Honorary Warriors For Life? Tim Hardaway and Trae Young
Honorary Warriors For Life? Tim Hardaway and Trae Young
Relax, this is to appreciate 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.
Tim Hardaway
Tim Hardaway was a thrilling point guard drafted in 1989 by GSW. He had a dazzling crossover that made him famous.
Under Coach Don Nelson, Tim Hardaway was the T in Run TMC (with Mitch Richmond and Chris Mullin) and he directed a high powered attack that led the league in scoring.
As with most past Warriors wonders, we couldn’t have good things, and Run TMC was disassembled after its second year. Hardaway put together three All-star years until a terrible knee injury kept him out of the entire 1993-94 season.
After they traded Hardaway in 1996, the Warriors would only make the playoffs one time (We Believe) until the Steph era.
After retirement in 2007, Hardaway shocked people by saying he hated gay people. After a firestorm of controversy, the NBA removed him from public representation of the league. This naturally put a big damper on some of Dub Nation’s approval of him.
Over the years, Hardaway seems to have made a lot of personal progress and began working on LGBTQ issues. In 2013 when Jason Collins came out, he said that Hardaway had called him to support him. And in 2013 Hardaway was even the first to sign a Florida Gay Marriage petition. Good to see that people can change.
Here are the poll results.
Well 69.2% / Poor 2.1% / Don’t care either way 27.3% / Don’t know who they are 1.4%.
To be honest, the results are a bit lower than you might expect for such a historic Warriors figure, possibly because of the controversy. He still qualifies for Honorary Warrior, but not For Life.
Trae Young
Trae Young is an exciting player whose game reminds everyone of Stephen Curry’s. It was surely no coincidence that Young was drafted by Travis Schlenk, ex-Warriors official who has been constructing a Hawks team in a Warriors mold. I’m not going to make a careful comparison, as it’s early days for Trae, but his daring long-range shooting definitely was inspired by MVP-Steph, and would never have been allowed to continue in the NBA before Steph.
When he came into the league, I was hoping he would succeed, just to show that kind of game could succeed. Trae has also, probably jokingly, said he’ll pass Steph as best shooter next year. Results-wise, Trae still has a long way to go, shooting 34.4% from 3, versus Steph’s 43.5%.
So, how does Dub Nation feel about this Steph disciple?
Well 39% / Poorly 17.6% / Don’t care either way 42.6% / Don’t know who they are 0.7%
Dub Nation feels pretty lukewarm. Not enough support to be an Honorary Warrior, not enough hate to be a Warriors Villain. This poll was taken before Trae said he’d pass Steph and left Steph off his Top 5 NBA player list, which probably didn’t endear him to Dub Nation, but probably didn’t tank his ratings down to Warriors Villain level either. So we remain, slightly warm towards Mr. Young.
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Hardaway is my favorite Warrior of all time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHrygsvvQ48
Not a Dub4Life? Obviously a lot of voter fraud. Can we build a wall between us and Houston?
This is scandalous. Hardaway was the T in the iconic Run TMC, played six seasons for the Ws and was TRADED away; it's not like he left of his own accord. The guy should be a W for Life.
Trae Young, OTOH, has ZERO connection to the Ws. He seems like a talented young guy, and yeah, people are always comparing his long range shooting to Steph, but come on. He's no villain, but how does he even merit consideration?