Watch: Rick Barnes Monday Media Availability

Rick Barnes met with the media for the first time in several months during a Monday Zoom Call. Barnes field questions for almost half an hour, and he covered a variety of topics.

One key talking point was the return of Yves Pons. Barnes full statement on Pons:

"We always want guys to get all of the information they can, and there's so much unknown this year. There's so much uncertainty. When you think about it, when players were allowed to have agents the past couple of years, the agents are going to do everything they can, I think, to get them to go into the Draft. With that said, there were some people at that point in time talking about how there's not going to be college basketball or college football season. The NBA backed everything up. It's not a typical year. The one thing we knew with Yves is that he's a very well thought out person. I do think that every NBA team that interviewed him was more impressed after talking with him because they understood what we know, with how hard he works, his commitment, how much better he wants to get every day. He's hearing it from a lot of different people, but Yves thought it out with his circle of trust, and his people back home, and in the end, he's coming back. Is he a difference-maker? Absolutely,  he's improved. He has. I think this year is going to give him a chance to walk into the NBA from the front door. I believe it. The growth he's made and will continue to make because he works. He's got a chance to really be in that league for a long time."

Another talking point was how Barnes has handled the uncertainty with Covid-19, and how he has handled his team. He said:

"We've got to play an NCAA Tournament. We've got to play it. If we don't, it's going to make it almost impossible for a lot of schools. I'm not talking about the Power Five. The money that some schools get, it might be $300,000, which is a lot of money for a lot of people. If they go two years without it—I just know we've got to have an NCAA Tournament some way, somehow. You can't have an NCAA Tournament without having some kind of regular season. What we have told our guys is what I'm telling you: I think we're going to play basketball. I think we're going to play on time. We don't know how all of this is going to play out. I know how far we've come since we started with this pandemic. I know how on our campus, we've had unbelievable leadership and I know in the athletic department, what we did this summer, our guys did a terrific job of really doing what we asked them to do.