How an 80-year-old basketball Hall of Famer thrives as a pickleball contender

Some people name-drop. With Rick Barry, it’s more like a name-deluge.

It takes only a few questions for the former NBA and ABA star to recount conversations with his fellow basketball Hall of Famers, life-changing advice from a golf icon, a bond with a group of tennis greats and a recent encounter with a Heisman Trophy winner.

But Barry’s tone reaches a special level of reverence and awe when he speaks about a star on her way up. Two years ago, he met Anna Leigh Waters.

You know, the teenage pickleball phenom.

“I told Anna Leigh, ‘You have done something that’s never, ever, ever going to happen again. There is no way that a kid, 15 years old, is going to become the best pickleball player in the world,’” Barry explained. “‘I just can’t see a 15-year-old ever accomplishing what you have accomplished.’”

Waters, now 17, recently won her 29th career Triple Crown in the Pro Pickleball Association Virginia Beach Cup. It’s mind-blowing for Barry, as he, at 80 years old, continues to embrace his new athletic universe.

The member of the NBA’s 75th Anniversary Team is a pickleball guy now, through and through.

Dismiss the sport at your own peril. To Barry and a rapidly growing U.S. fan base, this is kick-your-heinie serious.

“I’m out there for one reason and one reason only: I’m out there to win, OK?” said Barry, an eight-time NBA All-Star, four-time ABA All-Star and the MVP of the 1975 NBA Finals. “I can do the social thing afterward if you want to sit and socialize. But on the court, I really want to win.”

To no one’s surprise, Barry is now certifiably excellent. He advanced quickly in pickleball because of his hand-eye coordination, rangy 6-foot-7 frame and cutthroat competitive streak.

Do opponents recognize him? The older players do, Barry said, and they often want to take a photo.

“The younger people don’t know who the hell I am,” he added.

Barry ranks among the nation’s top age-group players and earned the Triple Crown at the U.S. Open in Naples, Fla., in April. He won the men’s 80-plus singles title, the men’s 80-plus doubles title with partner Fred Shuey and the mixed doubles 80-plus title with Susan Mathews.

This week, Barry is looking to add to his medal collection by competing in multiple events at the Huntsman Senior World Games in St. George, Utah. The 80-plus mixed doubles finals take place Friday, and the singles finals are set for Saturday.

“I love it,” he said. “It’s a great workout without killing yourself. Tennis, it’s too hard on your body — shoulders, elbows and knees. You’re covering so much more court.”

The basketball player known for his underhanded free throws now uses his deft touch and pure power on the pickleball court. Barry takes pride in his mental approach.

“In singles, you’re at such a disadvantage if you have a weak serve, because a good opponent is going to make you run and put you in a difficult situation for your next shot,” Barry said. “Whereas if you have a really good serve and a difficult serve to handle, not only can (opponents) make mistakes on it, but they’re not going to be able to dictate the game. And then, you’re going to be in a position where you can take and move them.

“We’re 70, 80 years old. With these guys, we’re (going to give) three hits, four hits maybe. It’s not going to be big, long rallies. So, I worked on my serve. My serve’s become very good.”

Ted Meyer, 75, served as Barry’s doubles partner at last year’s Huntsman Senior World Games. He recalled a tight game in which the opponent forced Barry to turn, make a mad dash and hit the ball off-balance on the run.

“Something a 30-year-old would do,” Meyer said. “And he was doing it in a 79-year-old body. He just didn’t want to lose the point. I think a lot of his instincts kick in when the pressure is on.”

Barry’s first love, of course, was basketball. During a 15-year professional career that began in 1965, Barry averaged 24.8 points, 6.7 rebounds and 4.9 assists between the NBA and ABA. He ranks fourth all-time in NBA free-throw percentage (90 percent), trailing only Stephen Curry (91), Steve Nash (90.43) and Mark Price (90.39).

After Barry/s final NBA season in 1980, he did what so many retirees do: He took up golf.

“I had to find something. I just love to compete,” he said. “But golf was getting frustrating.”

Barry worked his way to a 1-handicap, but so-called easy shots — like his free throws — didn’t seem to exist on the golf course.

“I asked Jack Nicklaus, ‘Jack, I’m telling everybody I don’t think you can master golf. Am I right or wrong?’” Barry recalled. “He said, ‘You’re 100 percent right.’

“So after I heard it from Jack Nicklaus, I said, ‘OK, why am I trying to kill myself?’ Because the better you get, the more frustrated you get. I said, ‘I gotta find something else.’”

Next up was a variation of golf that spared him the angst of 18 holes. He trained with a hard-hitting guru named Brad Peterson and captured four world Long Drive golf championships in different age groups between 2007 and 2013. Barry would have happily stuck with that sport, but organizers eliminated the older age-group categories.

In 2019, his wife, Lynn, suggested he try pickleball.

“I said, ‘What the hell is pickleball?’” Barry recalled. “I went out, tried it a little bit, and decided, yeah, this could be fun.”

Pickleball, played with a perforated plastic ball, has been described as a cross between tennis, badminton and ping pong. It’s played both indoors and outdoors on a court about the size of a badminton court and with a slightly lower net.

Once Barry picked up the sport, he improved quickly. He spends his winters at Lakewood Ranch near Sarasota, Fla., where it’s about a two-hour drive north to The Villages, considered a pickleball haven. The retirement community features about 300 courts and lots of worthy age-group competition.

“They have a lot of great older players,” Barry said of The Villages. “I would get up at 6 in the morning, drive there and play pickleball all day.”

This is where he honed his craft — and quickly. Dick Scott, another nationally renowned senior player, helped mentor Barry upon his arrival at The Villages. The first time they played together, they won handily against inferior competition.

The second time they played together, they were the inferior competition.

“Rick really enjoyed that,” Scott said, “because it let him know what he needed to work on.”

Scott knew Barry had the makings of a dynamic player when the two then-70-somethings took on a team featuring players aged 38 and 60. Scott was a proven player, so the younger opponents decided to test the newbie.

“They attacked Rick and just went after him on every shot,” Scott said. “By the time you looked up, we were ahead 8-0, and it was all because of his length. He’s 6-7, very good reflexes. They’d try to dink to his backhand but with his wing span, he could just hit back out of the air — and that took away their reaction time.”

Warriors great Rick Barry is now the kind of pickleball player you don’t want to mess with. pic.twitter.com/YXNigCJZF4

— Daniel Brown (@BrownieAthletic) October 16, 2024

Barry is positively evangelical about this venture. If he’s not playing pickleball, he’s trying to get others to play it. Pickleball has been named the fastest-growing sport in America for three years running by the Sports & Fitness Industry Association (SFIA), which tracks year-over-year rates of participation.

“I’m telling you, this thing is going to be so incredible,” Barry said. “It’s a phenomenon, and it’s not going away anytime soon.”

He’s hardly alone in spreading the word. SFIA found a 223.5 percent jump in U.S. pickleball players, with more than 13.6 million across the country picking up a paddle in 2023.

He also managed to persuade other NBA Hall of Famers.

“I got Chris Mullin to finally start playing, and his wife (Liz) is fanatical about it,” Barry said. “I talked to all the athletes about trying to get outside. I’ve been trying to get Hakeem Olajuwon to start.”

Olajuwon, 61, is 7-foot tall, was twice named the NBA Defensive Player of the Year and had some of the best footwork ever by a big man in the league. Barry believes Olajuwon would be good at pickleball.

Barry played earlier this year in the PickleBowl celebrity pro-am hosted by former Florida Gators quarterback Danny Wuerffel, who won the Heisman Trophy and a college football national championship in 1996. Wuerffel is so enthusiastic about the new sport that he was drafted this spring by the Denver Iconics of the National Pickleball League (NPL).

Barry also loves seeing his tennis pals get into the action. Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf defeated John McEnroe and Maria Sharapova to win a $1 million purse in Pickleball Slam 2, which was played in February and broadcast on ESPN.

Barry got to know McEnroe during his days as a tennis broadcaster. He met Agassi as an upstart training under Nick Bollettieri. Agassi was an early adopter when it came to pickleball. McEnroe, to borrow his iconic line, could not be serious about the oft-ridiculed sport.

“I think Agassi has the right idea about it. He’s not putting (pickleball) down at all,” Barry said. “But with John, it’s like, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.’ … I got on John’s ass. I said, ‘John, this is not going anywhere.’”

As for Barry, he doesn’t appear to be fading any time soon. He’s powered by a relentless — and ageless — desire to defeat whoever is on the other side of the net.

(Top photo of Rick Barry: Shawn Bennett / Golden State Warriors)