Al Harrington is essentially the poster boy for NBA journeymen. Playing for seven different franchises and being traded away five times, Harrington could always be counted on to play his heart out regardless of which jersey he was wearing.
Even featuring as primarily an option off the bench for the majority of his career, Harrington provided the prototype for modern players like Lou Williams by being a consistent scoring threat. In a long 16 years in the league, Harrington averaged 13.5 points and 5.6 rebounds per game. At his best with the Knicks in 2009, he was averaging 20.7 points and 6.3 rebounds per game.
For a former No. 25 pick to go and score over 13,000 points over the course of his career, Harrington has to feel pretty vindicated about all the teams that passed on him. In that star-studded 1998 draft class that featured the likes of Dirk Nowitzki, Paul Pierce and Vince Carter, he still managed to quietly become one of the best from that year’s crop of prospects.
Harrington was also helped pioneer the modern NBA’s preference towards the long-range game. From 2007 to 2010, Harrington finished each season in the top 20 of most three-point shots made, despite being a bench player and missing 20 games due to injury.
While Harrington lived a long and successful career, postseason accolades would forever avoid him. Playing in 55 playoff games over the course of his career, the closest he’d ever come to an NBA Finals was in 2004 where the Indiana Pacers were defeated by the Detroit Pistons in the Eastern Conference Finals. He would never return to a Conference Finals series again.
Despite his lack of postseason success, Harrington never lost his love for basketball. In 2017, Harrington joined “Trilogy” in Ice Cube’s BIG3 basketball league alongside former NBA players Kenyon Martin and Rashad McCants. In the league’s inaugural season, Trilogy went undefeated and captured the league title. At No. 25, the Blazers would be lucky to grab a player with this much passion for the game.