Harrison Barnes will be returning to the building where he won two state championships in high school. The Ames native and his Golden State Warriors will play the Denver Nuggets in an NBA exhibition game October 16th at Wells Fargo Arena in Des Moines. Barnes says he has a picture in his house of the very first NBA game he ever attended as a 2-year-old, and it was the Golden State Warriors against the Denver Nuggets at Veterans Auditorium.
“It was very ironic that we will also be playing the Denver Nuggets again,” Barnes says. “I am extremely happy to obviously coming back to the state of Iowa to play. And in an arena like this where I’ve had some pretty good memories.” Barnes says he is thrilled with the opportunity to play in his home state. He says anytime he plays in Minnesota, Indiana or Chicago, there are Iowa people who commute to see him play and now they can just go to Des Moines.
Arena general manager Chris Connolly says they have been working on this game for several months. “We first started talking to the teams that will play 6 to 7 months ago,” he says. Connolly says it takes a lot of work in planning to be sure that both teams can make the date.
It will be the first time Wells Fargo Arena has hosted an NBA exhibition game since it opened in 2005. “We had a lot of opportunities in years past where we thought we would get a game, but it just didn’t work out for whatever reason,”Connolly says.
Connolly says tickets to the general public go on sale next week.