Matt Barnes: Allen Iverson would drop $40K at strip clubs, also Mo Cheeks sucks

All that and more: http://www.si.com/nba/2015/04/10/matt-b ... chris-paul

One early lesson came from Iverson, his teammate for half a season in Philadelphia. “Allen was the first guy that showed me how NBA players spend money in strip clubs,” Barnes says. “That guy went. HARD. He’d throw so much money, and this was when I was first in the league, that I used to take my foot and scoop the s--- under my chair and either re-throw it or put some in my pocket. He’d throw $30,000, $40,000 every time we went. I’m like, ‘You realize what I can do with this money?’”

Philly is also where Barnes learned that it’s a star’s league. At the time, he was the 12th man, clinging to a job. As Barnes tells it, he was working with shooting coach Buzz Braman after practice, hoping to smooth out a hitch in his shot, when Sixers head coach Mo Cheeks walked by. “I don’t see why you’re working on your shot,” Cheeks said. “You’re not going to get to shoot here.” Barnes fumed, but said nothing.

A week later, in practice, things came to a head. “I came down on a 3-on-1 and hit pull-up 15-footer off the glass and [Cheeks] stopped practice,” says Barnes. “He yells, ‘What are you doing? What are you shooting the ball for? You know that’s not your job, you gotta pass the ball!’”

Barnes was shocked “What? But I made the shot.”

Said Cheeks: “That’s why you don’t play.’”

And then, Barnes says, he lost it. “I was going to chase him down and whoop his ass, so I took off after him and AI grabbed me and I got through him and Chris [Webber] grabbed me and bearhugged me and I said to Mo, ‘You’re lucky.’”

Says Barnes now: “I hated Mo Cheeks. He was a dick.”

Gee, not difficult to see why AI found himself in financial difficulties a little while back.

“You’re not going to intimidate them and you’re not going to take cheap shots, stuff that’s not basketball.”

That right there demonstrates why he's a good teammate, but it does come off a little hypocritical, since he's not above using intimidation tactics or taking cheap shots himself. "It's OK if I do it, but it's not OK if it happens to me or my teammates." But yeah, you can certainly see why players hate playing against him, but loving playing alongside him.

As for Mo Cheeks...well, you get that head coaches have to be tough, and are going to be hard on young players. Reading that though, I can't help thinking that he's far better suited to being an assistant coach, if anything.