Former Warrior Patrick O’Bryant joins the Big3

Oh, Patrick O’Bryant. A player who resides in Golden State Warriors history, primarily for his infamy. He hasn’t played in the NBA in eight years, but now he’ll be joining a different American basketball organization: The Big3.

The Big3 is the three-on-three, halfcourt basketball league started by, among others, Ice Cube. The league had its first season last summer, and is rapidly adding names to their roster for this year.

O’Bryant, if you recall, was the Warriors’ lottery pick in 2006. He was drafted ninth overall that year, and big things were expected out of him.

Big things did not occur. He suffered an injury, was subject to coach Don Nelson mercilessly telling the media that the young center was really bad, and played a mere 40 games for Golden State over two seasons.

He averaged just 1.7 points and 1.3 rebounds per game in a Warriors jersey, though he was part of the We Believe run as a rookie. He was best known for buying teammate Jason Richardson’s Ferrari, and forcing us all to question how a 7’0” man could fit in such a car.

O’Bryant’s NBA career never took off, as stints with the Boston Celtics and Toronto Raptors never yielded strong results. All in all, he played only 90 games in his career.

Since then, he’s had a few stints in the G-League and in training camps, and has had some success overseas. It will be fun to see him stateside again, and hopefully he can perform well in the fun new Big3 league.

For the Warriors, O’Bryant represents a dark segment of the franchise’s history. From 2005-2008, Golden State used four first round picks (including three lottery picks) on O’Bryant, Anthony Randolph, Ike Diogu, and Marco Belinelli.

In 2009, they tried to buck the trend by drafting Stephen Curry. Only time will tell if that was a good decision.