The paradoxes of Scottie Barnes and the Toronto Raptors

The Toronto Raptors started off too nice. And not in a good way. You take it. No you. It was the first time the team has started its ostensible starting lineup of the future (for now), with Immanuel Quickley, Gradey Dick, RJ Barrett, Scottie Barnes, and Jakob Poeltl. All are now healthy. And the meat and potatoes of the offence were on the plate, with ghost screens and handoffs and drives, oh my. But a funny thing happened as Toronto probed and deferred, each trying to let someone else play hero and take the risks inherent to playing NBA offence. 

Scottie Barnes didn’t touch the ball. In a sense, that’s normal. He’s the team’s power forward, and power forwards aren’t usually primary ball-handlers. Immanuel Quickley is the point guard, the best shooter, a star of the future. The offence runs through Jakob Poeltl. Gradey Dick gets up shots like it’s his job — wait, it is. (Shooting guard! I get it now.) RJ Barrett’s drives are the lifeblood of the offence, the heartbeats that keep everything flowing. Sometimes touches don’t all flow to the same hands, especially in an offence that prioritizes ball and man movement over individual talents. That should be a good thing. That should be what works best.

Barnes is not just another guy. Except he plays at his best when he is, when he’s not asked to be the sun around whom the entire solar system orbits. 

This is the primary paradox of Scottie Barnes. 

He first touched the ball two minutes into the game, catching it after a flurry of movement, and holding it aloft above his head as if he was readying for a soccer throw-in. When the defence shifted towards him, he hurled the ball to Barrett open in the other corner for a corner 3. Barrett missed, but it was one of the better shots the Raptors found to that point in the game. 

Later Barnes turned into a wrecking ball. He picked Giannis Antetokounmpo’s pocket and threw down a windmill dunk in transition. He took a flex screen from Dick along the baseline before catching the lob from Poeltl for the easy flush. He hit mid-range fadeaway after mid-range stepback after mid-range fadeaway. He took a brush screen from Quickley on the empty side before waltzing to the rim for a layup. Poeltl ghosted a screen for Barnes, and Barnes turned the threat of his mid-range shot into a bullet pass to Poeltl for the and-1 reverse. Then a pocket pass to Poeltl out of the snug pick and roll, though he missed the layup. 

That Barnes did it all bodying Antetokounmpo on the other end, absorbing contact, chopping his puppies, and generally staying between him and the rim, is all the more impressive. Toronto sent plenty of double-teams towards Antetokounmpo regardless, and sometimes it resulted in turnovers (when the helper arrived with the Bucks star’s back turned), but more often it resulted in open Milwaukee 3s. 

Of course, it is crucial to note that Barnes did virtually all of the above damage during transitional lineups. When he was not one of the guys, when role definition was much clearer. To close the first half, when the starters were back in the game, Barnes again blended into the background. For the worse. Milwaukee built its lead to 19. 

The Raptors need Barnes to touch the ball. But they are at their best when they don’t need Barnes to touch the ball. It is a razor-thin that the Raptors must walk in order to find balance, one that is created both by Barnes’ (few) limitations as a self-creator and 3-point shooter, and by the (more numerous) limitations of the team built around him. 

The Bucks kept drilling triples to start the second half, while the Raptors inexplicably continued to turn over the ball. And miss. Barnes touched the ball, but mostly just in passing, dribbling into a handoff for Dick, or pitching the ball back to him for a triple. (Dick missed both shots. Outside of a great outing against the Brooklyn Nets (and garbage time against Milwaukee), he is in the midst of a ferocious cold streak, and his defence and rebounding are not helping his cause.) 

Perhaps Barnes is at his best when he’s lifting an already good team. It’s hard when all the shooters are cold. (After a brilliant first game back from injury, Quickley has not been able to find his way in the offence.) To be fair, Barnes hasn’t perfected his off-ball game. He is not a very good screener (which even Darko Rajakovic admitted, calling that skill a “work in progress” when I asked about it); however, he’s such a brilliant passer in tight spaces, making such immediate choices, that he can turn silver into gold with consistency. 

Toronto’s problem is that it wasn’t creating very much silver. Barnes is an alchemist, not a miner. But the starting group wasn’t giving Barnes much to work with, so he turned to the mines himself in the transitional groups. At least in this one, that’s where he was at his best — hitting mid-rangers. 

But that’s not where Barnes is supposed to be at his best. If the Raptors want a post isolation wizard, Tobias Harris is probably available. Barnes is much, much more than that. But the Raptors are not currently able to let him spread those wings. That, too, is a paradox of Scottie Barnes. 

Barnes is also a steamroller in transition. But with the starting group playing Quickley, Dick, and Barrett, there are simply not enough perimeter defenders for Toronto to consistently get stops and reach the open court. Then when Barnes plays alongside the bench, Kelly Olynyk’s limited mobility offers the same problem. 

Ultimately, this is not looking like a team built to maximize Barnes, to lift up his talent, rather than be lifted by it. That’s not such a revelation; this is a rebuilding team. If Toronto maximized its 2024 All Star, then it would probably be better than its putrid 8-28 record. (Yeah, by the way, Toronto lost to Milwaukee. Lost bad.)

But eventually, either Barnes will need to overcome his limitations, or the Raptors will need to overcome theirs. Ideally each can help the other. But as long as those paradoxes remain, the Raptors will continue getting shelled by 20 points, 30 points. By more. 

Toronto played a team in the Bucks that, though in the midst of up-and-down stretch, knows exactly what it is. Do the Raptors? The largest cheer of the night came when Ja’Kobe Walter hit a triple to push Toronto over the 100-point threshold, meaning free pizza for the crowd. The shot was called back, as Walter stepped out of bounds. Right now, Toronto is searching. And just because the starting lineup is back doesn’t mean the Raptors are. 

Toronto needs answers to a variety of questions. First and foremost, how does it solve the paradoxes of Scottie Barnes? He is great — how can Toronto turn that into a great team? He is not a good 3-point shooter — how can the rest of the Raptors create and convert enough 3s to compete in the modern NBA? Energy was once their calling card, but that feels like a lifetime ago. 

Barnes is spending his time in the mines, hands sooty and breathing laboured. Toronto needs to find a way for him to become an alchemist again.

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