Honorary Warriors For Life? Harrison Barnes and Antawn Jamison
Honorary Warriors For Life? Harrison Barnes and Antawn Jamison
Relax, this is just for fun and to remember some good 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.
Harrison Barnes
Harrison Barnes was drafted in 2012, the strange fruit of the last Warriors tankathon. GSW owed the draft pick to Utah if it was worse than the number #7 pick (as the result of the usual heists other teams pulled on the Cohan era Warriors). After Steph Curry was injured, GSW tanked valiantly and a game-ending goaltend helped the Warriors fall into a tie for #7. This is what passed for drama back in the day. The tie was settled by a coin flip, which determined that the Warriors would be #7, and they got to keep the draft pick. It was a pretty underwhelming draft, and Harrison Barnes was considered not a great #7 pick, but the draft also lacked obviously better picks to make.
Barnes had a breakout playoff series in 2013, regressed terribly when he came off the bench behind Andre Iguodala in 2013-14, causing new coach Steve Kerr to ask Andre to go to the bench, to unlock Barnes’s game.
Barnes became the 5th member of the original Small Ball Lineup of Death (with Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, Draymond Green and Andre). Barnes shot well from 3, threw down huge dunks in-game (let’s not talk about the Dunk Contest), was an excellent strong defender in the post who could switch on to large attackers. He also seemed to hanker for a larger role and certainly for a maximum contract which would have made him the highest paid player.
As fate would have it, Barnes had a very very very poor shooting Finals — even shooting a merely bad percentage would have won the Finals — thus indirectly leading to Kevin Durant choosing GSW in free agency and forcing GSW to let Barnes walk to a maximum contract with the Dallas Mavericks.
Well 62% / Poor 9% / Don’t care either way 27% / Don’t know who they are 2%.
Dub Nation still has affection for Barnes and his contributions to the 2015 championship and the 73-win season. But there is a small part of Dub Nation that holds a bit of a grudge, so he qualifies for Honorary Warrior, but not Honorary Warrior For Life.
Antawn Jamison
Antawn Jamison was an explosive scorer for the Warriors between 1998 and 2003. This was a down time even by the standards of a franchise that has stunk colossally, with 20 wins being an achievement.
In this grim time, Jamison was an explosive scorer and consistently on the league leaderboards for points per game. His duel with Kobe where they both threw in 51 points was a season highlight.
Well 55% / Poor 1% / Don’t care either way 38% / Don’t know who they are 6%.
A majority of Dub Nation still wishes Jamison well! But a fair number don’t remember him at all. Antawn Jamison is hereby declared an Honorary Warrior.
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I can't imagine wishing any of the former Ws ill. But I don't much think about Barnes anymore and feel somewhat about him the way I do about Durant -- grateful for his time with Golden State but not in the same category as the core guys (Curry, Thompson, Green, Iguodala, Livingston). Any time a guy leaves of his own volition and rejects an offer from the Warriors, I feel a little different about them. Barnes could have been a part of this team if he wanted to be. Instead, he took buckets of cash from Cuban. Can't say I blame him for that -- good on him for making that money -- but I do end up feeling differently about him than someone like Bogut or Iguodala. Those guys also left the team, but they had no say in that, so in my imagination, they really could have been Ws for life if the team would have cooperated. Not so with Barnes or Durant, for whom the team did their best, only to be rejected.