Warriors and Barnes Agree to Deal

The Golden State Warriors and fan-favorite, swingman Matt Barnes have reached an agreement. The terms of the deal are unknown as any official announcement has yet to be be released. For Barnes, this marks the end to an extremely frustrating offseason. After becoming somewhat of a playoff hero for the Warriors in the 2006-2007 playoffs and believing he could easily receive a team's mid-level exception, Barnes was widely ignored during free agency. Teams viewed him as a product of Don Nelson's small ball, uptempo system and balked at his contract demands. Consequentially, Barnes went fired two agents in one summer before finally settling on Aaron Goodwin.

Warriors tickets remain hot as all Warriors 100 level season tickets are sold out. Additionally, despite mediocre performance over the past decade (the Warriors only made the 2006-2007 playoffs due to late-season surge), the Warriors still managed to be at 94% capacity in 2006-2007 and 95% capacity in 2005-2006 . Although the resigning of Barnes and additions of Austin Croshere, Macro Belinelli and Brandan Wright certainly improves the Warriors chances for the 2008 playoffs, it might not be enough to offset the loss of Jason Richardson and potentially Mickael Pietrus in the ultra-competitive Western Conference.

Update: The deal ended up only being one year for $3.5 million instead of the previously reported multi-year deal.