Former NBA star Matt Barnes has been an analyst for the Sacramento Kings on NBC Sports California since 2021 but reportedly lost the gig due to an incident at his sons’ high school basketball game.
On Feb. 2, Barnes’ twin sons, who play for Crespi High School, were playing a road game against Harvard-Westlake when one of the Barnes brothers was called for a technical foul.
Barnes, 43, yelled at officials, then went to the announcers’ table, where he put his hands on Jake Lancer, the Harvard-Westlake student broadcasting the game.
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Matt Barnes attends a game between New York Liberty and Las Vegas Aces July 6, 2022, at vivint.SmartHome Arena in Salt Lake City. (Melissa Majchrzak/NBAE via Getty Images)
Lancer told a freelance reporter that Barnes threatened to slap him, according to The Sacramento Bee.
That incident cost Barnes his analyst role, the paper reported, citing an NBC Sports California spokesperson.
“I’ve yelled at the refs my entire college career, my 15-year NBA career. I coach AAU in the summertime, I have high school boys and I have a 5-year-old coming down the pipeline. So, I’m going to be doing a lot of yelling at the refs,” Barnes said on the Feb. 13 edition of “The Dan LeBatard Show.”
“This particular incident — I will say my one mistake was putting my hand on [Lancer’s] shoulder. A lot of people want to say I grabbed this kid, or I did this. I literally put my hand on this kid’s shoulder because it was almost like I was talking to my son.
Oklahoma City Thunder forward Jeff Green, left, knocks the ball away from Phoenix Suns forward Matt Barnes in the first quarter during a game in Oklahoma City, Okla., Nov. 25, 2008. (REUTERS/Bill Waugh )
“He told me to sit my a– down. I was just like, ‘Why do you feel comfortable to be able to tell a grown man to sit his a– down?’ So, he and I had a little back and forth and, obviously, admitting my faults to even touch him was wrong of me. … But I just didn’t like the disrespect that came with the entitlement where they felt like they could say anything to me.”
Lancer gave another explanation of his version of the encounter.
“Last comment on the situation last night: I want to make it very clear that I never told him to ‘shut up’ or anything close to that, he came up to me,” he wrote on X. “All I wanted to do in the moment was get back to announcing the championship game.”
Matt Barnes addresses the media during 2020 NBA All-Star Weekend Feb. 15, 2020, at Wintrust Arena in Chicago. (Tyler Kaufman/NBAE via Getty Images)
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Barnes played 14 NBA seasons, winning a title with the Golden State Warriors in 2017.
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