Dick Barnett, legendary Knicks NBA champion, dead at 88

New York Post

27-04-2025

Dick Barnett, whose unorthodox left-handed 'Fall Back Baby' jumper thrilled Knicks fans en route to the team's 1970 NBA championship and who later authored multiple books, earned a doctorate from Fordham University and taught classes in sports management at St. John's, has died this weekend, the Knicks announced Sunday. He was 88.
A three-time All-America at Tennessee State, where he led his teams to three consecutive NAIA national championships, Barnett, enshrined in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2024, spent 14 seasons in the NBA — eight of those with the Knicks — and one in the old American Basketball League.
While a limping Willis Reed inspired his team and Walt Frazier played the game of his life in Game 7 of those 1970 Finals, the overlooked Barnett scored 21 points in the decisive game and had taken on the responsibility of guarding Jerry West for most of that series. Barnett was also part of the 1973 championship Knicks team. His No. 12 was retired by the team in 1990.
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'He's one of the architects who built the legacy of what the Knicks were about,' once said Earl Monroe, who replaced Barnett in the starting backcourt after the Knicks acquired him during the 1971-72 season. 'No one can ever forget that.'
4 Knicks Walt Frazier on left and Dick Barnett on right pose with Phil Jackson at the New York Knicks press conference to announce the hiring of Phil Jackson as President of the New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden on March 18, 2004.
Paul J. Bereswill
A three-time Little All-America at what was then called Tennessee A&I, Barnett was chosen in the first round of the 1959 NBA Draft by the Syracuse Nationals (now the Philadelphia 76ers). He spent the first two years of his career with the Nationals before jumping to the new ABL and the Cleveland Pipers, who were owned by George M. Steinbrenner, who years later would purchase the Yankees.
After one successful season with the Pipers, who won the ABL championship that year, Barnett returned to the NBA with the Los Angeles Lakers, with whom he spent three seasons. At the age of 29, he was traded to the Knicks, just before the start of the 1965-66 season. He averaged 23.1 points per game in his first season in New York, but it was a torn Achilles tendon suffered the following year that changed the course of Barnett's life.
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Facing the possibility he might never play basketball again, Barnett, an indifferent student who left college without his degree, realized he needed a backup plan. He had begun taking classes while with the Lakers and, with an uncertain future, approached his studies with a renewed vigor. He earned a bachelor's degree in physical education from California Polytechnic State University before getting his master's in public administration from NYU and his doctorate in education and communications from Fordham.
'I didn't understand that athletics and academics could peacefully coexist,' Barnett said of his class-skipping days as an undergrad. 'In my basketball career, the best thing that happened to me was that ruptured Achilles tendon. That was a wake-up call to get prepared for the future.'
Richard Barnett was born Oct. 2, 1936, in Gary, Ind., where he attended Theodore Roosevelt High School. As a senior, he took its basketball team to the state championship game. The opponent in the final was Crispus Attucks High School of Indianapolis, led by future Hall of Famer Oscar Robertson. Attucks won the game, which marked the first time two predominantly black high schools had met in that state's title game.
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At Tennessee State, Barnett played under legendary coach John McClendon and, en route to winning those three consecutive national titles, was twice named the MVP of the NAIA tournament. The Tigers were the first historically black college to win an integrated national championship in basketball. Barnett, who was inducted into the College Basketball Hall of Fame, remains the Tigers' all-time leading scorer.
4 San Francisco's Bill Turner snatches rebound out of the hands of Knicks' Dick Barnett during first period in San Francisco. March 18, 1968.
Associated Press Photo
Barnett came off the bench with both the Nationals and the Lakers, who reached the NBA Finals twice in his five seasons in LA. It was there that the team's legendary play-by-play man Chick Hearn, after learning that Barnett used to tell his college teammates to 'fall back' [on defense] as soon as he launched one of his jumpers, began bellowing 'fall back, baby' each time Barnett went up for a shot.
But it was with the Knicks, who never won more than 43 games in his first three seasons in New York, that Barnett became a starter. He was named to play in the NBA All-Star Game in 1968, the season after tearing his Achilles tendon.
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It was when he was paired ­in the backcourt with Frazier, who joined the team in 1967, that the Knicks began to climb in the standings. They would win 54 games in 1968-69, and 60 in 1969-70 en route to the NBA title.
'Dick was one of the leaders of that team,' said teammate Phil Jackson. 'I really thought he held a big piece of our success in the late '60s and early '70s.'
4 Dick Barnett. January 11, 1968.
New York Post
'He's got one of the best basketball minds of any player I've ever known,' said Eddie Donovan, the Knicks general manager who acquired Barnett from the Lakers. 'Everything he does is for a purpose.'
Monroe would join the team early in the 1971-72 season and eventually supplant Barnett in the starting backcourt. The Knicks would reach the NBA Finals in 1972, losing to the Lakers, before beating LA for the title in 1973 with Barnett in a supporting role. He played just five games during the 1973-74 season before being waived. He spent three seasons as an assistant on Red Holzman's staff.
In addition to teaching, Barnett authored some 20 books, and established a foundation, the Dr. Richard Barnett Center for Sports Education, Business and Technology, that provides scholarships and help with internship opportunities for sports management majors.
4 Walt 'Clyde' Frazier (l. to r.), Willis Reed, Bill Bradley and Dick Barnett appear on stage at The Hospital for Special Surgery 35th Tribute Dinner at the American Museum of Natural History on June 4, 2018
(Credit too long, see caption)
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'Dreams really do come true,' he told the MSG Network in 2020. 'Life is a continuum. Just because I achieved this goal doesn't mean I'm through. There are other goals.
'So what now, brother? There's always something else ahead.'