Honorary Warrior For Life? Russell Westbrook and Shaun Livingston
Relax, this is just to reminisce about great players.
Honorary Warriors For Life
The concept is simple. There are some players who are not in the Warriors organization, but Warriors fans will still root for anyway (as long as no Warriors interests are at stake). So they are not a part of Dub Nation, but they still are welcomed into Dub Nation. This is very often because they are former Warriors players, but not always.
More details are included in our master list of all those voted Honorary Warriors For Life so far. More details are included in our master list of all those voted Honorary Warriors For Life so far. In short, getting >75% support achieves Honorary Warrior For Life; >50% support of voters who know them achieves Honorary Warrior.
Russell Westbrook
In honor of yesterday’s rewatch of 2016 WCF Game 7, let’s talk about Russ.
Westbrook has an incredible engine and uses his athleticism to grab rebounds and force layups and generally drive an offense. But to my knowledge, he has never complimented an opposing player except the passive-aggressive, cover-my-ass “he made tough shots”. And he definitely loves his statistics, chasing triple-doubles hard, to the point where his OKC bigs boxed out for him to allow him to get easy rebounds.
And the media exalted his 2016-17 season as a cross between a bride abandoned at the altar, a modern-day Oscar Robertson, and one man standing against the zombies with no help in sight. All this in direct opposition to Kevin Durant’s first Warriors season. And Russ played up the martyr image all the way to an MVP and many dramatic cupcake-themed grudge matches between OKC and GSW.
Russ had plenty of chirps at KD, but also threatened to revenge-injure Zaza Pachulia, and even got happy-go-lucky Nick Young enraged at him.
So there are plenty of reasons for Dub Nation to be annoyed with Russ. But I suspect the chill really began with this smug press conference with OKC up 3-2, where Russ mocks and laughs at the idea that Stephen Curry had underrated defense. Then Steph proceeded to help put the clamps on Mr. Westbrook as the Warriors completed the epic series comeback.
Anyway, the polls did not disappoint…
Well 8.4% / Poorly 71.1% / Don’t care either way 20% / Don’t know who they are 0.5%
Wow, Russ easily gets Warriors Villain status, but just barely escapes getting Warriors Villain For Life. Sorry, Russ, James Harden outdid you in being disliked by Dub Nation. I think the years of playoff disappointments have made you a slightly less annoying personality. Still plenty of time to piss off Dub Nation next season.
Shaun Livingston
Do I really have to describe Shaun Livingston? Known as “S. Dot”, he came back from a horrible injury to join GSW and stabilize a wildly unsteady backup point guard position from 2014-15 through 2018-19.
He also had my favorite quote from the whole Five Year Run, from right after the bitter 2016 Game 7.
This poll was not even close.
Well 96.5% / Poor 1.2% / Don’t care either way 2.3% / Don’t know who they are 0%.
Shaun Livingston is now an Honorary Warrior For Life. In fact, he now has the highest Well vote to date (Andre Iguodala had the old high 93.7%).
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Love S-Dot. Are you even a Warrior fan if you don't root for S-Dot or Iggy to do well? I'm saying that both got 100% and the other votes are just haters or Cleveland-Houston-Thunder fans (but I repeat myself) :D