Pretty much every former, current or future NBA career has some form of wider aspiration. After all, even the most successful careers end a long time before the human earning cycle. They need to have something else to do.
Many, if most, try to become actors. Many more try to pass themselves off as entrepreneurs and/or venture capitalists, particularly in the LinkedIn era. And more still try to make it in the music game. For all the country artists like Meyers Leonard, there are a couple of dozen trying to make it in the rap game (arguably an easier one to self-finance one’s way into). And one of them is former Golden State Warriors cult hero, Baron Davis.
NFTs Were Never Good
Davis now raps under the name Bart Oatmeal, a name originally used for an NFT/Metaverse project, but which now actually serves a purpose, unlike NFTs and the Metaverse. [You would think he would at least change it to Barz Oatmeal.] Aided by the fame and fortune of his prior esteemed basketball career, Davis – or Mr Oatmeal, if being introduced more formally – has been able to secure some talent to help his project, including noted produced No I.D., and some songs have been drip-fed out into the world.
The amount of publicly released material from Camp Oatmeal is not huge, but earlier in the week, a release by Bart and Conductor Williams featured Davis in the video, instead of some hideous NFT graphics like some of his earlier ones. Those earlier ones included a song named Clint Capela for some reason.
Davis’s NBA Career
Davis played 13 NBA seasons between 1999 and 2012, appearing in 835 regular-season games for the Warriors, Charlotte/New Orleans Hornets, Los Angeles Clippers, Cleveland Cavaliers and New York Knicks, after the Hornets selected him third overall in the 1999 NBA Draft.
Davis averaged 5.9 points and 3.8 assists as a rookie before becoming Charlotte’s starting point guard in his second season, and then in 2001-02, he averaged 18.1 points, 8.5 assists and 2.1 steals, being selected for his first NBA All-Star Game. After the franchise relocated to New Orleans, Davis – who initially said he would not go with them – made his second All-Star appearance in 2003-04, when he averaged a career-high 22.9 points alongside 7.5 assists and 2.4 steals per game.
New Orleans traded Davis to Golden State during the 2004-05 season in exchange for Dale Davis and Speedy Claxton, whereupon he spent three full seasons with the Warriors, averaging a career-high 8.9 assists in 2005-06. In 2006-07, Davis helped Golden State reach the playoffs for the first time since 1994; the eighth-seeded Warriors defeated the 67-win Dallas Mavericks in the first round, with Davis averaging 25.3 points, 6.5 assists and 2.9 steals across Golden State’s 11 playoff games.
Davis signed with the Clippers in 2008 to a five-year, $65 million contract, and remained there until being traded to Cleveland in February 2011 in an awful deal that also saw the Cavaliers land the first overall pick in the 2011 Draft (subsequently used on Kyrie Irving). After 15 games with the Cavaliers, he was waived via the amnesty provision and signed with the Knicks for his final NBA season, playing 29 regular-season and four playoff games in 2011-12.
For his NBA career, Davis recorded 13,447 points, 6,025 assists, 3,183 rebounds and 1,530 steals. He averaged 16.1 points, 7.2 assists, 3.8 rebounds and 1.8 steals per game, shooting 40.9% from the field, 32.0% from three-point range and 71.1% from the free-throw line. He was a two-time All-Star and an All-NBA Third Team selection.
