"Game time is on time."
You have no idea what those words have come to mean.
For many years in my house, it was the punch line to "The Marvin Story". My kids learned it to be a long story about someone they knew nothing about – they got that from their mother, who wasn't much of a sports fan and patiently tolerated me telling the story many times over – with a roll of the eyes.
But that story meant an awful lot to me.
It was about a guy I knew about growing up, yet I later learned I didn't know nearly enough about him until I got to college. And there's always been a soft spot there..right there..for him with me.
Marvin Barnes.
Movin' Marvin. Bad News Barnes. BB. THE Spirit of the Spirits of St. Louis.
He had several nicknames, and that was apropos, given how large of a life he lived.
And I don't necessarily mean that as a compliment.
Marvin Barnes died Monday. He was 62.
Chronologically. If you cut him in half and counted the rings, like you do to determine the age of a tree, he would probably have been about 115.
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My first recollection of him was when his college team, Providence, came to town for the 1973 Final Four at the old St. Louis Arena. He and Ernie D(iGregorio) were the centerpieces of a free-wheeling Friars team that lit up scoreboards out East. They may very well have gotten to the finals against UCLA (think Bill Walton, 21-of-22 shooting, 44 points, national championship win over Memphis) had Barnes not gotten hurt in the semifinals, and the Friars came up short. That was around the time Barnes got the nickname "Bad News" when I read that he had gone after a teammate with a tire iron.
Anyway, when it was announced that the Carolina Cougars of the ABA were moving to St. Louis and taking the name The Spirits (think Lindbergh plane, trans-Atlantic flight, circa 1927), I was excited. I loved what I saw of the ABA, mostly in my old basketball card collection, since their games weren't often televised: The red, white and blue ball. The 3-point shot. The colorful uniforms. While the NBA of the early 1970's was okay for a young sports fan, the drab, brown basketball made me think of them as corporate, establishment, old – but the ABA…the ABA; Man, that was cool!
So, who do the Spirits bring to town as their top draft pick in 1974? Yep, Marvin Barnes. He was the marquee guy in a young lineup that was colorfully broadcast by their 22-year-old play-by-play announcer, Bob Costas, though Costas will be the first to tell you that that team didn't need much in the way of colorful descriptions -- their play did enough of that. I think I heard him refer to The Spirits once as a menagerie. And in the center ring of the circus was Movin' Marvin.
My friends and I followed The Spirits religiously. The team was appropriately named, as Costas would also tell you: Fly Williams, who once dribbled off the court to get a drink of water at Austin Peay – when the game was in progress. Gus Gerard ("Double G from 22 – Bang!", Costas would exclaim), Maurice Lucas (who sent 7-foot-2 Artis Gilmore to the floor with one punch), Goo Kennedy, Don Adams (not the "Get Smart" comedian, but a no-nonsense guy who looked like someone's uncle, what with his receding hairline and less-than-svelte physique), and head coach Bob McKinnon, who lasted but only a year with that team; probably so he could check himself into a sanitarium. There was a table basketball game (I think called "Bas-Ket"…maybe?) that came with a ping-pong ball you used as the game ball. I found red, blue and black magic markers to color the ball and I drew three-point lines on the court so my game would be the ABA, and my team was The Spirits. So what if they lost more than they won in that first season? My friend's dad took us to a game, and I didn't pay any attention to the fact that we seemed to be the only fans in our section – it was The Spirits! I collected all the cards from that year's Topps set (and ABA players made up only about a third of the cards in that set), and getting Marvin Barnes was like hitting the jackpot! They hit their peak when they beat Dr. J and the mighty New York Nets (not Brooklyn, or even New Jersey for you youngsters) in the playoffs that first year. As a 12-year-old, I ate it all up.
Meanwhile, Marvin Barnes was already establishing a reputation; as a dynamic scorer and rugged rebounder on the court – but he often wasn't on the court. There was that time he vanished for several days in a contract holdout; he was eventually found in a pool hall on Dayton, Ohio, of all places. Of course, he was holding out because he was already blowing through his large contract. Following the exploits of Marvin and the Spirits was like reading about the Wild West. When the Spirits (by the way, did I mention they had THE greatest logo in the history of logos?) crashed and burned after two seasons (even after adding a very young Moses Malone), it was a sad day. With some great memories.
The memories only got better whenever Costas would get to tell Spirits tales; sometimes on KMOX Radio, and later, on a show with Roy Firestone that I taped when I was in college. (Is the statute of limitations up on skipping afternoon classes to sit around and listen to the Costas tape? I won't mention any other names.) It was like finding a beloved toy after not playing with it for ten years. Later, I read Terry Pluto's classic, Loose Balls, and it opened up a whole new vista into this team, and Marvin Barnes:
On flying out of Louisville, Kentucky at 7:00 a.m. and arriving in St. Louis at 6:59: "I ain't gettin' on no time machine, man.
Consoling Bob Costas, after the young broadcaster thought he was going to be fired: "Don't worry, bro'. I been lookin' for a little dude like you to drive me around in my Rolls (-Royce)"
And of course, the classic story of the chartered airplane. The Marvin Story.
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How many of us say we hit our professional peak when we were 22? Marvin could. Late nights, bags of fast food, little or no sleep, candles burned on both ends, and money tossed around like candy all added pounds to his waistline and took away the sharpness of his reflexes and quickness under the basket. And then there were the drugs.
Cocaine was beginning to make its mark on pro basketball, and it took its toll on Marvin. He went to the NBA for big(ger) money when the ABA folded, but soon the secret was out – Marvin didn't have it any more, and he began residing on the far end of benches around the league – just he and his coke. He'd gone from the apex to the zenith by the time he was 27.
There is another must-read book on pro basketball during that period: David Halberstam's The Breaks of the Game. In it, Bill Walton talks about his teammate with the L.A. Clippers, Marvin Barnes. He said that Marvin, if he was sitting in a car with guys who had just robbed a bank and had gotten pulled over by the cops, would be the one to volunteer to hold the money and the gun.
The years after he left the league were spent in a cycle of drugs, arrest, rehab, prison, and back around again. I saw several years ago that he had gotten married, and that he had attended an ABA reunion; that he was turning his life around (again) and was doing some counseling.
I think I also read he was approached about doing an in-depth interview, and he wanted to know how much he was getting paid for it. When he was told he wouldn't be paid, he asked if the reporter could take he and his family out to dinner instead.
That sums up Marvin pretty well – not malicious, but always working an angle. A sweet con man, if you will, conning himself into believing he was okay and then falling back off the wagon.
Marvin was always this larger-than-life character in my mind, certainly a reminder of my younger days; but that was the ABA as a whole. There is very little video, or audio play-by-play, to document those times. Costas has often said that vacuum the ABA existed in takes its life, antics, and talents-on-display to an almost-mythological state – "Did you see Doc take off from midcourt and do a 360-reverse?" -- all you left have is what's in the mind's eye of those who witnessed it; and then, like the old kids' game of Telephone, stories get passed down from generation to generation, increasing in the hyperbole of the tale.
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But the Marvin story is true as it is told.
Not wanting to end his night/begin his day with a team flight from Long Island to Norfolk, Virginia, and having missed all commercial flights that would get him to the game on time, Marvin once decided to charter his own plane. Even still, he was going to cut it pretty close in getting to the arena, so he put on the burnt orange, swooshing plane-logoed road uniform, and then a floor-length, en vogue mink coat over the uni. He cabs to the airport as tipoff nears, with Bob McKinnon and the team going over strategy, sans Marvin. As they break the team huddle before going out on the floor, the doors to the visitor's locker room open, and there stands Marvin, opening the coat to reveal the uniform, who then smiled and said, "Have no fear, BB (a nickname for the shape of his head) is here. Game time is on time!"
And then he went out and scored 48 points and grabbed 19 rebounds.
Game time is on time.
That phrase was always worth a chuckle for me every time I'd tell the story, or hear, or read about it. And it was worth three rolls of the eyes when the request for The Marvin Story came up every so often – mostly when it was late and my kids didn't want to go to sleep.
It also brought back some bittersweet thoughts – about what was, but oh, what could have been.
RIP, Marvin. I hope you are at rest now.
And don't worry -- You may be gone, but as long as the stories live, so will you.
