The following story is a part of SportsDay Style, the subscriber-only magazine that published earlier in August. To subscribe to the Dallas Morning News, click here.

The NBA is all about the party-all-night, make-it-rain lifestyle that appeals to young, chiseled, immensely rich athletes and the women who fawn over them, right?

And then there are Brittany and Harrison Barnes, a young couple married barely a year who don't mind taking a sledgehammer to that stereotype.

To say they aren't big fans of the glitz and glamour that many fans and some players believe the NBA is all about would be an understatement. Especially for Brittany. As she and the Dallas Mavericks' leading scorer from the last two seasons passed their first wedding anniversary on July 29, she laughs at how unlikely their relationship seemed during a chance meeting with Harrison when both were students at North Carolina. She was so far removed from any sort basketball life at UNC that she didn't even know her university was more famous for being Michael Jordan's school than for the superior journalism department for which she went cross-country to attend.

That's what made meeting Harrison Barnes at a comfort-food spot called [B]Skis on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill, N.C., all the more unlikely. In the summer school session before her senior year, she was out with her friends. And the athletes on the basketball team were required to stay on campus for the summer.

"We were sitting outside and I walked in to order and Harrison is walking out of the door," Brittany said. "We stand there and stare at each other for a second with the glass in between us. I'm like waiting for him to open the door, right? And he's just staring. So I open the door and I'm like, chivalry must really be dead, right? And he's like, 'Oh, my bad. What's your name?' That's exactly what he said.

"I said, 'Brittany.' And he said: 'My name's Harrison.' I said I knew, because everybody knew who the basketball players were."

That's when the alarms started to go off in her head. This was not her idea of a dream meeting with a star athlete. She was not that type.

"I'm not one of the girls who dates a basketball player," she said. "That's just a no-no. I walked away, just like my mom told me to. I went back over by my friends and that was the last time I talked to him that night."

It was a couple of days later when Brittany, whose last name at the time was Johnson, started to learn just what kind of perseverance Harrison had. It involved a little "scouting report" on Brittany, as Harrison called it. And a lot of ice cream.

Harrison had asked a mutual friend if he could get Brittany's number. When he did, the first text he sent was a simple "How are you?"

The second text? It was at least two phone screens long and basically laid out Barnes' intentions for the couple, even if they hadn't said more than a few words to each other yet. Barnes knew what he wanted. He didn't want to play the field anymore. He wanted a genuine person. He wasn't into a crazy lifestyle. He wanted normal.

Which of course led him to ice cream.

"It took a long time," Brittany said. "I would ignore his text messages. I would ignore his calls. But somehow, he found out what my favorite ice cream was at the time. Starbucks had that java chip ice cream and you couldn't find it at every grocery store. But he would come to the house to coerce me into hanging out with four pints of this java chip ice cream.

"And he didn't have a car at the time, so John Henson, one of his teammates, would drive him up to the house and drop him off. And he'd be standing there with a grocery bag of ice cream with his laptop so we could, like, study in the living room. After about six months of that, that's finally how we started. That was June of 2011, and by November of 2011, we made it official. He had made it up in his mind. I'd never encountered a man that was so sure as he was about what he wanted. He was only like 18 years old at the time. And we were together for seven years after that [before getting married]."

Dallas Mavericks basketball player Harrison Barnes and his wife Brittany are pictured at The Joule hotel in downtown Dallas, photographed on Friday, July 13, 2018. (Louis DeLuca/The Dallas Morning News) (Louis DeLuca / Staff Photographer)

The above photo and photos in this story were shot inside one of four expansive penthouses at The Joule ranging from 1,350 to 2,500 square feet.

As always in a relationship, there were some twists and turns. When Barnes made the decision to go pro after his sophomore season with the Tar Heels, he thought things were headed to a little down time for him and Brittany.

Until fate stopped by to lend a hand.

"When it came time for the draft, we thought we'd take a little break because I thought I was going to be drafted by Cleveland with the No. 4 pick and we were worried about any kind of long-distance relationship," Barnes said. "Then, I ended up getting drafted by Golden State and she ended up going to grad school at Berkeley [the University of California]. So a guy from Ames, Iowa, and a California girl met in North Carolina and ended up in the Bay Area together."

To this day, the night of the draft remains one that Brittany has a difficult time processing. She was not sitting at Barnes' inner-circle table at the draft. She was at an adjacent table. She was prepared, like Barnes, for him to go to Cleveland and was braced for the worst in terms of their relationship.

"And somehow, the No. 7 pick is going to Golden State and I'm like, I'm from the Bay," she said. "I had graduated and moved back in with my parents there. So of all the places this man could have ended up, he ends up in my backyard.

"We didn't have to do the long distance and, to be honest, it wouldn't have worked. In our heads, we're like, we don't know if it's going to work. And then, once he came to San Francisco, it's like, well, we might as well. We're both here."

After several years of dating, a championship with Golden State and an unexpected move to Dallas in the summer of 2016, the union became official last summer. They have come a long way in a relatively short time.

Brittany is working in videography and supporting Harrison at every turn. The wins have not come in Dallas like they did at Golden State. But that doesn't mean life hasn't been successful and fun since they arrived.

In fact, Barnes has found himself as a budding journalist, doing several question-and-answer sessions for The Players' Tribune, including ones with Emmitt Smith and civil rights activist Harry Edwards. That leads to the question of whether Barnes has something more political in his future after basketball.

Dallas Mavericks basketball player Harrison Barnes is pictured at The Joule hotel in downtown Dallas, photographed on Friday, July 13, 2018. (Louis DeLuca/The Dallas Morning News) (Louis DeLuca / Staff Photographer)

He gets asked that a lot these days and says it's not clear because he has so much more to do on the basketball court.

"But I wouldn't say it's off the table," he said of a post-career dip into the political world. "I think it's important that we as athletes do whatever we can to help kids, primarily helping kids of color. Basketball is such a good platform to be able to have a real impact on kids. We don't have all the answers, but we can tell kids the importance of asking questions and working hard. Maybe they go to their teacher and ask questions because their favorite player told them it was a good thing to do.

"I have a desire to learn and be able to interact with people that I admire or like or respect. To me, I'm honored to be able to talk to and interview people like Dr. Harry Edwards and Emmitt Smith, and just to be able to ask them questions is an unbelievable opportunity. I'm not a journalist. I have no idea about that. My wife is 10 times the writer that I am. I'm not going to be on that level. But this is something I enjoy doing."

And it fits with how Barnes and his wife like to live their lives. There's a time and a place for everything. They can party with the best of them on occasion, such as Dirk Nowitzki's 40th birthday bash in June or their own wedding reception. But they appreciate the simple things, too. In many ways, Barnes is the perfect sidekick to Nowitzki, who is similarly immune to the make-it-rain code by which many NBA players live.

"We've been privileged to be on teams where, generally, that party atmosphere is not the culture of that team," Brittany said. "If we were at the Lakers or the Knicks ... but being with the Warriors, which is a very family-oriented team, and then to the Mavericks, also very family-oriented -- people are married and people have kids and people have lives outside of basketball, so they can't really afford to be out partying all night.

"That makes all the difference -- the people you are surrounded by. And we've been lucky to be surrounded by really good people."

Twitter: @ESefko

The great barbecue debate

Dallas Mavericks basketball player Harrison Barnes and his wife Brittany are pictured at The Joule hotel in downtown Dallas, photographed on Friday, July 13, 2018. (Louis DeLuca/The Dallas Morning News) (Louis DeLuca / Staff Photographer)

A big night on the town in Ames, Iowa, might include going for a chicken-fried or a rack of ribs at Hickory Park, a restaurant that Harrison Barnes has a great fondness for.

It was one of the first places that he took Mavericks' coach Rick Carlisle after Barnes signed with the team and Carlisle went on a get-to-know-you trip to Ames with Barnes and his then-girlfriend, Brittany.

So how does the food in rural Iowa compare with Dallas?

"It's all a matter of perspective," Barnes said. "There's a steakhouse there that's really good. And a barbecue place called Hickory Park. I took coach Carlisle there one time and he started eating and he said: 'Man, this is awful.'

Brittany was at the table for that potentially awkward moment, which was defused quickly.

"It was so sad," she said. "It was right after he signed and we took Rick to the restaurant. And Harrison's like, this is the best barbecue in Iowa. And the coach was like, uh, this is disgusting. And it was really funny."

Barnes, of course, sticks by his hometown cuisine: "I have to admit, Texas has great barbecue. But Hickory Park is really good, too."

Out and about town

Dallas Mavericks basketball player Harrison Barnes and his wife Brittany are pictured at The Joule hotel in downtown Dallas, photographed on Friday, July 13, 2018. (Louis DeLuca/The Dallas Morning News) (Louis DeLuca / Staff Photographer)

If you want to run into Harrison and Brittany Barnes around Dallas, you might want to take a spin on your bike around White Rock Lake.

Or check out one of those confounding spots known as escape rooms.

Barnes and his bride enjoy getting locked into a room and having to find the clues to getting out. They got hooked on the theme rooms awhile back.

"We love escape rooms," Harrison Barnes said. "We've really had fun doing those. We made it out of all of them but one. We exhausted all the time in that one and then figured it out, but it was too late. The best ones we've been to are Escape the Room and Bank Heist. We could not crack that one. Most other times, we finish it, but we missed that one."

The Barneses also like to take bike rides around White Rock Lake, and they recently started taking golf lessons at Top Golf.

When they need sustenance, one of their favorite stops is Mughlai in North Dallas.

"It's great Indian food," Harrison said. "My wife is a vegetarian. I'm never going to be completely vegetarian. But I try to watch what I eat as much as I can. But that's a good place for both of us."