East San Diego for three years as a panhandler and pimp. Eventually he would serve a total of five years in prison for various felony charges, including the sale of cocaine.
Throughout his life, every time it appeared that “Bad News” had turned the corner, his demons reappeared and succeeded in luring him back into becoming a conniving dope fiend.
On September 8, 2014, Barnes finally hit rock bottom, passing away due to acute cocaine and heroin intoxication. He was sixty-two years old.
With stories and quotes from Julius Erving, Bill Walton, Larry Brown, Mike D’Antoni, and many others who crossed paths with Barnes, as well as a foreword from former Spirits announcer Bob Costas, “Bad News” is the story of a squandered talent who could never defeat his inner demons.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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 spent 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.
