Quote Originally Posted by davekay1971 View Post
I'm comfortable judging Barnes as a college player and ignoring his NBA future, for now. And his college career is, by any realistic definition, a disappointment when judged against both his media hype and his self-hype. He was, in his time at Chapel Hill, a good small forward. For parts of games he was dominant, but rarely for a whole game or for a stretch of games. He was never close to being the best player on his own team. In fact for the bulk of his career, he was the fourth best player on his team (although that is fourth behind three very, very good players in Zeller, Henson, and Marshall).

For a kid who came to Chapel Hill touted as a preseason NPOY/All-American (not his fault, that was media hype), and who talked about leaving his legacy there (that's all on him), he leaves UNC as a borderline first team All-ACC player, and his legacy is a couple of good, but not spectacular seasons both for himself and his team.

He may go on to become a stellar NBA player, but that will not change his "legacy" at UNC. If he disappoints in the NBA, people will point to his time at UNC as an early indicator that he wasn't the player he appeared to be in Iowa. If he has a solid but unspectacular NBA career, people will look at his time at UNC as about par for the player he went on to be come in the NBA. If he becomes a perennial All-Star, people will wonder what happened to him at UNC, why he struggled between such a stellar high school career and a stellar NBA career.

Obviously, in that case, the problem will have been Roy.
I've been avoiding posting in this thread because part of me feels like the longer we talk about Harrison and analyze him, the more he "wins" despite not winning on the court. He is clearly not solely interested in winning on the court but also being the center of attention, so even threads like this that pick him apart would be to some extent gratifying to an ego like his.

That said, this post is great. Very well stated. Perhaps we can just summarize this thread with this post and leave it at that? I really dislike seeing the name "Barnes" each time I check the board.