Ex-NBA player Matt Barnes reportedly loses job as broadcaster due to high school incident

We are living in the era of accountability, as everyone has a camera nowadays and evidence of misbehavior will always come back and haunt you. Matt Barnes was used to handle himself as he pleased as a basketball star, as he was well known for losing his temper. However, yelling in the NBA courts is a common practice, but now that he’s a retired athlete he must control himself.

A recent incident at his son’s high school basketball match has cost him his job as an analyst for the Sacramento Kings on NBC Sports California, a job he’s had since 2021. The former broadcaster has always been praised for his “authenticity,” but this time it went too far as it cost him his gig.

Back on February 2, one of Matt’s twin sons was playing for Crespi High School in a road contest against Harvard-Westlake. According to sources, one of the Barnes brothers was called for a technical foul and his father lost it.

Ex-NBA player Matt Barnes loses TV analyst gig following incident with high school broadcaster: report https://t.co/YCkW5yxHVU

— Fox News Sports (@FoxNewsSports_) February 23, 2024

The 43-year-old went over to the announcer’s table and yelled at the referees. Reports say the he followed by putting his hands on Jake Lancer, who is the Harvard-Westlake student broadcasting the contest. The young boy told a freelance reporter that the former athlete threatened to slap him, as told by The Sacramento Bee.

The media outlet, who cited an NBC Sports California spokesperson, reported that this incident cost Barnes his role as an analyst. “I’ve yelled at the refs my entire college career, my 15-year NBA career. I coach AAU in the summertime, I have high school boys and I have a 5-year-old coming down the pipeline. So, I’m going to be doing a lot of yelling at the refs,” Matt tried to excuse himself.

“This particular incident — I will say my one mistake was putting my hand on [Lancer’s] shoulder. A lot of people want to say I grabbed this kid, or I did this. I literally put my hand on this kid’s shoulder because it was almost like I was talking to my son,” he recalled.

The former athlete then realized he should’ve never touched the student. “He told me to sit my a– down. I was just like, ‘Why do you feel comfortable to be able to tell a grown man to sit his a– down?’ So, he and I had a little back and forth and, obviously, admitting my faults to even touch him was wrong of me,” Barnes said.

The alleged victim gave his own version of the encounter and said he didn’t like Barnes’ self-entitlement

Lancer, the young student who has announcing the match, gave a different explanation of the incident, adding another point of view of the messy encounter. The teenager believes he was never disrespectful to Barnes, and just wanted to do his job.

“Last comment on the situation last night: I want to make it very clear that I never told him to ‘shut up’ or anything close to that, he came up to me,” he recalled about the situation. “All I wanted to do in the moment was get back to announcing the championship game.”

The student admitted that he did not appreciate the Matt’s sense of entitlement to think he could come over and yell at the officials. “But I just didn’t like the disrespect that came with the entitlement where they felt like they could say anything to me,” he said.

Barnes is an NBA champion who conquered the title with the Golden State Warriors in 2017 and competed in 14 NBA seasons before his retirement seven years ago.