It didn’t take long for Matt Barnes to have his welcome-to-the-NBA moment.
The current Los Angeles Clippers forward spent a brief stint with the Philadelphia 76ers during the 2005-06 season, catching Allen Iverson in the final year of his first tenure with Philly.
In an interview with Sports Illustrated’s Chris Ballard, Barnes revealed a pretty amazing story about how the All-Star point guard taught him a valuable lesson. With an emphasis on the “valuable.”
“Allen was the first guy that showed me how NBA players spend money in strip clubs,” Barnes told Ballard, via SI.com. “That guy went. HARD. He’d throw so much money, and this was when I was first in the league, that I used to take my foot and scoop the s— under my chair and either re-throw it or put some in my pocket. He’d throw $30,000, $40,000 every time we went. I’m like, ‘You realize what I can do with this money?'”
Barnes is right. You can do quite a lot of things with $40,000, like buy a very decent car or invest the cash in some nice mutual funds. But something tells us those options weren’t really on Iverson’s mind at the time.
Barnes’ full interview with Ballard is worth a read, as the 35-year-old veteran also tells of the time coach Maurice Cheeks yelled at him after making a shot and admits he uses negative Twitter posts about him as motivation.
Thumbnail photo via Eric Hartline/USA TODAY Sports Images
