Honorary Warriors For Life? Vote on Eric Paschall and Al Harrington
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.
Eric Paschall
Charismatic and easy to root for, he was a rare glimmer of hope in the crappy 2019-20 season. Another second-round find (#41 pick!!), he bullied to the rim and somehow made a leprechaun-kick jump shot go in.
But in his second-year, he struggled to find a role, despite a brief burst of goodness as smallball center. In the end, the Warriors moved him to be with his BFF Donovan Mitchell in Utah.
In our player review, Daniel and Tom wrote:
Last year Eric Paschall was the biggest bright spot on a depleted Golden State Warriors team, making the 2019-2020 All-Rookie team and giving Dub Nation more hope for the future.
This year, that hope was deferred as Paschall was waylaid by injuries and shuffled around a roster rife with development projects. Let’s jump down the rabbit hole to figure out how a guy we believe is a quality player was unable to fulfill Dub Nation’s hope of a big leap from his promising rookie campaign.
Dr. Tom: Those spot up numbers… woof.
Daniel: Right? Like you can't be a stretch-big in this offense without hitting spot up shots. For reference, 2015-2016 Mo Buckets was rated “good” on spot ups and 2016-2017 David West was ranked “very good”.
Now I know we’re harping on the spot up numbers but let’s not forget Paschall’s strengths here. He’s “very good” in isolation and as the screener in the pick-and-roll, and “excellent” as the PnR ball handler.
Unfortunately, that’s not where the majority of his shot opportunities came from last season. It’s been well documented how Coach Steve Kerr is reticent to spamming isolations/PnR; going forward how much is Kerr willing to further bend his system to accommodate Paschall’s current strengths?
Dr. Tom: If you can’t play with Draymond then your role/court time is going to be limited. It just really locks you in which is fine BUT…people need to understand that’s all he can really do with this team at this juncture without improving his outside shooting.
Al Harrington
A member of the We Believe Warriors, Al Harrington played for GSW from 2006-2008. He was a spry big who could hit threes.
He was a key part of the run and gun Nellieball that propelled the We Believe Warriors. Al Harrington could — ahem — light it up with the best of them.
As part of the special stupidity of the Chris Cohan ownership regime, everyone associated with We Believe was alienated and traded within a couple of years, and Al Harrington was no exception, getting traded to NYK for Jamal Crawford in Nov 2008.
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 Eric Paschall 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 Al Harrington 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
(You are welcome to opine about whether they should be Honorary Warriors / Villains For Life, but I am going to only count votes about whether you want them to do well or poorly or don’t care. Most comments didn’t make that clear, so I didn’t count them for the poll.)
Results for Kelly Oubre and Gilbert Arenas
The vote and justifications can be found in this thread and Twitter.
Gilbert Arenas got closer, and scored 66% raw Well vote, falling short of the 75% threshold and does not qualify for Honorary Warrior For Life. However, he did get 67% of the Well vote out of everyone who knew him, above the 50% threshold, so he qualifies for Honorary Warrior.
Kelly Oubre got 59% straight Well vote and does not qualify for Honorary Warrior For Life. However, he did get 59% of the Well vote out of everyone who knew him, so he qualifies for Honorary Warrior.
I see Al as HWFL. He was part of a team I'll never forget (reason why I'm a dubs fan today) and an important piece of the rotation that helped smoke those Mavs in 6
I wish Paschall well, I hope he improves as a player down in Utah and manages to carve himself a nice long career in the NBA
Hey Apricot, did you even tell people about the JTA and Mulder/Dray videos you put on YT.
THEEEEEYYYY’RRRREEEEE GRRREEEAATTT