Nerd alert: Warriors play lineup with entirely binary jersey numbers

Fans of esoteric number systems could delight in the Warriors’ Sunday night lineup, featuring five players whose jersey numbers were binary.

There’s an old joke that goes — there are 10 kinds of people in the world, those who understand binary, and those who don’t. If you don’t get the joke, you’re one of the ones who don’t.

Binary is what’s known as a base two counting system, which means it only employs the digits one and zero to represent all the same numbers that we do with our standard, base-10 counting system. For example, 0 is zero, 1 is one, 10 is two, 11 is three, 100 is four, and so on. Now try reading the joke again.

It’s fine to get the joke and not think it’s funny, math jokes aren’t for everyone. But those who liked it were probably excited to see the lineup the Warriors used Sunday against the Raptors (h/t r/NBA) — Jonathan Kuminga (No. 00), Donte DiVincenzo (No. 0), JaMychal Green (No. 1), Ty Jerome (No. 10) and Klay Thompson (No. 11) — all of whom have binary jersey numbers.

How did the Warriors end up with an all-binary lineup?

This is a complete quirk on the part of the Warriors but it’s also the only possible combination of five two-digit binary numbers. In a bit of symmetry, they kept it all binary playing exactly one possession, giving up one point to the Raptors before Moses Moody subbed in to shake things up, with nothing else logged in the box score for that unit but a string of zeroes.

Only 52 players in NBA history have ever worn a 00 jersey, so there’s a good chance that this was the first-ever all-binary lineup.

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