Listen Now: The Sage Steele Show | Matt Barnes
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Did you know at that time when you were a little kid that you were poor and this wasn't what you wanted to... No, I didn't know until we moved to Sacramento. I was in San Jose from like birth through about eight years old and I was in a very poor neighborhood and went to a pretty bad school. So I didn't know because I didn't see nothing else.

We moved to Sacramento. We got a little better neighborhood. But first day I went to third grade, second grade, they took me back to the kindergarten class. And I'm like Billy Madison in here, big as shit. All these other kids are tiny. The rest of my class is playing outside and I'm writing my letters on like a little chalkboard. I'm like...

When I got older, I was like, "Oh, so I didn't really learn too much at that other school." And then now I'm with them. And again, although my parents were functioning drug addicts, they always put me in predominantly white schools because I guess they wanted at the time to have me to have a chance and be able to be who I was going to be. So I hated that though, because I never got to go to school with the kids I played basketball with or the kids in my neighborhood. It was always the school that was 98 or 99% white.

Although I'm half Italian and half black, like I was dark, so I was never white enough and I was never black enough. So, I mean, I fought my way to respect and friendship and opportunities to play sports. So, yeah.

It was tough, but again, as I started making friends, I realized the first time I ate at a dinner table was with one of my white friends' family. First time I ever went on vacation was with one of my white friends' family. What do you mean? You didn't have a table? We did. It was tiny. We all couldn't sit at it, but my dad was in the streets and my mom was cooking. We kind of ate as dinner was served and we would eat it. And that's not to say all the time we wouldn't. We never sat down at a dinner table together where there was times we'd all eat dinner at the same time, but for the most part—

sitting down, someone saying grace and all the food being in the center of the table. And you kind of like that's the stuff you see on TV. Like I never had that until I was with, you know, a white family or my first vacation was with a white family. So I never saw the other side and never know that I didn't have money until I kind of moved to Sacramento and started hanging out and kind of befriending some white kids that obviously had a, you know, their parents had some more money. That's a lot. Were your parents married? Yeah, my parents were married for

28 years. They probably shouldn't have went that long. But my mom, unfortunately, my mom was overcome by cancer. She was diagnosed with cancer November 1st, 2007, died November 27th. So 26 days. What? What kind of cancer was it? It was kidney cancer that I think took her down. But she had four cancers in stage four by the time she was diagnosed. So it was, like I said, within a month, the very beginning of a season. And it was gone. So...

Yeah, but my mom was the super mom. We didn't have much. When my dad was gone, we didn't have a car, but she made sure that we got to where we needed to be. Our homework was done. Everyone was fed. We were dressed. We were bathed. My parents were functioning addicts. Some of their friends were

loser addicts, but my parents were able to kind of keep it together for us. Luckily, we were always, you know, big. Did you witness it? Did you witness the drug use? Right in front of me. And was it all of it? Yeah. All of the things? Yeah. I mean, outside of putting needles in their arms, I never saw my parents do that. I saw one of their friends do it one time in the bathroom when I walked in, but...

I was born in 1980 and that was heavy coming off the 70s where everybody was doing cocaine and then that turned into harder drugs. And my parents were the partiers, so they had the people over and they just allowed me to kind of witness life at an early age. And I think that too is why I never went harder. You know what I mean? Because I saw it all at an early age and saw how people acted and what they did and they didn't. I used to smell cigarettes and hated it, but I remember my dad...

would come home after work sometimes and smoke a little joint. I was just like, "Oh, that smells different. It didn't stink." Not that he was mean, but he was just out there. He was out there. He would relax. He would wrestle and play with us sometimes. I'm like, "I like that smell." When I was 14,

That's what I tried. You associated that to your dad being more present, probably. Relaxed, cool. Yeah, kind, more of a... Yeah, talkative, playing with us as kids. Do you think that's why you tried it? Yeah, I didn't, to be honest with you, I don't really know why I tried it. I just wanted to try it. Like, I remember that the smell was the one thing that stuck me from a young kid. So I don't necessarily, I didn't equate it till I got older was this is what my dad was like when he did. He was really chill on it.

I just tried it to try it, 14 years old and kind of, you know, promiscuous and out, hanging out with my friends and tried it. First time it gave me a bad headache, made me pass out. But like I said, I wasn't a quitter. I got back on the horse and eventually kind of found my lane. Is your father still around? My dad's still around, yep. How's that relationship? It's great now. It wasn't anything, which was weird because he was always there, but he was always out providing and he was a disciplinarian. So it was, you know.

In the 80s, you got spanked. They would call it beating or child abuse now, but I got my fair, fair... When my mom used to tell me, go sit in the room until your dad comes home, that was the worst shit I could ever hear. I could try to fall asleep, try to put a book on my butt, try to go underneath the bed. When I heard him come home and walk down the hallway, it was over.