Who is James Michael McAdoo and why on earth is he playing in the NBA Finals?

The 2017 NBA Finals were — are — meant to be a meeting of All-Stars and league legends, of a super team and a super-super team. For some reason, James Michael McAdoo was, and is, there too.

Run through any Finals preview and you’ll see words upon words about the much-anticipated match-ups of exceptional talent: Kevin Durant vs. LeBron James, Steph Curry vs. Kyrie Irving, Draymond Green vs. LeBron again, Klay Thompson vs. Kevin Love. Game 1, sloppy as it was to start, saw all the stars present and accounted for. Then, toward the end of the first half, James Michael McAdoo, a 6-foot-9 forward out of University of North Carolina, checked into the game and proceeded to guard LeBron James. Excuse me?

McAdoo only played four minutes, so perhaps this is an overreaction, but during his brief time in the game he was tasked with guarding the greatest player of his generation, embodying disrespect, so his presence is worth contemplating. Also because McAdoo happens to represent the worst things about “Strength in Numbers” and how, at least in Game 1, not even that could sabotage Warriors.

But before we go any further, a disclaimer. I have an admittedly disproportionate interest in McAdoo on account of three things:

1. The cadence of his name. James Michael McAdoo just has a lovely swing to it that I’ve enjoyed saying and reading these past three years.
2. The fact that in 2015 he won both a D-League and NBA championship, both with the Warriors, becoming the first player to do so, which is a top five piece of NBA trivia. (He was not alone, Ognjen Kuzmic — #neverforget — also won rings with Santa Cruz and Golden State in 2015.)
3. This tweet, which is not even his best tweet, remains excellent.

Still, I share the opinion of most Warriors fans that McAdoo’s roster spot is inexplicable. I’m on record as both loving when he re-signed last summer and, by December, really preferring that he be gone. In 2015, he played 1:12 in Game 4 of the Finals, during which time he got one defensive rebound. In the 2016 Finals, he played in Game 4, 5 and 6 and we all remember how that turned out. On Thursday, the start of the 2017 Finals, he played in the second quarter and periodically throughout the third and fourth. (McAdoo even got a New York Times profile in January, which actually says more about the collective thirst for Warriors content than anything else.)

But more than a simple waste of space, McAdoo’s minutes represent the worst tendencies of the Strength in Numbers ethos that guides Bob Myers and Steve Kerr’s organization. Playing Anderson Varejao at the end of Game 7 will forever remain one of the most frustrating and mysterious coaching decisions, but Varejao was, at least, a veteran player. No one wanted to see him out there, but you could hope he remembered something from 13 years in the league. Similarly, during the postseason this year, playing JaVale McGee or David West when Zaza Pachulia rests is excusable, often smart. McGee is on a mostly successful redemption tour; West knows his way around a basketball court.

On the flip side of the same coin, seeing Patrick McCaw get Finals minutes is disrespectful and potentially confusing for anyone who is unfamiliar with the underfed wing, but his place in the rotation, like Ian Clark’s, seems like the next step in his development.

McAdoo, rather, has been on the Warriors for three years now and despite the rising tide vibe of the team, has never really broken through or shown anything besides, by all accounts, hustle, dedication and good intentions. He is the player the Warriors low-key remarkable player development system hasn’t been able to hone. But despite first choosing not to retain his services last summer, the Warriors re-signed him to a one-year deal anyways. In fact, Steve Kerr’s commitment to McAdoo’s success is a sometimes delightful and near perennial theme in Warriors Twitter.

Of course, everything that is frustrating for Warriors fans about McAdoo is frustrating tenfold for everyone else, players and fans alike. Because James Michael McAdoo should probably not be on an NBA team, let alone in the Finals, let alone getting actual minutes in three consecutive Finals. Yet here is, doing just that. And rather than stomach-turning dread, Warriors fans get to see his substitutions as just another card to play from the deck of disrespect and dominance.

Next: Worst NBA Finals Starters of All-Time

James Michael McAdoo is not and probably will never be a difference-maker in this series. But Kerr’s, and now Mike Brown’s, affinity for playing the whole bench and a slew of mediocre big men could be. And yet, after Game 1, it’s looking instead like it’s a litmus test for the competitiveness of what comes next.