Will somebody let Scottie Barnes run at the rim?

You gotta move. In the NBA, you gotta move. The king of movement for the Raptors is their All-Star, Scottie Barnes. Even if you didn’t bother to look at all the numbers that track speed and movement, I think most people would come away from a Raptors game thinking that Barnes is the king of output – be that miles traveled, energy expended, impact, whatever.

Barnes is a superbly effortful player. No doubt about it. There’s no way to design a wing player who can ramp up to a 24-9-6 playoff series on one side of the floor while guarding backcourt All-Stars on the other side without taking some level of stamina into consideration. To Barnes’ credit, he’s one of the few stars who hasn’t neglected the defensive side of the floor despite how laborious it can be. He’s not ready to transition to the LeBron James portion of his career (walk a lot of the time, conserve energy, still always remain at the top of the league in transition volume).

From a piece about Andrew Nembhard, that had a Barnes nugget:

“At exit interviews in almost every single season, Scottie Barnes tells me his major goal is to improve his fitness. For a player who is cast in a role that demands a lot of offensive skill – and his relative lack of it compared to other star wings – that answer surprised me at first. Then I covered him for a longer time and things became clearer. I talked to Jason Kidd about how Giannis Antetokounmpo managed to create so much on offense while still providing enough on defense to win DPOY in the same year as his MVP. Or even how Kidd managed to excel on both sides during his hall of fame career. He pointed out that learning where to spend your energy is everything; a trait he was hoping to impress upon Cooper Flagg. 

Barnes is hard pressed to let go of what he brings on defense, and it’s led to him being mocked widely for his offensive output in the past. It took Antetokounmpo years, but he ultimately opted to lean further towards offense. Nembhard, while not an MVP like Antetokounmpo, or an All-Star like Barnes, has entered the phase of his career where he has more agency to determine his role on the court. He’s a talented player with many paths before him, and more than one has the potential to be successful.”

A major question, I think, is how the Raptors set Barnes up for easy success on offense so that he can maintain the high level defensive effort that made him a top 3 defender in the world. As far as I can tell, the 3 easiest ways to score are:

1. Hitting catch and shoot triples
2. Being fed the ball at the rim
3. Finishing in transition

So, one of these falls under the purview of Barnes and his own development. The other two are heavily team context dependent.

Obviously, it would be great if Barnes could graduate out of the “really bad 3-point shooter” class that he currently lives in. The 38% he hit across from downtown across 7 games against the Cavs was mildly heartening. Seeing something like that over the course of a season would create a grinch-like heart growth within this writer.

In terms of catching at the rim to finish in the halfcourt? It can happen, but it’s probably not going to be a very voluminous option for Barnes. For one, Barnes spends too much time on ball to be a fully dedicated roller/cutter. For another, Jakob Poeltl is the most talented screener, the largest player on the team, and a very talented roller which makes him the logical selection for the most volume. It was very nice to see that Barnes, Poeltl, and Collin Murray Boyles were all providing near elite finishing numbers as rollers (all above 1.25 ppp, all above the 75th-percentile), but Barnes had the smallest volume of the trio for obvious reasons. There’s a reason the Raptors had a high rim frequency, and were 5th in paint touch points, they’re stacked with great rollers.

The last one, transition, is the home run swing to me. We have, for years, seen RJ Barrett near the top of the NBA in terms of transition volume. Last year he was 7th in volume, and around the 50th-percentile in efficiency. It’s obvious why the Raptors guard is always near the top. He rebounds well for a guard, creating grab-and-go opportunities. He loves to run alongside others when they push. He likes to take shots. Simple stuff.

Barnes does all these things as well, but with a very important distinction – Barnes’ rebounds are the contested, high point rebounds a lot more often than they are the loose ball collection rebounds. It’s a lot easier to run out with one vs the other. Players like Barnes & Barrett also suffer as grab-and-go handlers when it comes to typical transition spacing and efficiency because they’ve been playing on a team with very little shooting talent. Teams opt to take away the rim and live with transition triples. This was exacerbated last year when even their best shooter, Immanuel Quickley shot 29-percent on transition triples, something we all hope improves measurably this season.

At the start of last season, the Raptors elected to have Barnes operate as an outlet man more often. Not a grab-and-go player who teams could collapse on, but a sprinter up court who could steamroll in 1-on-1 transition scenarios. He started out as one of the best transition scorers in the NBA. The problem was that the Raptors were near the bottom of the NBA in defensive rebounding. Their defense was suffering greatly because of this. So, the boss call was made. Barnes had to spend more time shoring things up on the glass. The transition volume fell to some degree, but the catch-middle-finish-at-the-rim touches that were a huge source of Barnes’ efficiency really fell off a cliff.

Can anyone help this? Is there a solve on the roster?

Last year, Kawhi Leonard was 12th in volume, and near the 90th-percentile in transition. He’s also a historically good defensive rebounder from the wing position. By historic I mean nearly 14 straight years above the 90th-percentile. He’s also historically great at stealing the ball and helping to create more transition possessions that way. Leonard is so complete as a transition player that he can allow everyone else to succeed more often. A rising tide lifting all boats, as it were. Things can always break the wrong way, it’s true, but Leonard is coming off a season where he was in the 96th percentile in how much more efficient his presence made the Clippers offense, and the 94th percentile in how he increased their transition frequency. Titanic impact.

How does that translate for the Raptors? For one, Leonard can hang back on the defensive glass and allow Barnes to break early, especially when Barnes is tasked with star guards higher up the court. For two, Leonard’s incredible gravity as a pull up shooter can pull defenses away from the rim, opening up the wing-to-rim lane for someone like Barnes. For three, Leonard has significant gravity off ball as a shooter, which can help open up straight line lanes to the rim for Barnes as a grab-and-go handler.

For now, this is all hypothetical. And I understand this is very optimistic, but when I look at the film and the numbers and try to project it going forward… it’s hard to come away thinking anything else. It has to be better. It just depends how much better all of this will be.

I can’t wait to see if the Raptors let Barnes run at the rim (in transition).