ORACLE ARENA AND WARRIORS PRACTICE FACILITY, OAKLAND, CA — In the second quarter of the Golden State Warriors‘ Game 2 victory against the Portland Trail Blazers, Harrison Barnes sparked a mini-run with by up-faking the back-pedaling Brian Roberts from the left corner, attacking baseline, and rising for the tomahawk dunk just before Blazers big man Ed Davis got there:
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Davis was a tad late on the help, but nevertheless got a stare-down from Barnes.
Barnes and Davis are both University of North Carolina Tarheels alumni, barely missing each other as Davis played there from 2008-10 and Barnes 2010-12, but during their first meeting in the NBA on January 28, 2013, Davis stuffed him. Twice.
“That’s a Carolina thing,” Barnes told us after the playoff game against the Blazers, on his stare-down of Davis. “I think it was my first or second year in the league, I tried to go for a dunk. Ed just totally beat it up.”
Unfortunately, we couldn’t find any evidence of it in the official NBA video recap — although curiously, Stephen Curry sprained his right ankle in that game, at about the 1:20 mark of the video, and Barnes, at about the 1:49 mark of the video, had a ferocious dunk in the face of Aaron Gray.
So Barnes got his in that game, regardless.
As for the payback on Davis, Barnes said, “He always talks a lot of trash, so I snuck a kind of look at him, ‘You count that?'”
“Nah, I’m not gonna count that as a dunk,” was Davis’ reply, according to Barnes.
While the show of emotion was more of an inside joke, Warriors teammates such as Andrew Bogut enjoyed the rare moment, even though Bogut hadn’t made his standard #BlackFalcon quip yet with Barnes.
“We don’t want to give him too much cover about it, because it might disappear for another three years,” Bogut joked after Warriors practice yesterday.
Best buddies on the team, no one knows Barnes better as a teammate than Bogut, and he made clear that being judged as an emotional player (or not) is a double-edged sword.
“If we see him show some emotion, we definitely appreciate it,” Bogut told LetsGoWarriors. “Some people will say a guy that doesn’t show emotion, doesn’t care. Some people will say, ‘Oh, he’s too emotional, he can’t win.’”
Barnes apparently isn’t even aware that #DubNation loves it whenever he stares people down.
“That’s funny, though,” Barnes told us.
“I don’t think it’s a huge deal,” Bogut said. “It’s more whatever works for you, whatever got you to this point, keep doing.”
(Photo: @letsgowarriors Instagram account via AP)
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