Friendly rivalry

Doug McDermott and Harrison Barnes have remained friends since playing high school basketball together in Ames, Iowa. The small forwards took different paths, but will play each other in the same conference for the first time on Sunday.

They would stream into the gym at Ames High all winter long, a who’s who of college basketball’s mostrecognizable names.

Bill Self. Roy Williams. Mike Krzyzewski. Billy Donovan.

They came to watch the Little Cyclones play in the shadow of Iowa State University, and Ames High forward Doug McDermott was in a shadow, too – the long one cast by his friend and high school teammate, Harrison Barnes.

“They all came to our high school, and they just didn’t think I was quite good enough, I guess,” McDermott said. “That actually put a chip on my shoulder to try and improve and try to get to the NBA. Because I knew I wasn’t that far behind guys like Harrison.”

On Sunday, McDermott and Barnes will meet on the court for the first time since the former was traded from Chicago to the Thunder, where he’s playing for Donovan.

They won’t have to do their catching up at American Airlines Center. The two talk “at least a least a couple of times a month,” McDermott said.

“I’m still pretty close with Harrison,” McDermott said. “He’s a great guy to just bounce (things) off of during the season.”

These days, McDermott and Barnes are peers as well as friends, two of fewer than 500 men in the world good enough to be on NBA rosters.

Back when they were tearing up Iowa high school basketball, only one of them was supposed to make it here.

Old school

Greg McDermott was the Iowa State coach when his son Doug was starting out at Ames High School, and it was clear even then that Barnes was bound for something big.

The Cyclones began recruiting Barnes when he was a freshman in high school, Greg McDermott said. At the time, Doug McDermott wasn’t a highly regarded prospect.

But the talent gap didn’t hamper their friendship. McDermott got his driver’s license as a high school sophomore, and Barnes didn’t have one. So McDermott would pick up Barnes and they’d drive around and “end up in the gym together,” Greg McDermott said.

Doug McDermott needed the extra work.

“As a sophomore, he was the third-leading scorer on the sophomore team,” Greg McDermott said of his son. “But he improved as much in three or four years as anyone I’ve ever seen.”

By the time they were juniors, Barnes was the most sought-after prospect in the country, and Ames High was on its way to back-to-back undefeated, state-championship seasons.

As Ames steamrolled the state, McDermott quietly was getting stronger and more versatile, blossoming into a player, who’d go on to play for his father, who took the head coaching job at Creighton in 2010.

And as coaches streamed in to see Barnes, at least one of them started to take note.

“Doug was probably somebody I would have liked to have recruited,” said Donovan, then the coach at Florida. “But with his dad right there at Iowa State and then going to Creighton, it was probably gonna be a waste of time.”

So Donovan passed on McDermott. He wasn’t alone.

Far apart, but close

Even as media and recruiting attention focused on Barnes, McDermott wasn’t fazed. He drew from Barnes’ work ethic to find ways to improve his game. Barnes, in turn, admired the strides his friend made.

“Doug was a big supporter,” Barnes told the Chicago Tribune during McDermott’s rookie season.

“He didn’t mind that a lot of attention was being placed on me. If anything, it definitely motivated him.”

They took different paths to the NBA – Barnes spent two seasons at North Carolina, McDermott four at Creighton – and have had different careers in it. This season, both players changed teams for the first time, Barnes leaving Golden State last summer for a four-year, $95 million offer with the Mavericks and McDermott coming to the Thunder as part of a trade that also brought Taj Gibson to Oklahoma City.

This summer, McDermott will travel to what he called “the middle of nowhere in Rhode Island” for Barnes’ wedding. And on Sunday, they’ll meet on the court, though perhaps not for the first time in Dallas this weekend.

Typically, Barnes and McDermott have dinner the night before their teams play, and that was the tentative plan. McDermott planned to let his old friend pick up the check.

“He’s got the contract,” McDermott said. “I think he can handle that.”