Remembering Dana Barros' record streak just before it gets broken

If you've been watching a lot of basketball early this season, particularly games involving the Atlanta Hawks, you've probably heard a name mentioned that you might not have thought about for a number of years: Dana Barros. The pint-sized point guard (listed at a diminutive 5'1", 163 pounds) had a fine career that stretched across four teams and 14 NBA seasons, but Dana's production was mostly unextraordinary, his ESPN classic moments were relatively few, and none of those four teams are sending his jersey to the rafters anytime soon. He hung up his sneakers in 2004, and unless you live in Boston, where he recently served as a local TV analyst and still hosts basketball camps and plays in charity games, that was probably the last time you gave much consideration to Dana Barros.

So why the resurgence in attention for Barros? Well, thanks to Atlanta sharpshooter Kyle Korver, the one truly enduring contribution of Dana's career--his all-time record for consecutive games with a three-pointer made, a streak of 89 that lasted from December of 1994 to January of 1996--is now in jeopardy. With the two triples he made last night against the Detroit Pistons, Korver is now just four games away from tying Barros' streak. Given that Korver is hoisting nearly six threes a game, and that he's making about 50% of them, he seems likely to blow past Barros' record number, erasing the Boston product's signature NBA achievement. 

It's always a little sad when a player loses a record that's stood for many years--especially one like Barros, without much else to hang his legacy on--so I figured it'd be worth taking a look back at some of the context surrounding those 89 games for the backcourt dynamo, for those of us too young to remember the streak as it was happening, or those of us who have spent too long with Barros out of sight and out of mind to have strong memories of it. Remember it now, before the demon-Kutscher mug of Kyle Korver wipes it off the NBA's ledger for all time. 

1. It started with Philadelphia. Barros spent the four seasons of his career in Seattle, mostly coming off the bench (alongside Nate McMillan) while stuck behind Seattle guards like Ricky Pierce, Dale Ellis and, of course, a very young Gary Payton. Barros was a useful contributor to those playoff-contending Sonics teams as a long-range weapon off the pine, and even led the league in three-point percentage with 44.6% from deep in '92. But he was mostly a one-dimensional player, and never averaged over 20 minutes (well, 20.1 his rookie year) or 10 points a game during his years in Emerald City. 

In June of '93, Barros was traded to the Hornets in part of a mega deal that landed the Sonics a high-upside young starting two-guard named Kendall Gill. A few days later, Barros was redirected to Philadelphia, in a deal for the more experienced sharp-shooter Hersey Hawkins. In Philadelphia, Barros would slot in to a team that was in total rebuild: A summer earlier, they had traded longtime superstar forward Charles Barkley to the Suns in a deal whose primary return was Phoenix shooting guard Jeff Hornacek, and before Barros' first season in Philly was over, Hornacek was also jettisoned, sent to the Jazz for the deteriorating Jeff Malone and a first-round pick. The Sixers, still laden with aging vets like Orlando Woolridge, Johnny Dawkins and a 38-year-old Moses Malone, would also begin a youth movement of sorts around Barros, 23-year-old forward/mini-Barkley Clarence Weatherspoon, and much-anticipated draft pick Shawn Bradley, selected second-overall that summer. 

The upside of this for Barros was that he would finally get the playing time he was denied in Seattle's crowded backcourt. Barros started 70 of 81 games his first year in Philly, and all 82 the next season, as he saw his scoring hit double figures for the first time. Barros also became far more of a distributor, handing out over five assists a game (with only two turnovers) after never managing more than 2.5 a game in Seattle. The team only won 25 games that season, but by the time his streak began in the '94-'95 season, Barros was the unquestioned orchestrator of the Sixers' offense.

2. It officially started in Boston. Barros had his best game of the season to that point on December 23rd, 1994, when he lit up his hometown Celtics to the tune of 34 points, five rebounds, six assists, and even a season-high six steals--two of which came late in the fourth quarter, in game-sealing open-court swipes. The Sixers had been on a five-game losing streak, with Barros tying his lowest scoring outing of the season with nine points the night before in Charlotte. "It feels like 1,000 pounds off our backs," Barros said after the game.

Dana also hit on three of five attempts from behind the arc, and for the rest of the season, he would not go a single game without connecting at least once from beyond. He would be particularly blazing in the six games following his Celtics outing, averaging 26 and eight with an absolutely absurd shooting slash line of .56/.57/.97.--though the Sixers would go just 1-5 over that stretch.

3. It encompassed a trip to the All-Star game. In '94-'95, Barros was not only the leading light of a Sixers team with a regressing Weatherspoon and an increasingly busty-looking Bradley, he was one of the best guards in the NBA. Barros averaged 20.6 points and 7.5 assists a game that season--numbers that certainly reflected the hike in playing time he received in Philly (only Milwaukee's Vin Baker played more minutes that season), but which came at no expense to his efficiency, as Barros still shot an impressive 49% from the field and a ridiculous 46.4% from three, third-highest in the whole league. According to Basketball-Reference, he was worth 10.5 offensive win shares that season, making him one of only nine players in the '90s to have that valuable an offensive season. (Of the other eight, all except Penny Hardaway are in the Hall of Fame, or will be soon.)

For his efforts, Barros was selected to the All-Star Game, despite the Sixers owning a 14-34 record at the time of the break. Barros had a solid 11 minutes for the Eastern Conference team, scoring 5 points on 2-5 shooting, with three assists and zero turnovers. You can see every consequential second of his playing time in the game in this exhaustive YouTube clip:

Not revelatory, but not embarrassing either. For a first-timer playing with the likes of Shaq and Patrick Ewing, it was about as much as you could ask for.

Barros also appeared in the Three-Point Shootout for the third straight season, losing to Glen Rice. Dana would end his career going 0-4 in the Shootout, though he did come in second twice.

4. It peaked in a 50-point outing against the Rockets. On March 14th, 1995, Barros had one of the best shooting nights in Sixers franchise history--maybe just one of the best all-around games period, at least by someone not named Wilt Chamberlain--when he put up an even 50 on absolutely unconscious 21-of-26 shooting (6/8 from deep), to go with eight assists, six rebounds and two steals in 42 minutes of game action. "That was something personal I can look back on and they can never take away from me," Barros said of his historic night. "It was like one of those once-in-a-lifetime things."

As remarkable as Barros' stat line was on its own, it becomes quadruply so when you consider that the Sixers not only failed to get the W against the Rockets, but they lost by 29 friggin' points. Eight Houston players scored in double figures, no one else on the Sixers scored more than 11, and by the third quarter--when Sixers rookie BJ Tyler was sent to the locker room for throwing a towel at coach John Lucas--the game was already over. Barros could've gone off for 75 and it wouldn't have made a difference. His 50-point night thus goes down as one of the greatest totally inconsequential outings in NBA history.

5. It continued the next season with Boston. In the '95 off-season, Barros became a free agent, and despite the breakout season he had just had, the Sixers balked at committing the kind of star contract Barros wanted to the 28-year-old guard. "We can be $6 million or $7 million under the cap in a year when Michael Jordan, Alonzo Mourning and Dikembe Mutombo are scheduled to become free agents," explained coach John Lucas of the team's long-term plans. (Spoiler: The Sixers signed neither Jordan, Mourning or Mutombo in the '96 off-season.) Instead, they signed veteran forwards Vernon Maxwell and Richard Dumas. Maxwell played one season in Philly (during which he contemplated trying out for the Eagles) before signing with San Antonio, Dumas played in just 39 games before washing out of the league entirely. 

However, Dana did find a taker in the Boston Celtics--another team in a rebuild, and incidentally, a hometown team for Barros, who was born and raised in Boston, even playing his college ball at Boston College. The Celtics offered Barros six years and 20-something-million, giving him the vote of confidence the Sixers declined to offer. Unlike in Philly, though, playing time and offensive priority was not so guaranteed in Boston, where Dana found himself competing for minutes with David Wesley, Sherman Douglas and Dee Brown. Barros would start just 25 games for Boston that year, seeing his minutes slip from over 40 a game the year before to under 30 a game, and his numbers fall generally across the board.

Still, Dana's stroke remained true--he would shoot 40.8% from three that year--and through the end of the 1995 calendar year, he had still yet to go a game without hitting at least one three. In fact, Barros went over a month (from mid-November to late-December) where he hit at least two in every game--an impressive consistency that helped him reclaim his starter's job--and at one point helped the ailing Celtics win six of seven, their best stretch of the '95-'96 season. 

6. It became historic against Minnesota. Dana didn't have a particularly great game against the woeful T-Wolves on December 22nd, 1995--17 points on 7-16 shooting, with just one assist and two turnovers. But he hit on one of four attempts from downtown, and that was good enough to give him an 80th consecutive game with a three-pointer made, breaking the previous record of 79, held by fellow Boston College alum Michael Adams from his Nuggets days in the late '80s. ``I'm glad it's over," commented a relieved Barros, who hit the sole trey early in the first quarter.

Despite the historic night for Barros, the game is probably best remembered in Celtics lore for a much more unexpected record-setting achievement that transpired--shooting guard Todd Day, acquired from the Bucks less than a month earlier, breaking the Boston record for scoring in a quarter (previously held by Larry Bird), going off for 24 of his career-high 41 in the second quarter. "It's the happiest day of my career," reflected Day. "But you can't put Todd Day in the same sentence as Larry Bird." The Celtics won the game, 114-113, and Todd Day's name was never put in the same sentence as Larry Bird again. (Except this one.)

7. It came to an end against New York. Playing the division rival (and playoff-contending) Knicks on Janaury 12th, 1996, the Celtics were clearly fighting a losing battle, and spent the final minutes trying to get Barros a good look from deep to keep his streak going. However, New York coach Don Nelson was determined not to let Barros gun for his streak at the Knicks' expense, and the guard was triple-teamed by the away team on each of his late-game looks at a three. Though Dana still had four tries at one in the final 15 seconds, none connected, and the streak was over.

Celtics coach ML Carr, furious over Nelson's petty denial of Barros' chance to keep his streak alive, threw the ball at the Knicks coach as he patronizingly smiled and patted Barros on the back after the game. "Let's just say I didn't like the way things happened in the end," Carr stated unequivocally to the press. "They had the win and they need to move on. It was bush." ("That was kind of fun at the end," was the blithe comment from Nelson.) For his part, Barros seemed mostly embarrassed by the whole affair, saying "I really don't care. I wanted to get it but the only thing I was upset about was that I felt it turned the game into a fiasco."

8. It never even came close to happening again. Tellingly, the game after Barros had his streak snapped, he not only went a second straight game without hitting a three, he didn't score at all, going 0-7 for zero points against the Hawks in Atlanta--his first scoreless outing since his days with the Sonics. Dana would recover the following game, going off for 22 points on 9-14 shooting (with four threes) and seven assists, but Carr had given the starting position back to David Wesley. Barros would start in just one more game the entire rest of the season.

For the rest of his career, the closest Barros would come to duplicating his 89 consecutive games with a three-pointer made came from March 22nd, 1998 to February 9th, 1999, when he hit a trey in 20 straight contests. (It seems like it should be more games because the '98-'99 season started late, due to the pre-season lockout.) In general, Barros never again matched the success he found over the course of the streak--particularly during its beginning days in Philadelphia--and mostly spent the end of his career as he spent its beginning, as a shooter off the bench. 

Barros played four more seasons in Boston, averaging double digits in scoring only for the first, then was traded a couple times in the 2000 off-season and ended up in Detroit, where he wound down his career for a couple years. He returned to Boston as an assistant coach towards the end of the '04 season, and even suited up for one single game, scoring six points (though not even attempting a three) in eleven minutes of action. After retiring, Barros opened a failed sports club in a Boston suburb, briefly served as an assistant coach at Northeastern University and made cameos in various roles in and around Celtics basketball in Boston, where he still resides today. 

The story of Dana Barros' 89-game streak is a triumphant and sad one, one which offered Barros a kind of basketball immortality, but more the type of immortality achieved by Dexy's Midnight Runners or Michael Cimino. Now, with Korver looming ever-closer in the background, it seems like even Barros' one hit is doomed to fade in its wonder. Still, Barros stands as a sort of icon of mid-'90s basketball--a time when Michael Jordan decided to take a breather, and where without the looming threat of Jordan and his dominant Bulls team to inevitably bring the entire league under their thumb, the NBA seemed wide open. Like Barros' ascent, it didn't last long, but it seems particularly indelible in retrospect for its brevity and general unlikeliness. And in these few days left for the streak before it becomes a footnote to a footnote, it should absolutely be cherished.