Rick Barnes goes down memory lane during appearance on The Mike Keith Show

Tennessee Basketball coach Rick Barnes was the guest for the first hour of The Mike Keith Show on Thursday afternoon, going down memory lane over his nearly 40 years as a Division I basketball coach:

The Ernie and Bernie era of Tennessee Basketball 

“I remember those days. My wife was in school here for that year. Bernard came back. And Ernie has been good. Those guys, they had good wins and stuff. But Bernard came back and actually talked to our team our first year here. Really good.”

If Bernard King is the best basketball player in the history of the SEC 

“People don’t realize how much he lost (time to injury in his career). I mean, Hubie Brown always said that if he hadn’t have missed the time, I think he was the real first athlete to come back from the ACL. And remember, I think all told in games back then, he missed almost five years. And when he left, I still think when he left was one of the top-10 scorers (in the NBA). But Hubie Brown said just what you said. People have no idea how good a player he was. And if he hadn’t gotten hurt, it would have been one of the all-time greatest players.”

The best basketball player he has ever seen in person

“Kobe Bryant. I was at a summer league game and my coaches put me on the court and said we need you to watch these two courts. And I looked over to my left and there was a kid playing that just mesmerized me. And I’m like, I’m never seen a guy (like this). I mean, I was shocked. And my assistant coach came up and he said, what do you think about these two guys? I said, I don’t know about these two guys, but I know that guy (Kobe Bryant), if you get him, we’ll win the national championship. He said, well, the problem is his dad might be looking for a job to go with him to college. I said (to my assistant coach) that means you’re looking for a job. 

“But what he became, he was that. I mean, from the first time they called him the Black Mamba, that’s how he played in high school. I’ve never seen a guy play that hard. But certainly watching LeBron and Kevin Durant, those guys … it was how hard Kobe Bryant played as a young player. I mean, he was so intense. And it carried over what he became as a professional.”

If he thinks Kobe Bryant’s time in Europe as a kid played a part in how he played the game

“I think that was a big key. I think when you grow up around a professional organization, like his dad playing professionally, and his dad was a good player, too. And I think being over there, (Kobe) probably messed around with those guys before and after practice. But he was so mature. And again, the level of his intensity was just phenomenal. And then he goes on to do what he does. I mean, it’s amazing. 

“But I have great respect for guys like Kevin and LeBron, who, I mean, they’ve defied the age limit. And I think Kevin will play another five years. LeBron, I think, is 41 right now. But, I mean, you can always argue Michael Jordan, what he did. But I’m talking from the very first time I saw him as a high school player, Kobe was just a cut above. 

“Now LeBron was gigantic. He was a freak when you looked at how he moved and ran. And you know what surprised me about him, because he was always very, very explosive, and most of those guys that last a long time, they play close to the ground. But LeBron was always an explosive guy, playing up above the rim. And for him to maintain and do what he’s done, it has really been remarkable to see.” 

If they knew how they were going to use Kevin Durant at Texas during the recruiting process

“No, from the very first time that we saw him, Kevin came along really a little bit right after the transition where everybody used to, you go back to the Spurs world championship when they had Tim Duncan, David Robinson, I think Robert Horry, that big front line. Right after that, it started moving to where we are sort of today. And people back then asked the question a lot — what position, where do you see me? And every time I saw Kevin play, he could do everything. And really our comment to him was, we’re going to let you be who you are. And we used him everywhere. He often would play inside. Sometimes he would play on the perimeter. We’d let him bring it up. And what he did, and that’s what we told his dad and mother, that, hey, we’re going to let him be who he is. 

“And I remember I had gotten a call from Fran Fraschilla. We had been in practice a couple of days, and he said to me, so what do you think about your team? Because we had lost, we had literally had four players coming back because we left three guys leave early for the NBA. And signed seven, I think, seven players. Second or first best class, whoever you wanted to look at in the country, because of (Kevin Durant) and DJ Augustine and Damian James all being ranked in the top-20 players. And Fran asked me, he said, what do you think about your team? I said, I don’t know yet. I don’t quite have a pulse on it yet. But I can tell you this, we’ve got the best player in the country. He said, you mean best freshman? I said, no, we’ve got the best player. I said there’s nobody in his class in college basketball, which he went on to become the first freshman to win every national player of the year honor. 

“And he played everywhere. The only problem was late in the year, he played almost 37 minutes a game, and that’s a lot for anybody. And we had the NCAA Tournament, we go up against a Southern Cal team with Tim Floyd, terrific coach, and they had some older guys and they really put it on him in terms of just physicality. And Kevin had seen it all anyway. But he would have played 40 minutes, but he ended up averaging right almost 37 minutes, I think it was right at 37 minutes a game of the freshman.”

At one point in his career he learned to let players play to their strengths on the court, regardless of size or position

“Well, I think sometimes that coaches, we put guys in boxes, and I probably learned from Kevin that we’re not doing that. You got to let guys, what they do, you got to find a way to utilize it. And you’re always going to still try to help them expand their games and do what they need to do. But you’ll be surprised. 

“I’ll give you a for instance this year, we’re really going to let Felix shoot the three. He’s worked hard at it. He’s got good touch and he’ll know when and when not to. But he’s a guy that, again, I think, had been placed in a box. And he’s starting to realize he can do so much more than he probably had been thought or challenged to do. And sometimes as coaches we just got to play, let it evolve and see, okay, maybe this guy can do some things. And oftentimes you do, but sometimes you realize that some of them need to be in a box.”

How that is similar for Tennessee freshman Nate Ament

“Well, obviously I’ve seen it work. And I did have a chance to work with some really good head coaches, and I learned from each one of them and I thought the guys that I worked for, it was a real blessing. I watched them utilize guys in ways that, I mean, I watched Gary Williams at Ohio State, we were picked to be the last, we ended up making the NCAA Tournament when he got it done really as a 6-3, 6-4 post player. And at Alabama, watching Wimp Sanderson, we had some terrific talent, but he would do different things, but he let guys play. And when you started out at George Mason, and even Davidson with Eddie Biedenbach and Joe Harrington, you just got to figure out a way to compete. And so you can’t be afraid to try some things. And obviously sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. But the fact is today, I think players are more versatile. And like I said, I don’t want anybody to think that we’re going to put them in a box. We’re going to give them a chance to show us what they can do.” 

If it makes it more fun to coach a more versatile game of basketball compared to how the game was played years ago

“It’s fun. And I think the game has changed, obviously. I mean, when I played, we did everything within 15 feet. Which, I think even today, some days we need to still be inside of 15 feet because we’re going to play against some teams that come in here and they’re going to be back in the lane so far and all they want us to do is shoot the ball early. And you’ve been around it a long time. I mean, some nights it’s not going in. So what’s going to be your alternative plan? 

“Two guys that I’ve learned a great deal from, Dean Smith and Bob Knight. Because when I broke into the coaching business and was getting started, those guys were really at the prime and they kept coaching for a long time, but they were dominating college basketball and spent a lot of time studying both of them. And then at the end, when Coach Knight stepped away from it, he called me one night — and we had played against each other a lot — he called me one night and said, I want you to come out here to Lubbock and I’m going to teach you how to coach offense. And I went out, spent a night and a day with him and you know what? So much of what we still do today has come from, some of it from what I did with Coach Williams and some of it that, my best brand in the business has always been Bob McKillop. We started together at Davidson College. 

“And Bob, to me, is one of the greatest coaches ever, in terms of he really defines what I think coaching is about in every aspect. But his mind, his attention to detail, just spending a year with him when I was a kid, he would go out recruiting and I couldn’t leave campus. And we ran five miles every day … I drove him to the airport, one. I always drove him to the airport and I normally picked him up/ And from the time he got in the car, I would pepper him. So what did you do? I want to know how do you rent a car? How? How do you do this? How do you do that? I had never done any of that. And so actually one year he had left and gone back to New York, Long Island. And he had told me so many times, you know, you leave the Newark Airport or the LaGuardia, or drive up 95, get on the Belt Parkway, Verrazano Bridge. 

“And I said, I’m gonna do that. And we didn’t have the GPS. And from our conversation, and there was a Bagel Nosh up there where he was, and I drove the whole way, and I told him when I got to the Bagel Nosh, I’d call him. And I got to the Bagel Nosh, I said, I’m here. And I did it just from, through that one year, and he was great at it. And we stayed in close contact ever since. And he’s had a big impact on me, obviously. But having a chance as an assistant coach to coach, in the Big 10, SEC, even the Colonial, I look back back, it was interesting. 

“Monday at our golf tournament, a guy came up and told me he was a basketball player at UNC Wilmington. This was in 1982. And I said you played there? Because I was coaching at Mason from ’80 to ’85. He said, yes. I said, do you remember a game playing George Mason? And right in the middle of my sentence, he stopped me. He said, I remember that game. They missed nine … we were down 16 points and they missed nine straight one-on-ones and we came back and won the game. And I said, do you remember? He said, oh, I do remember. Because I remember the day after. 

“But there’s so many things that through your lifetime in basketball you see happen. And things like our first year here, we’re playing at North Carolina and we’re not doing very well, you just feel like they’re getting ready to get on a run. And during the timeout, I just put in a triangle-and-two during the timeout. And we go out there and I think three or four straight possessions, they didn’t score. And Chris Ogden looked at me and he said, coach, we have no idea what we’re doing. I said, well, (if) we don’t, they don’t. And with whatever kind of team you have, sometimes you’re going to do some things just to try to give yourself a chance to win.”