Former UNC player Harrison Barnes has opportunity for redemption in Olympics

It has been a while, about 16 years, since the U.S. Olympic basketball team included a former North Carolina player. That will change this summer, though.

Harrison Barnes, the Golden State Warriors forward who played two seasons at UNC, has been selected for the 12-man team that will play in the Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games, which begin Aug. 6. The team was finalized and announced on Monday morning.

Barnes becomes the 14th UNC player to be selected for an Olympic men’s basketball team. He’s the 13th that will play for Team USA (Henrik Rodl played for Germany in 1992), and Barnes is the first basketball Olympian to have played at UNC during Roy Williams’ head coaching tenure.

News of Barnes’ selection to the team leaked Saturday, when Yahoo! Sports’ Adrian Wojnarowski reported it. As word spread on social media, Barnes became the target of harsh criticism, as he was while he struggled during the final three games of the NBA Finals.

Through the first four games of the Finals, when the Warriors built a 3-1 lead against the Cleveland Cavaliers, Barnes outperformed his regular season averages. During those first four games, he averaged 12.5 points, shot 51.3 percent from the field and made six of his 14 3-point attempts.

Yet it’s those final three games that everyone remembers. The Cavaliers pulled off a dramatic comeback to win Cleveland’s first major sports championship in more than 50 years. And, yes, Barnes played especially poorly.

He scored 15 points combined in the final three games of the Finals, missed 27 of his 32 attempts from the field and made three of his 15 3-point attempts. He made one of his 11 3-point attempts in Games 5 and 6, when the Cavaliers tied the series.

Barnes’ struggles came on the NBA’s brightest stage and in high-profile games that captured the attention of the nation, given the story lines: the Warriors’ pursuit of the best season in NBA history combined with the Cavaliers’ captivating rally from a deficit that once seemed insurmountable.

Slowly, the prospect of the Cavaliers making history – they became the first to win the NBA Finals after losing three of the first four games – became more realistic. And slowly, the Warriors’ collapse seemed imminent. And then there was Barnes, in the middle of it all, missing shot after shot.

He became in some ways the focal point of his team’s demise. And some seemed to take special glee in Barnes’ individual misfortune. Perhaps it was because he turned down a sizable raise before the season: a reported four-year contract extension for $64 million.

Perhaps it’s Barnes’ calm, somewhat aloof public persona, which might be perceived as arrogance. Perhaps it’s Barnes’ connection to UNC or, further back, the spectacle of his high-profile college recruitment, which ended with Barnes using Skype to announce he’d chosen UNC.

Then there’s the whole branding thing. Barnes, who had a personal logo before he ever turned professional and who spoke in detail about his “brand” in a memorable 2012 story in The Atlantic, always did pay attention to his “brand” – however that can be defined – and his marketing potential. That isn’t a unique approach among modern athletes, and yet … such a focus on “brand” arguably has an effect opposite of what’s intended.

Which is all to say: Barnes’ detractors, and there were many on social media, appeared to take great pleasure in watching him fail during the final three games of the NBA Finals. The criticism was odd given Barnes’ avoidance of controversy and his well-crafted image, but it was there in full force, a constant torrent of people using Twitter to voice their opinion that Barnes is “trash,” among other descriptors.

More of the same followed as news spread that Barnes is about to become an Olympian. A Twitter search of “Harrison Barnes” and “trash” turns up no shortage of harsh, colorful rebuke of his selection to Team USA.

Yet contrary to the perception – at least that of those quick to revel in Barnes’ shortcomings during the Finals, and quick to admonish his selection to Team USA – Barnes played well the majority of the season, his fourth in the NBA. He averaged career highs in points (11.7) and minutes per game (30.9).

He shot well, too, for most of the season and finished with an effective field-goal percentage of 53.1 percent. It was the second consecutive season in which Barnes had shot that well. Even so, Barnes’ success during the regular season is now something of a distant memory, overshadowed.

He joins the Olympic team barely a week removed from perhaps the most difficult stretch of his basketball career. Barnes is the first former UNC player since Vince Carter, in 2000, to play on the Olympic team. Before that, Michael Jordan was a member of the original Dream Team in 1992.

Jordan is considered perhaps the best who ever played. Carter will be remembered as one of the game’s great athletes, and as one of the sport’s most prolific dunkers. Their places on Team USA were assured, and expected.

Barnes, meanwhile, undoubtedly benefited from others who decided not to go to Rio. LeBron James last week announced that he wouldn’t play for Team USA. Stephen Curry, Chris Paul, Russell Westbrok, Blake Griffin and Damian Lillard, among others, also opted out.

Those decisions left Team USA and coach Mike Krzyzewski looking for ways to fill the roster. Which led Krzyzewski to Barnes, a player he recruited at Duke with much vigor back in 2009 and 2010, when Barnes was considered perhaps the best high school prospect in the country.

Barnes eventually spurned Krzyzewski and Duke in the most high-profile of ways. And now Barnes will get his chance, after all, to play for Krzyzewski. More important, Barnes has a chance, too, to help his critics forget about those memorable shortcomings in the NBA Finals.

This story was originally published June 27, 2016 at 3:45 PM with the headline "Former UNC player Harrison Barnes has opportunity for redemption in Olympics."