The New York Knicks are in what looks like a serious Playoff run. They've had a few. But only 2 have resulted in an NBA Championship: 1970 and 1973.
There is now one fewer surviving member of those teams.
Richard Barnett (no middle name) was born on October 2, 1936 in Gary, Indiana, outside Chicago. A guard on the Tennessee State University basketball team at the same time that Wilma Rudolph was leading their "Tigerbelles" women's track team, he was then known as "Dick the Skull." He won a championship with the Cleveland Pipers in the short-lived American Basketball League in 1962. They were the 1st sports team owned by George Steinbrenner, then just 31 years old.
When the ABL folded a few months later, he joined the Los Angeles Lakers, and helped them reach the NBA Finals in 1963 and 1965. His fallaway jump shot led Laker announcer Chick Hearn to nickname him "Fall Back Baby Barnett." The nickname followed him to the Knicks, where he became an All-Star in 1968, and an NBA Champion in 1970 and 1973.
He retired after the 1973 title, got a Ph.D. in education from Fordham University in The Bronx, and taught sports management at St. John's University in Queens until retiring in 2007. Due to his doctorate, he was nearly always referred to as "Dr. Dick."
The Knicks retired his Number 12 on March 12, 1990. He is a member of the College Basketball and Tennessee Sports Halls of Fame, along with his Tennessee State coach, John McLendon. He was finally elected to the main Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts last year.
He still attended Knicks home games until age caught up with him, and he was moved to a senior assisted-living facility in Largo, Florida, on the St. Petersburg side of Tampa Bay. He died yesterday, April 27, 2025, at the age of 88.
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