Rick Barnes waited on the boat dock of an enchanting town on Lake Como.

The Tennessee basketball coach clutched the spoils of a 45-minute foray into Bellagio, the charming setting on the point of a peninsula in the dreamy lake in northern Italy. He wanted to share. He offered the olives he acquired at a small store in town before boarding the boat.

He reached into a paper bag again, pulling out fresh bread and jam to pass out on the second deck of the boat as it coasted toward Como. He slathered the jam onto slices of bread and insisted people try it, his small delights to be enjoyed by others.

“Whatever the quote, unquote, final chapter is, it can never be about one person,” Barnes said in an interview with Knox News when the Vols played exhibition games in Italy this summer.

Barnes is in the final chapter of his storied career — and he knows exactly who he is. He's in his fourth decade as a head coach, closer to 40 years than 30 years. He's living with a rooted satisfaction, but he's not done. He can't be. His itch for more — more moments, more laughter, more basketball — won't allow it.

Not yet.

Who is Rick Barnes? A tour of Rome shows the man within

Barnes walked briskly at the head of a tour group in Rome — one of three on Tennessee’s first night in the Eternal City. The group wove from the Spanish Steps through the cobblestoned streets until it reached the Trevi Fountain.

Barnes peppered the tour guide with questions, including asking where he lived. The guide pointed beyond the distant city wall to the left. Barnes smiled and asked if the Vols could come over for dinner.

This is Richard Dale Barnes. He has an unquenchable curiosity. He is a 69-year-old bursting with irrepressible youthful exuberance. He embodies the second-greatest Biblical command — he truly loves his neighbor as himself. He does so with the refined tenderness and settled wisdom that come from passing years. He surrounds himself with goodness and joy.

He's also a menace, sporting his signature grin and eager eyes when he looks around for laughter after posing a tongue-in-cheek question to an unsuspecting tour guide.

“That’s kind of my love language, you know?” Barnes said. “I love picking at people and having fun with 'em. I love being around laughter and people having a good time and being real.”

That's not new. Neither is Barnes' line in regards to the coming years and eventual retirement.

He still loves being around the players. He wakes up each day excited to go to work. When those feelings vanish, he will know that it will be time to hang it up. That day hasn't arrived. It might in a few years. It could be more or less. He says he doesn’t know. He does know that he has talked to coaches who retired and they say they miss being around a team daily.

Barnes has been a basketball coach since he graduated from Lenoir-Rhyne in 1977. He has never known life without basketball. The game has been a place of learning and comfort since his childhood in Hickory, North Carolina. It's a haven and a vessel that took him from a humble youth center on the other side of the Appalachian Mountains to 20,000-seat arenas.

He scoffs at the notion of being self-made. No one is, he says. He recites names of the coaches from whom he learned: Bob McKillop at Davidson, Wimp Sanderson at Alabama and Gary Williams at Ohio State. He sought out Hugh Durham at Georgia and Charlie Spoonhour at Southwest Missouri State in the 1980s to pick their minds. He learned zone offensive strategies from Sonny Smith, a former Auburn and VCU coach. He still incorporates defensive drills from famed defensive mind Henry Iba, who retired in 1970.

But there are undeniable attributes to Barnes that make him successful. He believes all he has is God and all he has is because of God. He is confident he is undeserving. He is the best basketball mind in almost any gym, but is open to the idea he can learn. That is his defining curiosity that leads him to discuss the profit margins of barbershops and ask to see someone’s glasses so he can check their eyesight, briefly and authentically seeing the world through someone else’s eyes.

He is insatiable in his yearning to soak up every morsel of knowledge and possibility.

Rick Barnes' family changed his approach to life, basketball and coaching

Barnes dragged a chair into the corner of the humble gym at Palacoverciano in Florence. He perched and observed, watching the first two of Tennessee’s three games in Italy from that same spot.

It was the first time he hasn’t coached the Vols in his nine seasons — an act that would have appalled the younger version of Barnes.

Barnes used to be scared. He felt the weight of being a rising coach with boatloads of early success. He was the golden boy hurtling into the Big East as a 34-year-old coach hired at Providence. He was hellbent on taking care of his family. He took everything personally and anything negative was a reflection on him. He let the pressure beget more pressure.

The result was a controlling coach and an up-and-down presence.

“Instead of being who I was and who I wanted to be, I let — whether it was internal pressure or whatever it may be — change me in a way that I didn't like,” Barnes said.

Barnes tried to do everything right — if not perfectly — with a hodgepodge of ego and pride and immaturity. He held frantically to coaching duties and didn’t let his staff do enough.

It was his program at George Mason, Providence, Clemson and even at Texas. There were coaching blunders, being too harsh toward players and taking it out on others when expected success wasn’t met. He was most combative at Providence and feels he failed players.

Barnes had to change. He needed to look outward instead of inward, eying his effect on others in a new manner. Barnes’ family — his wife, Candy; son, Nick; and daughter, Carley — told him he had changed and now more change was required. The right change.

He had to let go to hold on.

“There's no doubt I quit making it my life,” Barnes said. “I said, ‘If this doesn't work, I know I can do something else.’ I still went at it the same way, but I didn't want it to be my identity.”

Barnes is adamant the head coach must be the most consistent and real person in the building. That’s a lesson born from an inability to be that during the first two decades of his coaching career. Players must know what they will get from him each day. The culture of a program runs from the top down. It’s not about me, Barnes reminds by bringing up the slogan of the Tennessee program he has fought to establish.

For Barnes, such consistency meant facing himself off the court. He devoted himself to his faith 15 years ago, the change of changes birthed in a literal come-to-Jesus moment with his family.

He was raised in the church by his mother, Mary, and his grandparents. God first, family second, you third — that was the lesson. Basketball wasn’t in the discussion.

“I let this sport pull me away from it because being prideful in vanity of vanities, whatever, just making it my identity,” Barnes said. “And I never wanted to be like that. … You are who you are when you are around those you really love and you are by yourself."

One look at Barnes with his soon-to-be-1-year-old grandson, Everett, tells you who Barnes is. He reclined in the ornate breakfast area of the Hotel Helvetia & Bristol Firenze hugging Everett to his chest and playing with gentleness and adoration.

He hoisted his grandson up, holding tightly to what matters deeply.

What Rick Barnes hopes his legacy is and how a Final Four factors in

Barnes gripped the railing atop the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence.

He wanted to spot the famous bridge in Florence. That bridge is Ponte Vecchio – an arched structure filled with stores and souvenirs crossing the Arno River. It was behind him on the other side of the cathedral’s dome. He spotted Piazza della Signoria ahead of him, where a miniature version of Michelangelo’s David stands as a reminder of the city's rich artistic history.

Barnes isn’t big on the idea of his legacy. Certainly not a legacy defined before the final pages are written. He firmly believes if he started thinking of what his final chapter could be that he would make it about him. He left that approach behind and is never going back.

Wins and losses will always be attached to his name. That’s the reality of being a coach. But they can’t define the man if he sees his definition differently.

Barnes has simple hopes: he hopes his grandkids have good things to say about him and that people say he loved Jesus.

“I hope that it is not about basketball,” Barnes said. “I want people to look at me and be judged by the kind of person I am. The greatest honor they could ever say is that that dude is a Christian. He loves Jesus, and he tried to treat people the way that he felt that Jesus wanted to treat them.”

The intangible marks are Barnes’ desire. He wants players prepared for life and leaving the program saying they were the best years possible. Where the younger Barnes mistreated players, the veteran Barnes is attentive to how players could feel. They’re complicated goals to quantify but they’re the goals.

The easily measurable goals say Barnes is likely to reach 800 career wins before the end of this season, his 37th. He has 779 as the Vols speed toward their Nov. 6 season opener against Tennessee Tech. He has won 175 games at Tennessee and could be its second-winningest coach after his ninth season in Knoxville.

He knows Tennessee has been in the national title conversation a few times in the past five seasons. He knows it will be again, which is what he envisioned when he was hired in April 2015.

“I think people thought when I got here I was just going to ride it out and everything,” Barnes said. “I won't do that now. No one knows me if they think that because it's not fair to Tennessee.”

Fairness to others shapes his approach to tangible achievements. That includes a Final Four, the oft-mentioned piece of Barnes’ resume. He has been to one, taking Texas in 2003. He called it the thrill of a lifetime and would love for the Vols – all Vols – to experience it. He states a national championship at the Final Four is the goal every year.

“To me? It matters,” Barnes said. “Because I want it for our guys, too.”

Barnes easily imagines the NCAA Tournament glory he hasn’t experienced. He has never coached on that final Monday in a national title game. He has dreamed of it, the feelings attached to both outcomes. He can imagine the eviscerating emotion of tumbling a win shy of the elusive national championship. To win, well, Barnes thinks he can dream that sensation better yet.

He knows precisely what he would do. He’d watch every part of the revelry — players dashing about, fans in a frenzy, and the coaching staff's delirium. Barnes would merely exist in the midst of the celebratory chaos, unbothered by the madness.

He would be still.

Barnes can picture the moment sitting by a pool outside the Stella Azzurra Basketball Academy before Tennessee played its third and final game in Italy. He has done it before. He will do it again. He wants to get better as a coach to bring imagination to realization. He thinks this team has a chance.

He is someone who has almost seen it all, a satisfied man and unsatisfied coach.

“I think we got a lot more we can get done,” Barnes said.

Mike Wilson covers University of Tennessee athletics. Email him at michael.wilson@knoxnews.com and follow him on Twitter @ByMikeWilson. If you enjoy Mike’s coverage, consider a digital subscription that will allow you access to all of it

This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Coach Rick Barnes reveals legacy beyond Tennessee basketball in Italy