Matt Barnes Says Appearing on 'Basketball Wives' Was "The Biggest Mistake I Ever Made"

Matt Barnes appears on J.J. Redick’s podcast and talks about how appearing on 'Basketball Wives' with his ex Gloria Govan was a big mistake.

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Complex Original

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Remember when Matt Barnes appeared on VH1’s Basketball Wives? Unless you’ve been following the reality TV show loyally since the beginning, there’s a good chance you don’t, since Barnes only appeared briefly on Season 1 of the show before deciding that he didn’t want to have anything to do with it anymore. He will always be closely associated with the show, though, because of the breakout success that his now ex-wife Gloria Govan enjoyed on it. She ended up spending two seasons on the show before jumping over to join the Basketball Wives LA cast for two seasons.

Barnes appeared on "The Vertical Podcast with J.J. Redick" on Monday and in between talking about his NBA career and his thoughts on Colin Kaepernick's protest with his former teammate Redick (which was interesting when you consider that Barnes hates Kaepernick), Barnes also brought up just how much he’s come to despise Basketball Wives. He went as far as to say that he considers agreeing to appear on the show one of his biggest regrets.

"The biggest mistake I ever made was doing that stupid Basketball Wives show," he said, "because it’s just such a negative, untrue, fantasy of what our lives are like. Our lives are nothing like that, but people live and swear by that reality TV…None of it is true. Nothing you see on these reality TV—not even just Basketball Wives—it’s all staged. They say it’s unscripted. It’s not. Everything is scripted."

While speaking with Redick, Barnes also explained that he was hesitant to appear on the show from the beginning. "I was with Shaq in Phoenix when Shaq brought it to me at practice like, 'Yo, [my wife] Shaunie wants to do a show. Will you let Gloria be on?'" he said. "I was like, 'Oh, hell no. What are you talking about?' Like we had just had the kids and everything."

Barnes did eventually agree to be on the show, but he told Redick that it didn't take him long to realize that it wasn't going to be a good fit for him. "We were in Orlando when we first started filming, and that was when Tiger Woods was going through all that stuff," he said. "So the first time and last time they filmed me—because this was the only show I did—[they asked], 'So what do you think about Tiger?' And I’m like, 'Whoa, where did this come from?' Like, 'Do you hang out with Tiger?' I’m just like, 'Huh?' Like, 'What do you and your teammates do on the road?' And then they went to a little cut where, like, I took my mic off like, 'I’m done.'"

At one point during the podcast, Redick pointed out that he didn’t necessarily plan on spending so much time talking with Barnes about Basketball Wives, but it led to an interesting discussion about the perception that people have of Barnes. You can check out the entire podcast here.

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