Former NBA player Matt Barnes starred at Del Campo High School, but it wasn’t all roses and sunshine for him during his time there. Barnes appeared on The Art of Ward podcast, where he shared his and his sister’s experience with racism at Del Campo in 1998.
“She was a sophomore my senior year, and there was just a little kid that was either her grade or the grade above her that just kept harassing her,” Barnes said. “And I guess one day… he was harassing her already, but then my sister got into it with his homegirl. And they were about to fight, and then the dude pushed her and called her a n****r and spit on her.
“She caught me right then, and she was crying to me with her homegirls,” Barnes continued. “And then the dude just happened to be walking by. So we tangled up a little bit. I beat the s*** out of him, and we get taken to the principal’s office. And my sister literally still has kind of some of the spit in her hair, and I get called in there.
“And to me, this is what blew me away, but also completely turned me off of my high school,” Barnes added. “I was breaking all Dusty Baker’s records in football and basketball and everything. I was probably the biggest athlete to come out of that school. One time, I needed the school, they didn’t believe me. Like, ‘Nah, this kid dad a lawyer. He wasn’t raised this way.”
Barnes couldn’t believe the authorities didn’t have his back. He pointed out that he was going to UCLA in a few months and wouldn’t do something as reckless as beating up a fellow student for no reason whatsoever.
“I ended up getting suspended for a whole week,” Barnes stated. “And during the suspension, they just came in and vandalized the school, like burned down a bathroom, swastikas everywhere, a mannequin hanging from the big Oak tree with my football jersey on it, ‘Die, n****r.’ To this day, if you go back there, if you look in certain areas, you could see swastikas carved into the cement… It was f***ed up.
“Made national attention,” Barnes continued. “The NAACP came down there, but they had actually put a hit out on me. And a story that’s going to flip your lid is my cousin, who is, I think, like Italian and Indian from my mom’s side, ended up being one of the biggest skinheads out there. And he had went to prison for killing somebody. So he called my mom and said like, ‘Hey, there’s a green light on Matthew’s head.’
“It had got back to the prison,” Barnes added. “So we actually had to move, and the NAACP was like 24-hour security for us.”
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That is horrific. Keep in mind, we’re talking about 1998 here. This isn’t something that happened 60-70 years ago. The people who did this to Barnes are very likely part of society today, which is a scary thought. He can thank his lucky stars that he is even alive today.
Barnes would graduate from Del Campo in 1998 and head to UCLA. He played four seasons for the Bruins, after which the Memphis Grizzlies selected him with the 46th pick in the 2002 NBA Draft. The Grizzlies would trade him on draft night to the Cleveland Cavaliers, who’d assign him to what was then called the NBA D-League.
Barnes would eventually get to play in the NBA with the Los Angeles Clippers in 2004, and he’d hang around for quite some time. The 46-year-old would spend 14 seasons in the NBA, averaging 8.2 points, 4.6 rebounds, 1.8 assists, 0.8 steals, and 0.5 blocks per game for his career.
