Club Random with Bill Maher - Listen Now: The Sage Steele Show with Matt Barnes

Episode Date: April 18, 2024

Sage Steele and Matt Barnes on the top ten players to get technical fouls in the NBA, the truth behind Matt’s recent incident at the high school, Matt’s attitude on playing the villain on the court, Matt’s favorite player ever in the NBA, succeeding at life after basketball, Matt’s incredibly tough upbringing, the hypocrisy of the NBA’s substance testing policy, Matt’s podcast network, getting booed in front of his kids, and much much more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Did you know at that time when you were a little kid that you were poor and this wasn't what you wanted to? I didn't know until we moved to Sacramento. I was in San Jose from like birth through about eight years old and I was in a very poor neighborhood and went to a pretty bad school. So I didn't know because I didn't see nothing else. We moved to Sacramento, we got a little better neighborhood but first day I went to third grade, second grade, they took me back to the kindergarten class. And I'm like Billy Madison in here, big as shit. All these other kids are tiny.

The rest of my class is playing outside and I'm writing my letters on a little chalkboard. I'm like, when I got older, I was like, oh, so we didn't really learn too much at that other school. That was, you know, and then now I'm with them. And again, although my parents were functioning drug addicts, they always put me in predominantly white schools because

I guess they wanted at the time to have me to have a chance and be able to be who I was going to be. So I hated that though, because I never got to go to school with the kids I played basketball with or the kids in my neighborhood. It was always the school that was 98 or 99% white. And although I'm half Italian and half black, like I was dark so I was never white enough and I was never black enough. So I fought my way to respect and friendship

and opportunities to play sports. So it was tough, but again, as I started making friends, I realized like the first time I ate at a dinner table was with one of my white friends' family. First time at a dinner table was with one of my white friends family. First time everyone on vacation was with one of my white friends family. What do you mean? You didn't have a table? We did. It was tiny. We all couldn't sit at it, but my dad was in the street, so my mom was cooking, you know, we kind of ate as dinner was served and we would eat it.

You know, and that's not to say all the time like we wouldn't. We never sat down at a dinner table together where there's time we'd all eat dinner at the same time, but for the most part, sitting down, someone saying grace, and all the food being in the center of the table, and you kind of like, that's the stuff you see on TV. Like I never had that until I was with, you know, a white family, or my first vacation was with a white family.

So I never saw the other side and never know that I didn't have money until I kind of moved to Sacramento and started hanging out and kind of befriending some white kids that obviously had a, you know, their parents had some more money. That's a lot. Were your parents married? Yeah, my parents were married for 28 years.

They probably shouldn't have went that long. But my mom, unfortunately, my mom was overcome by cancer. She was diagnosed with cancer November 1st, 2007, died November 27th, so 26 days. What? What kind of cancer was it? It was kidney cancer that I think took her down, but she had four cancers in stage four by the time she was diagnosed.

So it was, like I said, within a month, the very beginning of a season, and it was gone. So yeah, but you know, my mom was the super mom. We didn't have much, you know, when my dad was gone, we didn't have a car, but she made sure that we got to where we needed to be. Our homework was done. Everyone was fed. We were dressed. We were bathed. Like, my parents were functioning addicts. Like, some of their friends were loser addicts, but my parents were able to kind of keep it together for us. Luckily that, you know, we were always, you know, baiting.

Did you witness it? Did you witness the drug use? Mm-hmm, right in front of me. And was it all of it? Like, all of the things? Yeah, I mean, outside of putting needles in their arms, I never saw my parents do that. I saw, you know, one of their friends do it one time in the bathroom when I walked in, but, you know, I grew up in the, I was born in 1980, and, you know, that was heavy coming off the 70s

where everybody was doing cocaine and then that turned into harder drugs. So, and my parents were the partiers. So they had the people over and I was, they just allowed me to kind of witness life at an early age and I think that too is why I never went harder. You know what I mean?

Cause I had, I saw it all at an early age and saw how people acted and what they did and they didn't. I used to smell cigarettes and hated it, but I remember my dad would come home after work sometimes and smoke a little joint. And I was just like, oh, that smells different. And it didn't stink. And then he was not like, not that he was mean,

but he was just, he was out there. He was just, he would relax. He would kind of wrestle and play with us sometimes. I'm like, yeah, I like that smell. So when I was 14, that's what I tried. You associated that to your dad being more present. With the memory. Relaxed, cool.

Kind, more kind. Talkative, playing with us as kids. Do you think that's why you tried it? Yeah, I didn't, to be honest with you, I don't really know why I tried it. I just wanted to try it. Like I remember that the smell was the one thing that stuck with me from a young kid.

So I don't necessarily, I didn't equate it till I got older, was this is what my dad was like when he did it. He was really chill on it. I just tried it to try it. 14 years old and kind of, you know, promiscuous and out hanging out with my friends and tried it. The first time he gave me a bad headache, made me pass out. But like I said, I wasn't a quitter.

I got back on the horse and eventually kind of found my lane. Is your father still around? My dad's still around, yep. How's that relationship? It's great now. It wasn't anything, which was weird because he was always there, but he was always out providing and he was a disciplinarian.

So it was, you know, in the 80s you got spanked. They would call it beating or child abuse now, but I got my fair, fair, oof. When my mom used to tell me, go sit in the room till your dad come home, that was the worst shit I could ever hear. I could try to fall asleep, try to put a book on my butt, try to go underneath the bed. When I heard him come home and walk down the hallway, it was over.