We don’t have to worry about Scottie Barnes

Scottie Barnes has had a hell of a start to his season so far, but not in the same way that it was a hell of a start to his third year in the NBA. He continues to amass box score stats, and he is the best player on the Raptors — which is the same as last season — but unlike last season, there’s no surprise statistical development, no torrid 3-point shooting, and no expectations cleared – at least not yet.

Unfortunately, Barnes had to navigate a summer on the mend from a broken hand; then he sustained a broken orbital bone courtesy of a Nikola Jokic elbow, and then a sprained ankle after climbing Karl-Anthony Towns’ back for a block attempt. It’s been a rough go health wise for Barnes, as he’s been robbed of any semblance of momentum over, roughly, the past calendar year.

His game is changing. There is a real attempt at wingification going on here.

If you’ve noticed a huge uptick in jumpers (and dribble jumpers especially) the numbers will back you up. It’s not just the extra 3-point attempts that Barnes is trying to get up, but a meaningful bump in mid-range attempts. 11-percent of Barnes’ shot chart has been sapped from rim attempts and distributed elsewhere. He’s now 70th-percentile in the NBA as far as pull-up frequency goes (30th-percentile in efficiency). He is scoring significantly less off screens, off cuts, and as a roll man. It’s not just that those are easier possessions to score off of, but they’re playtypes that properly utilize his size and play finishing abilities.

The reason why this isn’t particularly worrying to me? I think he can quite comfortably slide back into those actions when the team calls for it, or after he’s done stretching his legs trying to create constantly with a live dribble. The Raptors moved away from Pascal Siakam and a middling team, but it was absolutely true that Barnes benefited greatly from Siakam’s offensive gravity and high-level playmaking. Even though RJ Barrett has done a bang up job stepping into a larger offensive role and creating for others this year, he’s creating mostly for roll men, cutters, and spot up shooters. Barnes has barely rolled or cut this year and he’s only shooting 32-percent on C&S triples this year, so he can’t even get lumped into that creation. No man is an island, but Barnes’ role this year is asking him to be one, at least to some extent.

Even in regards to his pick n’ roll play — which was a big strength last season — that has ticked up in frequency, we’ve seen a dip in efficiency because he’s not running it with the likes of Quickley/OG Anunoby/Pascal Siakam/Gary Trent Jr. as often.

There’s some interesting stuff with Ja’Kobe Walter, but I’m waiting on some more volume to amass to dive into that.

Last season the Barnes on ball/Quickley screening actions went quite well. Barnes was able to leverage Quickley’s gravity into some leeway in driving lanes, which in turn made him a more dangerous driver and playmaker heading downhill. Quickley however, did not benefit greatly from Barnes as his screening partner. I’ll be very interested to see if the overwhelming push towards Barnes’ wing-adjacent stardom is tempered by Quickley’s return in an attempt to equalize the 2-man game, or if they’ll double down with the opportunity the Raptors guard provides for Barnes to charge up his on-ball actions. That alone should be a great indicator of what the Raptors want to see in the future.

All this to say, the NBA has gotten a lot deeper, a lot more complex in how you outfox defenses, and how rosters and skillsets intertwine is extremely important. It has giant, cascading effects on players and their success, and Barnes is currently shouldering through some of the clunkiness of the fit along with some bodily maladies.

Even the changes on the defensive side have squashed Barnes’ big playmaking numbers on that end of the floor. With OG Anunoby gone (and Siakam to a much lesser extent), Barnes has been placed in matchups on the outside far more often which don’t allow him to sit in the backline sweeper role that he was commanding to All-Defense level impact last season. Even when he does get to play that role, the ball pressure, length and intensity elsewhere isn’t forcing on-ball players into as many difficult decisions that Barnes can playmake on. Through 18 games last year Barnes had 53 stocks, and this year he’s sitting at 35. He’s not a different level of defender, he’s still quite good, he’s just in a different role and surrounded by a worse defensive nucleus.

For me, Barnes has already answered whether or not he’s a max player – and that answer for me is YES.

What will be interesting to track, in this odd season, is what type of max player Barnes is. He can garbage man his way to All-Star impact fairly easily — which is a great compliment to his game — by finishing plays on offense, blowing them up on the other end, dominating transition, imbuing his tremendous playmaking everywhere on the court, and helping tilt the battle on the glass towards his own team night in and out. He’s a really strong player even when he’s not a focal point.

Barnes is currently trying to be the focal point. If he uses this season to work out the kinks of on-ball creation and comes out on the other side with huge gains (which hasn’t happened yet, but could) it creates a chain-effect for how the Raptors get to team build. Most importantly, they could probably exchange some of the creation from the guard/wing spot for defense, which helps a lot.

The early returns? They haven’t been particularly strong. However, as pointed out at the top, Barnes hasn’t been given much runway to try things out; and additionally, he’s being asked to work with some fairly weird and limited lineups. Development looks a lot of different ways, progression isn’t linear – all that stuff. Everyone is entitled to how they think Barnes should be developing. I’ve voiced that I’d like to see a larger volume of drives — I think that those possessions reading defenses, rotations etc. in game are absolutely essential and invaluable — some people have voiced they want to see a huge volume of triples. There’s a few different types of player that Barnes could be, depending on what he works on.

However, Barnes is without question working on things. It’s different and it’s more difficult now, but this is just a step in his career towards a better version of himself. With Barnes’ talents he’s made a lot of difficult things look easy and he rode that to an early All-Star selection. Now, he’s doing the difficult things that look difficult for him. We’ll see how much of it becomes easy with time.

Have a blessed day.

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