Warrior mentality: golden state's three rookies are learning about life in the NBA as their team learns how to win

Sporting News, The, Nov 26, 2001 by Sean Deveney

Antawn Jamison is shouting, at no one in particular but loudly enough for everyone to hear. It's the middle of September, and Jamison and his teammates are running pickup games at the Warriors' practice facility in downtown Oakland. The season is too far away for him to be this worked up, but he has vengeance on his mind.

"Do not talk that s-- to me! Don't even!" Jamison says.

Two weeks earlier, Jamison, along with veteran Larry Hughes and Vonteego Cummings (who since has been traded), suffered an embarrassing defeat--a three-on-three loss to the Warrior's three draft picks, Jason Richardson, Troy Murphy and Gilbert Arenas. After winning the first game 5-0, Jamison's team lost four straight causing his young teammates to get a bit bold. Whenever the opportunity arose, they reminded Jamison of their victory. Arenas even left messages on Jamison's pager, repeating the scores of the games.

So now, with Jamison, Hughes and Cummings joined by Adonal Foyle and Danny Fortson, Jamison is exacting his revenge on the youngsters in a five-on-five matchup (the rookies are joined by Erick Dampier and since-traded Chris Porter). He blocks a shot by Murphy, who timidly calls a foul. "What?" Jamison shouts.

"Foul," Murphy says,

"What! You crazy, rook?"

The next time down the floor, Jamison posts up and hits a turnaround jumper over his head. "Write that in your damn magazine!" he shouts. "The world needs to know what is going on here! Welcome to life in the NBA! These guys are getting their asses kicked!"

This time, Jamison's team wins."I think they cheated, the way they were keeping score," Arenas says. "Man, that was rough."

Rough, indeed, but this was just some pickup basketball among friends, mild compared with what would be in store for the Warriors' rookies this season.

Take Murphy, for instance. In the Warriors' fourth game, he got into an elbowing incident with Portland's Dale Davis, and both players drew technical fouls. When Murphy put down a dunk on Davis four minutes later, Davis delivered another elbow, prompting Murphy to stare at him. Murphy was given a second technical, for taunting, and was ejected--the first ejection of his career, at any level. In the Warriors' next outing, Murphy made two layups around the Raptors' Keon Clark. Having been shown up, Clark popped Murphy in the head with an elbow, resulting in a $7,500 fine from the league. Making matters worse, Murphy says, was that Jerome Williams took a cheap shot at him later in the game.

Welcome to life in the NBA, rook. It has been just five months since the draft, and already the Warriors' three rookies have taken their lumps, literally and figuratively.

"They picked the wrong guy to hit in the head," Murphy says. "My head is hard, I can't feel anything up there. Hit me all you want. I just went to the line and hit the free throws, so I mean, who wins?

"I know what it is. Everybody sees the rookie out there, the big white guy, and if you do something good, they want to put you in your place. Nobody wants to let rookies have success."

This is a complex process, learning to play basketball as a rookie at the NBA level, putting up with cheap shots from opponents and the occasional scorn of your veteran teammates while learning an entirely new style of play. But, ultimately, the success of one's rookie year does not rely on points per game, turnovers or shooting percentages, as the Warriors' rookie trio is finding out. Being a rookie means not just learning to play NBA basketball but figuring out the NBA life as well. Hard to say which is more difficult.

"It's just how I thought it would be," Richardson says. "I am 20 years old, I have a lot I am trying to learn on the court so I can fit in with the team. But I am trying to learn to take care of my business off the court. This is all part of life in the NBA."

Shark tanks and Hummers are another part of life in the NBA, and for the Warriors, this is where community relations director and former NBA player Otis Smith comes in. In addition to his normal community relations duties, Smith also keeps an eye on the Warriors' rookies. He helped each of them find a place to live, setting up Murphy and Richardson in homes in the Danville area west of Oakland, and getting a condo for Arenas in Alameda. He helped them set up utilities and pay bills. As he calls it, he is in charge of "transitioning" the new guys into the real world of paychecks and major purchases.

"They get off the airplane and say, `Now what?'" Smith says. "In the past, that was the situation rookies were in. You had to figure it out on your own.

"But now, these guys are so young, a lot of them come in without any world experience. You can't take a 19-year-old kid and drop him into a new life and hope he succeeds. This is a total lifestyle change. You have to give him the proper tools for success."

Luxury items are not listed among the proper tools, and part of Smith's job is to frown upon extravagances. He points out that the guys he deals with are adults, free to make their own choices. But he is careful to show them how bad some of those choices may be. When Murphy first arrived in Oakland, he wanted his first vehicle as a professional to be a Hummer. Smith pointed out that, besides the price tag and gasoline usage, a Hummer might not be a wise choice. It would not even fit into the parking garage at the Warriors' practice facility, the kind of minor logistical problem Murphy had not considered. Murphy bought a Denali instead.