Matt Barnes, the former NBA champion, recently sat down with Joy Taylor for her “Two Personal Show” to give an interview on how life has been for him since retirement and speak on some controversial and personal issues.
Among the several things they spoke about, one of them was family. Barnes made a shocking confession about himself while talking about his family.
“I’ve been someone who’s been comfortable in chaos my whole life… I’ll sabotage. You know, it’s funny. I’ve subconsciously sabotaged, like ‘this is too good. She’s too good,’… It’s just like that’s so toxic. But at the same time, if we’re going back to the root cause of that, that’s, you know, that’s trauma.”
“We’ve all had some sort of trauma. You know, some people grew up with two parents, and then it was good, but they faced some trauma. I grew up with two parents who constantly fought, and my mom was trying to leave the whole time, and when she finally was ready to leave, she died from cancer.”
“So, it’s just like a lot, people have their story and their journey. And I think if we don’t address the PTSD and the childhood trauma and the teenage trauma and just the daily, I mean, this world is f**kin crazy. Even if you had a perfect childhood, growing up in this world, you’re going to have some issues.”
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He then shouts out to Kevin Love, DeMar DeRozan, and Paul George for publicly addressing their mental health issues at a time when they could have been pressured not to do that due to the amount of money they were making.
As athletes, he believed that they have the responsibility to use their platform to address their mental health issues even at the highest level of their sport.
“And I think that athletes are so inspirational and motivational, and we’re such leaders that when we open that door, it becomes the norm. And I really credit those guys. You know, four or five years ago, talking about mental health, because when we grew up, you were just (deemed) crazy, that motherf****’s crazy.”
“Especially in the black community, it’s a sign of weakness. Like, I mean, ‘top f**king crying, toughen up.’ All the stuff that they said would make us men. Like, now that we’re men, it comes back and it’s biting us in the ass because we swept it under the rug, or we avoided it, or we compartmentalized it.”
“I didn’t cry when my mom died. I didn’t cry when I got divorced. I didn’t cry when my children were born. I didn’t cry when I got married. I didn’t cry. But did you feel I felt like I just wish that there was a way for me to kind of and just let it all because I know a good cry is all I f**king need.”
“But I haven’t been able to cry. And I think it’s because I’ve had to be the soldier and the rock for so long that it’s just like it’s in there, but I don’t know how to tap into it.”
Barnes lost his mother in 2007 and got a divorce from Laura Govan in 2016. And that is only a few of the many traumatic incidents he has been through in his life.
Matt Barnes is a former NBA champion who played for 14 seasons in the NBA with nine different teams. He eventually won his NBA championship with the Warriors in 2017 and averaged 8.2 points, 1.8 assists, and 4.6 rebounds per game for his career.
It is a very positive sign to see NBA players also talking about their mental health, as it shows the world is becoming more sensitive to each other’s problems.
