Matt Barnes Battles With Possum Home Invader in Hilarious Video

Chris Malone Méndez
·2 min read

Matt Barnes has had quite the illustrious career in professional sports. He played in the NBA for over a decade and became an NBA champion before retiring in 2017. And though he has skills on the basketball court, when he's at home, he deals with very different challenges.

On March 25, Barnes went live on Instagram as he dealt with an unexpected home invader in his kitchen: a possum. Barnes chronicled the ordeal in a nearly 10-minute-long livestream. By the time he began recording, he was already well into the process of trapping the animal and trying to get it out of his house, which included barricading it into the kitchen by building walls of cardboard boxes.

Barnes is in the process of moving from that house to a new place, so the boxes being on-hand was a blessing in disguise. He explained that because he and his family are between homes, the back door of this house was open, allowing the possum to waltz right in.

"All you can do is peacefully run out, bro, so what are we going to do here?" he asked the animal as it sat on the tile floor. He began throwing apples at the animal to try to get it to move, but it wouldn't budge.

When fruit didn't do the trick, Barnes went to another part of the house to retrieve a golf club. "I'm about to put a pitching wedge up his a--," he said to the camera before approaching the animal with his metal weapon. He got up on the kitchen counter and got closer to the possum from above and eventually started spraying water on it.

Once the animal was soaked, it began to saunter off—right through Barnes' box barricade. It didn't get too far and remained in the kitchen area before it finally had enough and scurried out the door.

"This s--t gave me the chills," Barnes told viewers on the patio after the fiasco. "I'll fight anybody but I don't f--k with animals. That's for godd--n sure." He caught sight of the possum in the corner of the yard and told it to go to another house.

Possums can carry a variety of diseases, so if you find one in your home, it's probably best to call an animal control expert and let a professional handle it.