Honorary Warriors For Life? Vote on Kelly Oubre and Gilbert Arenas
Honorary Warriors For Life? Vote on Kelly Oubre and Gilbert Arenas
Relax, this is just for reminiscing.
Honorary Warriors For Life
The concept is simple. There are some players who are not in the Warriors organization, but Warriors fans will still pull 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.
Kelly Oubre Jr
We’ve had our say about the tumultuous year with Kelly Oubre Jr at
Say Anything: Oubre, Warriors are right fit, but wrong time. Useful but ultimately too expensive, Oubre looks like just a one year fling.
Duby wrote:
It’s not hard to pick out Oubre’s highlights.
Oubre was the Warriors’ third leading scorer this season, behind only Stephen Curry and Andrew Wiggins.
Oubre was also adept on the defensive end, a solid rebounder, and one of the few players whose offense was able to self-generate. Cleaning the Glass has him in the 70th percentile (for his position) in defensive rebounding, and 90th in block percentage, and offensive rebounding.
There’s also something else going on here, where Oubre fills gaps. He’s in two of the team’s top three 5-man units, sorted by net rating. There’s a kamikaze element to Oubre’s game. Never shy about driving into a defense, or being a defensive pesk, it’s telling that he was a part of the team’s best units - even though many of the team metrics don’t look too favorable for him.
Seems like the only set play that worked for the Warriors. Modified split action, w/ Curry running around Wiggins' screen, dives inside, and sets a screen underneath for Oubre. Foul, but he misses the free throws.Though he wasn’t quite suitable for running the second unit, a task that first fell to Wiggins, and then, shockingly to Jordan Poole, Oubre’s viability as either a starter or second unit player seemed to bode well for a future here.
You’ve got to be careful looking at on/off impact for basketball players. Because of all the synergies that occur between personnel, the scoring and defensive impact associated with a guy being on or off the court is compounded by what else the team does in his absence.
That said, it’s far from meaningless, and Oubre’s overall net impact was detrimental. A net negative 11 points per hundred possessions; a mark in the bottom 10% of the league, and below only Paschall.
Tsunami Papi did score a 2 year, $26 million contract with CHA, but he raised some Dub Nation eyebrows on his way out, with his quotes:
"I want to continue to show all the things I’m capable of and not be put in a box," Oubre said on the latest HoopsHype podcast. "I felt like the universe was trying to put me in a box last year. It’s something that always clashes because it’s a big deal whenever I’m trying to be put in a box, because I can’t be put in a box.
"I’m going to continue to show you and prove to you why you shouldn’t put me in a box. I think that just fueled me to work harder this summer and to come back next year and be a better all-around player."
Gilbert Arenas
The original Agent Zero. Hibachi. And in the early days of blogging, the most amusing NBA player bloggers writing.
He was only with the Warriors for two years (more on that in a second), but he was dazzling and an unexpectedly explosive point guard for a second round pick (#31 in 2001). (In those days, the Warriors were about as likely to hit in the second round as the first round.)
By his second year, he had a 18.3 / 6.3 / 4.7 line, won Most Improved Player, and seemed poised to take the Warriors to greatness.
Except.
There was a bug in the NBA salary cap rules where the Warriors were not allowed to offer Arenas nearly as much money as other teams! The Wizards took advantage of that, and Arenas left much too soon.
Younger fans might only remember Arenas for the absurd and dangerous gun locker room incident which derailed his career, and not for his dazzling NBA career, but he was a blast to watch in his prime.
And that bug in the salary cap rules, has now been fixed and is now known as the Gilbert Arenas Rule and the Warriors remain the last team to be screwed by the bug.
Your Vote
You can vote by Twitter or by comment (which counts as ten Twitter votes) on these two specific questions:
Dub Nation, imagine you see Kelly Oubre in a game with no practical implications for the Warriors. (So not against GSW, ignore draft picks, playoff seeding, etc.) Do you want them to do well or poorly?
Well
Poorly
Don’t Care
Don’t Know Them
Dub Nation, imagine you see Gilbert Arenas in a game with no practical implications for the Warriors. (So not against GSW, ignore draft picks, playoff seeding, etc.) Do you want them to do well or poorly?
Well
Poorly
Don’t Care
Don’t Know Them
No to both.
Arenas probably more known as a Wizard.
And though he was helpful in moving the sticks, I just don't think that Oubre spent enough time here to rack up enough first downs.
I do want him to do well, though. And I'm looking forward to seeing who he matches up against when we play them.
I appreciate all the comments on the HWFL question. I’ll go through the comments and do my best to parse out your actual answers to the specific question Well/Poorly/Don’tCare/Don’tKnow.