Barry Clemens, Knicks draft pick who played 11 NBA seasons, dies at 83

Barry Clemens, the Ohio forward who started an 11-season NBA career with the Knicks, has died at 83. The Cleveland Cavaliers and Rock Entertainment Group announced his death on Tuesday, the New York Post reported.

New York took the 6-foot-6 Clemens in the third round of the 1965 draft, and he spent only his rookie season at the Garden. He appeared in 70 games for the 1965-66 Knicks and averaged 5.4 points, according to Basketball Reference. After that year he went to the expansion Chicago Bulls, where he played from 1966 to 1969. He had the best scoring seasons of his career there, peaking at 9.3 points a game in 1967-68. Three seasons in Seattle and two in Cleveland followed, and he finished with Portland in 1976.

Clemens never made an All-Star team. He lasted because coaches could use him in a lot of ways. Over 790 regular-season games he averaged 6.7 points in just under 16 minutes a night and scored more than 5,300 points in total. Hoops Wire noted that he was known for his outside shooting. That shows in his numbers: he made better than half his field-goal attempts in two seasons in the early 1970s. In his two years with the Cavaliers he played 143 games while the franchise was still young.

He was from Dayton, played at Xenia High School and then at Ohio Wesleyan. As a senior there he won the Ohio Athletic Conference's MVP award, averaging 23 points and 14.7 rebounds. He left college as the career scoring leader for both the school and the conference. The Ohio Basketball Hall of Fame inducted him in 2009.

He also had a moment back in Manhattan. In the spring of 1973 he reached the final of ABC's televised one-on-one tournament for NBA players, held at Madison Square Garden, and lost the title game to Portland guard Geoff Petrie.

Knicks at Bulls

The Knicks play in Chicago on Wednesday night against the franchise Clemens joined after his one season in New York. They won for the first time on Monday, beating Detroit 111-97. Before that they lost their first three games: 106-100 to Philadelphia, 107-103 at Boston and 111-102 to Orlando. At 1-3, New York has scored between 100 and 111 points in every game, and none of the three losses was by more than nine.

The markets still have New York as a clear road favorite. On the game board, Novig lists the Knicks at -264 on the moneyline and Chicago at +257. The spread is where the venues split. Novig has New York favored by 7.5 at +102, while the best Knicks price anywhere is FanDuel's -120 with the line at 6.5. That one-point gap shows the books disagree about how much margin the Knicks have earned after a slow start. The total sits at 232.5 on Novig. Pinnacle is a point lower at 231.5, at -110 on the over. Across the 12 venues the sportsbook hold runs from 2.9% to about 5%.

Tip-off is on NBA League Pass.