Harrison Barnes Is Going To Be Just Fine, Thanks

He has not signed a contract extension with the best team in the NBA, but do not weep for Harrison Barnes. He's not a jilted lover or a drone victim or a man done wrong by the system. His very understandable gamble to get some extra dough just didn't pay off, or hasn't paid off yet. The fourth-year forward will end this season as a Restricted Free Agent, perhaps having proved his worth once and for all. That or, more likely, he will have reinforced the belief that he is an interesting player, talented, but ultimately—in the sick argot of the rich boys who call the shots in this league, and in general—a redundancy.

The extremely confident Harrison Barnes turned down "a lot" of money from the Warriors—$64 million, dang!—because he wanted more money. A thing that aggrieved talk-radio white men of the world should remember is that Harrison isn't a robber baron or greedy highwayman. We'd all do the same with his leverage, and more money is definitely better than less money, as the old saying goes. And because of the massive TV deal signed between the NBA and ESPN and TurnerSports, the salary cap will heartily increase and mid-tier players like Barnes would be fools not to wait and see how rich the coming realignment will make them.

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The Warriors brain-trust had an uncomfortable responsibility to eschew sentimentality and any sort of pollyanna dream to keep the championship band together forever. Basketball teams aren't the Beatles, and if anything the model to follow is that of the Fall or Guided by Voices. You find your transcendent talent—Mark E. Smith, Robert Pollard, Stephen Curry—and you add and subtract and buy and trash at your leisure. It sounds raw and shitty, and that is exactly what it is, what it's always been, and ever will be until #FullCommunism.

The bosses in the smoky backroom, and perhaps Barnes as well, were smart to delay their reckoning. They still have high hopes, but the Dubs brass must at least half realize the possibility that Barnes is a phantom, a sweet looking inkblot consistently putting up perfectly fine if underwhelming numbers. Barnes of course deserves to be paid—it is terrible this must be explicitly stated—but false prophet narratives have buried alive many promising careers.

Indications were that the Warriors, neophytes at this contender thing, were sentimental enough to give Harrison Barnes whatever he wanted, in the hopes that he might help them continue their unexpected run of dominance, or that he's just the sort of nice dude the Oklahoma City Thunder might want to try on for size in some hypothetical and very unlikely gargantuan Kevin Durant sign-and-trade. And yet the battle to pin him down meekly rages on. His butter-fingers and deer-in-the-headlights stylings are momentarily forgotten when the spirit takes hold of him and he scores ten quick points, as he did against the loathed/loathsome Los Angeles Clippers, or when he thunderously dunks on goofy-ass Dwight Howard's goofy-ass head.

His size, his athleticism, his preternatural professionalism, his spurning of alcoholic beverages and conspicuous consumption of the medium-highbrow center-right media—it all just feels like the exact thing the witch doctor ordered for this team. Except, that is, for the basketball stuff. Barnes is cautious off the ball but herky-jerky and impulsive with it. He cannot reliably create his own shot. He flirts with invisibility at times, in a way no player this talented ever should. He's inconsistent, occasionally meek, not a great passer, and despite Steve Kerr's sharing-is-caring offense, still seems to hear the siren call of iso-ball in his secret heart. If you've watched him for three years you know damn well he's not the next Paul George. But every tenth game he looks like he could sort of be someone. His value in this league up to this point is the power of illusion and wish-casting, of convincing the venture capitalist that lives within us all to believe in the dream.

Perhaps this is all the end result of Barnes' SEO personality. His branding game is the stuff of legend. Even as a high-schooler Harrison was prepping for the biggest stage and the media offensive never relented, even as he looked downright pedestrian and sort of confused as a Tar Heel, even as he embraced the silly nickname/brand The Black Falcon, even as he sharted on his shot to be Bench Commander his sophomore season. As this early returns indicate, Steph is the spindly serial killer we all know and fear, Klay Thompson is mired in a slump, Draymond remains an all-purpose Kraken, and Harrison is playing like the $65 million guy that you keep around to get you in the carpool lane.

Barnes has always been a smooth operator in the science of saying the right things. But the confidence he projects doesn't seem necessarily hard-earned or hard-won; he's always had it, and there has long been a slickness to him that strikes a note that is, if not quite false, at least a little flat. He has a winning smile and his dunks are competently ferocious. When Stephen Curry is double teamed Barnes can hit open threes at a good clip and his defense against bigger power forwards was key to the Warriors deadly switch-heavy defense last year. But somehow this has seemed to beguile opposing GMs and NBA pundits across the land into buying into the legend of Harrison Barnes. The legend of the placeholder asset always a few steps away from leading man.

This makes sense for both parties. Harrison just has to look alright—not even great—and he'll be hoisting suitcases of money next summer, courtesy of the Warriors or some other desperate suitor. Either way, the Warriors passed a test, here. Teams are not supposed to drastically overpay a guy hoping he might blossom into the world's most beautiful Swiss Army Knife. That's for losers, mugs, the Nuggets. The Warriors aren't losers anymore, no matter what Doc Rivers or your friend from work implies. They're a very good basketball team that runs like a very good business. Harrison Barnes, of all people, can probably appreciate that.