Tennessee basketball coach Rick Barnes joined the Mike Keith Show Thursday afternoon to talk ball and much more with the start of the 2025-26 season just over a month away.
Barnes and Keith discussed an abundance of topics including Kevin Durant, Nate Ament, changes in basketball during the veteran coaches career and much more. Here’s some of what Barnes had to say on the Mike Keith Show.
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On the Bernard King and Ernie Grunfeld picture in the studio
“I remember those days. My wife was in school here for that year, and Bernard came back and Ernie’s been good. Those guys, they had good wins and stuff, but Bernard came back and actually talked to our team our first year here. Really good.
People don’t realize how much he lost. I mean, Hubie Brown always said that if he hadn’t have missed the time— I think he was the real first athlete to come back from the ACL. And remember, I think all told in games back then, he missed almost five years. And when he left, I still think when he left was one of the top 10 scorers. But Hubie Brown said just what you said. People have no idea how good a player he was. And if he hadn’t gotten hurt, it would have been one of the all-time greatest players.”
On who is the best basketball player he’s ever seen in person
“Kobe Bryant. I was at a summer league game and my coaches put me on the court and said, we need you to watch these two courts. And I looked over to my left and there was a kid playing that just mesmerized me. And I’m like, I’m never scene a guy (like that). I mean, I was shocked.
And my assistant coach came up and he said, what do you think about these two guys? I said, I don’t know about these two guys, but I know that guy. If you get him, we’ll win the national championship. He said, well, the problem is his dad might be looking for a job to go with him to college. (I said) That means you’re looking for a job.
But what he became, he was that. I mean, for the first time, they called him the Black Mamba. That’s how he played in high school. I’ve never seen a guy play that hard. But certainly watching LeBron and Kevin Durant, those guys were along with— it was how hard Kobe Bryant played as a young player. I mean, he was so intense and he carried over what he became as a professional.”
On if he knew how he was going to use Kevin Durant when he recruited him or if he learned when he got on campus
“No. From the very first time that we saw him, Kevin came along really a little bit right after the transition where everybody used to— you go back to the Spurs world championship when they had Tim Duncan, David Robinson, I think Robert Horry, that big front line. Right after that, it started moving to where we are sort of today.
And people back then asked the question a lot, what position, where do you see me? And every time I saw Kevin play, he could do everything. And really our comment to him was, we’re gonna let you be who you are. And we used him everywhere. He often would play inside. Sometimes he would play on the perimeter. We’d let him bring it up. And what he did, and that’s what we told his dad and mother, that, hey, we’re gonna let him be who he is. And I remember I had gotten a call from Fran Fraschilla. We had been in practice a couple of days, and he said to me, so what do you think about your team? Because we had lost, we had literally had four players coming back because we left three guys leave early for the NBA. And signed seven, I think seven players. The second or first best class who ever you wanted to look at in the country. And because of he and DJ Augustine and Damian James all being ranked in the top 20 players. And Fran asked me, he said, what do you think about your team? I said, I don’t know yet.
I don’t quite have a pulse on it yet. But I can tell you this, we’ve got the best player in the country. He said, you mean the best freshman? I said, no, we’ve got the best player. I said, there’s nobody in his class in college basketball, which he went on to become the first freshman to win every National Player of the Year honor.
And he played everywhere. The only problem was late in the year, he played almost 37 minutes a game. And that’s a lot for anybody. And we had the NCAA tournament, we go up against a Southern Cal team with Tim Floyd, terrific coach, and they had some older guys and they really put it on him in terms of just physicality. And I mean, Kevin had seen it all anyway, but he would have played 40 minutes. But he ended up averaging right almost 37 minutes a game as a freshman.”
On seeing Durant not just as a post player
“Well, I think sometimes, Mike, that coaches, we put guys in boxes. And I probably learned from Kevin that we’re not doing that. You got to let guys, what they do, you got to find a way to utilize it. And you’re always going to still try to help them expand their games and do what they need to do.
But you’ll be surprised. I’ll give you for instance this year, we’re really going to let Felix shoot the three. He’s worked hard at it. He’s got good touch and he’ll know when and when not to. But he’s a guy that, again, I think, had been placed in a box. And he’s starting to realize he can do so much more than he probably had been thought or challenged to do. And so sometimes as coaches, we just got to play, let it evolve and see, okay, maybe this guy can do some things. And oftentimes you do, but sometimes you realize that some of them need to be in a box.”
On Nate Ament comparisons to Kevin Durant, having the experience coaching a player like that
“Well, obviously I’ve seen it work and I did have a chance to work with some really good head coaches and I learned from each one of them and I thought the guys that I worked for, it was a real blessing. I watched them utilize guys in ways that, I mean, I watched Gary Williams at Ohio State— we were picked to be the last, we ended up making the NCAA Tournament when he got it done really as a 6-3, 6-4 post player, and at Alabama watching Wimp Sanderson. We had some terrific talent, but he would do different things. But he let guys play.
And when you started out at George Mason and even with Eddie Biedenbach and Joe Harrington, you got to figure out a way to compete. And so you can’t be afraid to try some things. And obviously sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. But the fact is today, I think players are more versatile. And, like I said, I don’t want anybody to think that we’re gonna put them in a box. We’re gonna give them a chance to show us what they can do.”
