All in the Family

Their family can beat your family, five on five.

The Barrys of the Bay Area may have had problems off the court, such as when Mom and Dad split up 19 years ago, but as far as basketball goes, there has never been a family like theirs.

Their maternal grandfather was a college and pro coach. Dad is in the Hall of Fame. The oldest boy, Scooter, was on Kansas’ 1988 NCAA championship team and plays in Europe. No. 2 son Jon was a first-round NBA pick, as was the next son, Brent. Drew, the youngest boy, was a second-round pick.

Jon and Brent now play for the Lakers and Clippers, respectively, and isn’t that heartwarming?

“He stayed with me the last four days,” Brent was saying as the Clippers opened camp. “We got a chance to spend some time together. I helped him move into his place.

“I didn’t know I could hate the Lakers any more, but I guess I can now.”

Yes, this is a family that knows something about competition. Everyone’s kids fight with each other, but with the Barrys, it was more like a lifestyle.

Rick, the dad, was known for the fires that raged within him. Even though his kids were toddlers when he moved out, they started in on each other as soon as they were big enough to get a basketball up to the rim, Scooter and Brent against Jon and Drew, with Pam, the mom, bandaging the wounded, restoring the peace and interjecting the perspective.

“Well,” the gentle Pam, now remarried, says from her home in the Bay Area, “there was a degree of competitiveness and then there was a degree that really crossed the line a little.

“And even though within them, they needed to prove themselves to each other, it was important for me to be always reminding them it was more important for them to be really good people and the type of person that they were, not that they were athletes and competitive on the court.

“I think there’s something about beating the opposition, but there’s something about beating your brother that’s better. They would stand up for one another, but I think it gave them great joy to beat each other.”

Rick, who once conceded, “I was a jerk on the court,” could be edgy enough off it. His sons have Type-A personalities too, but they’re personable, quick to laugh and popular with teammates.

It was a weird and wonderful childhood, starting with privileges they could barely appreciate, going to Dad’s practices, hanging around with NBA stars--”When it’s happening,” Jon says, “you think that everyone does it”--then watching real life arrive with a vengeance.

“We all did some ball boy work,” Brent says. “We all went to practice, tried to get out of school whenever we could . . .

“We were so young, Drew and I just kinda messed around. Scooter and Jon spent a lot of time being ball boys, going on the road sometimes. Obviously, they had some of the major duties. I just got to bring them Gatorade. Those guys got to sweep the floor.

“I remember Julius Erving coming over to the house for dinner when he would come to town. I remember Jamaal Wilkes. Certainly Clifford Ray. I considered him to be my best friend when I was little. I gave him my blanket when I had to part with it--which he’s still got to this day.”

Suddenly, the privileges ran out. Rick had been a 21-year-old All-American at the University of Miami when he married Pam, the daughter of his coach, but their breakup was bitter, leaving the kids in a sad limbo.

“I’m sure there were some people that tend to think that we had to make 100 free throws before we came in and had dinner; that just wasn’t the case,” Brent says.

“By the time each of us started to pick up and play basketball, we were all basically living with my mom and had to find ways on our own to go out and find better players. We’d take trips down to Oakland and play down in the city, where we knew we’d find better competition to try and push ourselves. . . .

“My father just wasn’t around. By the time my parents had split up, we were 6, 7, 8 years old. When you turn 10, 11, 12, those are kind of your formative years where you can do a lot of bonding, you can do a lot of listening and learning. That was my mom’s job. She had to take the role of both parents. She did a great job.”

Scooter was 12 when Rick left. With Pam working, he was the one who made sure everyone did their chores. As a basketball player, he had the same kind of game.

“He was the head of the family,” Pam says. “When he was off to college, letters home were, ‘Is Jon taking out the garbage? Is Brent mowing the lawn?’ His focus was on a lot of the responsibilities he left behind, that everybody was doing their job. So it was nice.”

Says Brent: “Scooter’s pretty much a caretaker, a great guy, a good friend to have. He’s pretty reserved. He didn’t play much at Kansas but has gotten better over the years. He’s been able to avoid a real job by playing overseas the last few years and he’s enjoying doing that.”

Nonetheless, Scooter almost made it to the NBA. He was in Bill Fitch’s first Clipper camp and Fitch says he was tempted to keep him.

After Scooter, 31, comes Jon, 28. Pam calls him “Mr. Determination,” an all-out, floor-burning player still looking for his niche as he joins his fourth team in six NBA seasons.

“Jon was a tremendous high school player,” Brent says. “Jon’s always been a hard-nosed, hustle-type player and I think that’s what Del Harris still sees in him and that’s what he’s going to give them this year, a guy who comes off the bench and just scraps real hard and plays tough.”

Brent, 25, is a familiar figure in Los Angeles, although his career has yet to catch up to his celebrity. A rookie sensation with a slam-dunk title, he saw his playing time drop 25% last season in a standoff with Fitch, who wanted better defense and fewer turnovers.

Now, with the departure of Malik Sealy, Brent is finally the starter as well the centerpiece of the Clippers’ marketing, so this is the season he and they have been waiting for.

“He’s like an entertainer, and that’s kind of the way he is off the floor,” Jon says. “He’s into magic. He was screwing around this summer and he did a movie with a bunch of his friends.

“He’s always been an entertainer and he’s always wanted to be the center of attention and that’s the way he plays too. He throws passes that no one ever sees. He does crazy stuff on the floor. He’s out there entertaining.”

Says Brent: “I think I stole a little bit from all of ‘em. I think I’ve got Scooter’s personality, a little bit of Jon’s grit, not as much maybe as I need. And I think I see the floor much like my brother Drew, who’s a tremendous passer. I think athletically, that’s where it separates between me and my brothers, I just have a little more ability that way.”

Drew, 24, was a second-round pick of the Seattle SuperSonics last season, was cut, played in the CBA and was invited to camp by the Hawks this fall before being cut again.

“Drew’s a really good kid, really sharp,” Brent says. “He’s a tremendous playmaker, he makes guys around him so much better and really sees the floor well.”

Says Jon: “Drew’s a little more like Scooter, a little more reserved. He needs to get a little fire in him to be able to make the NBA. He plays a little tentative; he’s a little soft.”

Despite the general urge to lump them together as “Rick’s kids,” the boys are different, even if Jon, Brent and Drew are thin, slashing players with great court sense, like you know who.

“That’s what people look for,” Brent says. “They look for some sort of similarity, some way to make sure there’s some type of tie-in with the genetics.

“Obviously, you can find something in everybody’s game that relates to someone else and people certainly look for that. But I don’t think any of us ever patterned our game after him. He was obviously one of the greatest forwards ever to play the game and to come close to what he did athletically on the floor would be tremendous.”

The boys have had to endure numerous “Rick’s kids” interviews, in which they point out they were really raised more by their mother. Jon and Brent say they have relationships with their father, they speak perhaps every month by phone and Rick comes to occasional games.

Reunions can be awkward, however, as when the brothers met for the first time as pros, in a Warrior-Clipper game in Oakland, with Pam and Rick sitting in the stands, separately.

Suggesting the subject is still tender, Brent says, “I hate this, when reporters keep rehashing the same stuff. It gets really boring and really tiresome.”

Happily, they have their own careers--Brent is making $1.1 million, Jon $272,500, Scooter is in six figures--and their own lives. Brent just got engaged. Jon and his wife are expecting their first child.

“He’s in Santa Monica and I’m down in the South Bay,” Brent says. “It’s great. His wife’s pregnant. It’s going to be a great time because sometime in April, she’s going to have their son or daughter.

“I’m hopefully going to be in town and that’s just going to be a magical thing.”

Just as long as the guys don’t get together and go out in the driveway for a pickup game.