Honorary Warriors For Life? Vote on Hall of Famer Chris Webber and David West

And yes, you can now vote directly on HWFL status

Sep 16, 2021

Honorary Warriors For Life, new process

The loudest voices in the comments are not satisfied with voting via a Well/Poorly vote and letting the aggregate vote process run its course. They don’t want an electoral college, they want to directly vote on whether players are Honorary Warriors For Life.

So, let’s try it that way today.

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.

We’ve changed up the process a couple of times in the past, and this is our master list of all those voted Honorary Warriors For Life so far.

And now for our two nominees…

Chris Webber

The Warriors have been searching for The Big Man Of The Future for 4 decades. They finally got a good one when they traded up in the 1993 NBA Draft to grab Chris Webber. And indeed he would turn out to have a great career, ending up with his entry into the Basketball Hall of Fame this week.

Just mostly not with the Warriors, who blew a bunch of picks and opportunity when Webber bailed out after just one year, just another example of GSW getting screwed by wacky contracts.

I find the story still quite depressing, so I will quote liberally from Wikipedia now.

Webber was selected by the Orlando Magic with the first pick of the 1993 NBA draft. The Magic immediately traded him to the Golden State Warriors in exchange for Penny Hardaway and three future first round draft picks.
Webber had an outstanding first year, averaging 17.5 points and 9.1 rebounds per game and winning the NBA Rookie of the Year Award. He was instrumental in leading the Warriors back into the playoffs where they were swept by the Charles Barkley-led Phoenix Suns in three games.
However, he had a long-standing conflict with his coach, Don Nelson. Nelson wanted to make Webber primarily a post player, despite Webber's superb passing ability and good ball handling skills for someone his size at 6 ft 10 in (2.08 m) tall. Webber also disliked playing a substantial amount of time at center, given Nelson's propensity towards smaller, faster line ups.
In the 1994 off-season, the Warriors acquired Rony Seikaly so that Webber could play primarily at power forward. However, at the time, the differences between Webber and Nelson were considered to be irreconcilable. Webber exercised a one-year escape clause in his contract, stating he had no intention of returning to the Warriors. With few alternatives, Golden State agreed to a sign-and-trade deal, sending Webber to the Washington Bullets (renamed the Wizards in 1997) for forward Tom Gugliotta and three first-round draft picks. The three draft picks included two of the picks the Warriors had traded to the Magic to obtain Webber in the first place, as the Magic had included those picks in a trade package with the Bullets less than 4 months earlier.

Let’s wrap with this all-time great commercial:

David West

David West left a lot of money on the table to first join the Spurs and then the Warriors in search of a role on a championship team. He became the veteran leader and part of the foundation of the Dynasty Warriors.

He particularly had a nice connection with Ian Clark. His nice elbow jumpers and passes from the top of the key made the bench hum.

Then he gave one of the all-time great post-championship interviews. “It’s feels better than I thought it would…. You can’t take it with you. The Egyptians learned that!”