No 'News' Was Good News For Pistons When It Came To Marvin Barnes

(note: some quotes and facts for the following came from Jerry Green's book "The Detroit Pistons: Capturing A Remarkable Era")


Watching the Pistons win with monotonous regularity, piling up wins like pancakes on a serving plate at the IHOP, got me to thinking of the team's rather inglorious past. I'm big on contrasts. I like remembering the good times during the bad, and the bad times during the good when it comes to our teams. It's much more fun, of course, to do the latter.

And when you're talking Pistons Basketball, throwback style, it's just as well to do just that: throw it back. Before the Bad Boys, the Pistons really were the bad boys. Mostly they played basketball court jesters in a theater of the absurd, and before gaggles of empty seats. They were the Broadway show that got shut down after one night, but kept playing anyway.

The follies weren't confined to the hardwood, however. The Pistons, before Bill Davidson bought out his partners in 1974 and began to right the ship ever so slowly, practiced an interesting approach toward winning: they constantly walked around with pistols, and aimed them squarely at their basketball shoes.

What else can you say about a franchise that once employed, at various times, the following as its general manager: its radio announcer, an accountant, the Lions' former GM, and a lawyer. But that's okay, because it also employed as coach a 24 year-old player, a liquor salesman, a man who met his future wife in the army brig and who loved steam baths, a man who loved to wear leisure suits and no socks, and a one-eyed sheister from the college ranks.

So when the American Basketball Association decided it had had enough and deflated its red, white, and blue basketballs for good, announcing that four of its teams would survive and merge into the NBA in the summer of 1976, it was announced there would be a dispersal draft. Basically, the cream of the crop of players not on those four surviving teams would be put into a hopper of sorts, available for selection by NBA clubs in a certain predetermined pecking order.

There was, without question, some highly attractive talent in that pool. The ABA could play some ball. They just couldn't get enough paying customers to witness it in person. Hence the deflation of basketballs.

The Pistons had their eyes on big, strong, young Moses Malone, from the Virginia Squires. Moses didn't go to college, but he made the transition from high school to the pros with wonderful seamlessness. Of course, Moses was coveted by many teams. Still, the Pistons would have a shot at him, based on their draft position.

But there was another player, another huge talent, that made the Pistons' feeble, woefully basketball knowledge-deprived front office drool. He played for the St. Louis Spirits.

When Marvin Barnes was selected by the Pistons in the ABA dispersal draft in the summer of 1976, it was the perfect completion to the statement, "Just when you thought it couldn't get any: a) worse, b) more bizarre, c) funnier."


Marvin "Bad News" Barnes


Barnes had a nickname, gathered from his time at Providence University and his years with the Spirits. It was "Bad News". That's what they might tend to call you, too, if you threatened a teammate with a tire iron, as he did in college, and missed practices and showed up late for games, as he did in the pros.

But the Detroit Pistons, once again pointing that pistol at their feet, pulled the trigger when they selected Marvin "Bad News" Barnes over Moses "Future Hall of Famer" Malone.
Barnes, legend has it, had 13 telephones in his two-bedroom apartment so he wouldn't have to reach any further than arm's length to answer a call. But eccentricities aside, Marvin "Bad News" Barnes had a message for the basketball fans in Detroit.

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All season, Barnes tried the Pistons' patience. He was late for practices. He was late for games. He complained that he wasn't playing enough.
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"I'm going to get my game together. I think we have a great team. I can imagine the championship banner now. What do they call that place? Cobo?"

And then Marvin probably answered a phone call in the bathroom.

But he had another message, and it was about his relatively unflattering nickname.

"Call me 'News'," Marvin implored the good people of Detroit -- especially those with pens and notebooks and newspaper columns. "Not 'Bad News' -- just 'News.'"

And then Marvin probably answered a phone call in his closet.

The Pistons, in the fall of 1976, were coached by Herb Brown, Larry's not-as-famous older brother. He was in lockstep with his bosses when he declared publicly that the selection of Marvin Barnes instead of a huge manchild like Moses Malone in the dispersal draft was a good thing for his basketball team. Herb Brown, after all, knew that upper management read the papers -- even the sports section.

But when training camp started, and when the players gathered around Brown on the first day, guess who was missing?

Marvin Barnes!

The Pistons suspended him. Before he suited up for even one practice.

And that was just the beginning. All season, Barnes tried the Pistons' patience. He was late for practices. He was late for games. He complained that he wasn't playing enough. But then he did something that couldn't possibly remove the word "Bad" from his sobriquet.

Already on probation for the tire iron incident, Barnes was caught with a loaded gun while going through the metal detectors at Metro Airport. Providence must not be a very good school. They apparently don't teach their students not to do such a thing, especially while one is already on probation.

There would be jail time for Marvin Barnes, a judge said, and it would begin in May -- conveniently after the NBA season would be concluded. Judges read sports pages, too, you know.

So the '76-77 campaign rolled along, and as it got closer to the end of the regular season, Marvin Barnes had another surprise for Herb Brown and the Pistons brass.

"I don't want to play in the playoffs. I want to start my prison time. I just want to get it over with. My contract doesn't say I have to play in the playoffs for them."

Marvin may have been right about the contract thing, but it's doubtful the Pistons felt they had to add a clause that said, "Player agrees to play in the playoffs -- if we make it!"

After some cajoling and ego stroking, Barnes finally agreed to play in the 1977 playoffs. It was much ado about nothing. The Pistons were blasted out in the first round, two games to one. Marvin then traipsed off to prison, leaving his apartment and his telephones behind.

Marvin "Bad News" Barnes lasted into the beginning of the 1977-78 season before being traded to the Buffalo Braves. It closed a deliciously goofy chapter in franchise history.

So when you are witness to the basketball ballet that today's Pistons perform nightly, be mindful that before the pirouettes, there were pratfalls and slapstick.

"News", indeed!