If you’ve been a longtime member of Dub Nation (the assemblage of diehard Golden State Warriors fans), you’ll certainly remember the dog days before Steph Curry and co. reversed the team’s reputation of misery and heartbreak. Currently, the San Francisco-based basketball franchise is one of the most valuable sports products on the planet.
But before the glory, the team’s on-court performance floundered for decades in East Oakland, and there wasn’t much winning to be had, its shine marred by a dearth of talent and lack of appeal for attracting star players. From 1996 to 2006, the Warriors ranked among the lowliest teams in the league, dragging through the most dismal stretch in team history since it migrated from Philadelphia to California in 1962.
That all started to change when one hardwood luminary, Baron Davis, put on a Golden State Warriors jersey.
In 2005, the electric, hyper-athletic point guard—who up to that moment had already established himself as a winning player at the University of California, Los Angeles, en route to becoming the third overall pick in the 1999 NBA draft and earning multiple-time all-star nods as the leader of the New Orleans Hornets—did more to turn around the struggling Warriors in the modern era than just about anyone else not named Steph. Davis (who at the time was known as “B Diddy,” long before the Sean Combs lawsuits) serendipitously landed in the Bay via a throwaway trade with New Orleans.
Though he only suited up as a Warrior for three brief seasons, departing for his hometown Los Angeles Clippers in 2008, he was far-and-away the most entertaining and uplifting force of Bay Area basketball throughout the aughts—a headband-wearing, AND1 blur of a scorer and nifty distributor.
Most notably, Davis led the eighth-seeded Warriors to a statistically historic, franchise-shifting playoff series victory against the top-seeded defending NBA champions Dallas Mavericks. Davis followed that up with one of the most lauded dunks of his era against much-larger defender Andrei Kirilenko during a second-round playoff loss to the Utah Jazz.
That late-season miracle was enough to galvanize Northern California’s hoop-loving armada, famously leading to the coining of the “We Believe” slogan. Since then, the “We Believe Warriors” have been canonized as part of epic NBA lore, not just in the Bay, but in basketball circles everywhere (Spain’s largest sports media outlet recently published a retrospective on the subject.)
After years of withering faith and spiritual erosion for Bay Area sports fans, Davis made us believe once again. It takes a transcendent human to reactivate a skeptical fanbase. A certain artistry and razzle-dazzle, for lack of a better phrase, to give hope to the hopeless. It’s precisely that kind of spirit—simultaneously bold and bohemian, aggressive and assured, high-flying and in-control—that makes Davis’ post-career pivot into the rap game all the more alluring and fitting.
Help us save local journalism!
Every tax-deductible donation helps us grow to cover the issues that mean the most to our community. Become a 48 Hills Hero and support the only daily progressive news source in the Bay Area.
Look no further than his rap nom de guerre (Bart Oatmeal, a nickname given by his son) to get a sense of this former baller’s head space. Not too serious, and unafraid to reveal a weirdness within. This isn’t the young, aspirational NBA star or a basketball jock trying to kick down the door with braggadocious noise (see: LiAngelo Ball’s recent run of hits, or Shaquille O’Neal’s past life as Shaq Diesel, a Jive Record signee, in 1992.)
Nah. Bart Oatmeal is a gray-bearded OG with wisdom and experience carefully tucked away in his pockets; and if you ask, he’ll joyfully split some of it with you. Even if you didn’t ask, he’ll spell it out for you in the open. That’s what listening to his surprise debut album, Steel Cut (Deluxe) is like: not forceful like a brashly open-court dunk, but silky and calculated—a smooth lay-up that evades anticipating defenders.
The eight-song, 24-minute project sounds matured and reflective; serious at times, goofy and playful at others, evincing the signs of a man who has lived different lives outside of his socially prescribed box and is ready to divulge game from the driver’s seat of an old school box Chevy as it slugs down the coast, without any care for appeasing the industry suits or mastering an algorithm.
Despite never having released a full-length project, Bart Oatmeal—an alter ego that Davis revealed as his most expressive, humorous, openbook self in an extensive ESPN interview with music journalist Jeff Weiss — he has been cutting up behind the scenes for most of his life. He has personal ties and/or long-lost recordings with the likes of Lil’ Wayne, Common, The Game, and Oakland’s Mistah F.A.B, to name a few.
F.A.B. even appears on Steel Cut (Deluxe) with a California-centric cruising anthem about gang life and sunshine in L.A. But it’s clear that his de facto recording studio apprenticeships—perhaps uncommon among high profile athletes, who by default of their stardom have veritable access to the music and film industries—have paid off. It’s also clear that Bart Oatmeal isn’t hoarding all the wealth for himself, bringing on a diverse variety of guest features and collaborators ranging from Compton stalwart and West Coast fixture Jay Worthy to lesser-known emcees from the greater L.A. area.
There are loads of basketball references throughout the album: “Clint Capela” is titled after the Atlanta Hawks power forward of the same name, and “Allstar Cut” is clearly a nod to hoop culture and Chuck Taylors on summer blacktops. But the album is more Gang Starr (underground, thoughtful, well-sampled) than it is Madison Square Garden (the holy basketball and entertainment venue where Davis once played as a New York Knickerbocker.) Whether you grew up watching Davis hit game-winners as a fan-favorite on the Dubs, or you have no clue what a three-second violation is, this is a worthwhile soundtrack without any pretense.
In the meantime Davis, who also has own TV show WTF Baron Davis and is involved in a variety of side businesses, will continue to find new ways forward. “GPS the way for the next up,” he says on the ever-laidback track “Ziploc”—words from a true journeyman.
