There was almost no competitive team in the NBA last season that had such clear and identifiable weaknesses as the Toronto Raptors. The offensive problems were not hidden. The team did not drive with any modicum of success, and the Raptors weren’t efficient at scoring when they reached the rim. They were not good at shooting triples, and just as significantly, they were not treated by defenders as good at shooting triples, so teams packed the paint off the ball. That created a vicious cycle with drives, making forays into the paint that much more difficult. The Raptors did not draw free throws. And they isolated close to the most often among any team yet with almost the lowest efficiency. With all that in mind, it was a wonder the Raptors were as good a team as they were. But they were decidedly a team with a round hole sitting squarely in the middle of the roster.
For a time, it seemed like Scottie Barnes might be a square peg. He entered the league without a dangerous jumpshot, and he had positional and conceptual overlap with incumbent superstar Siakam. That went out the window as soon as he stepped on the court.
It was clear that Barnes offered plenty to the Raptors. But so far this season, he has offered even more — exactly what the Raptors need. Barnes remade his game, transforming himself into exactly the round peg Toronto requires to address its weaknesses. The solutions that Barnes embodies are uncanny.
Barnes has become a solution with the ball in his hands or otherwise. Last season, he averaged 0.86 points per possession when finishing a play in isolation. That’s not great, so it makes sense that he only averaged 1.8 such possessions per game. This season he improved to about average on isolations on almost double the frequency. Outside of Pascal Siakam, the Raptors didn’t have anyone last season to whom they could throw the ball and reliably expect a bucket from anywhere on the floor. Barnes has, on occasion, been a second orbital system around which the team can revolve.
All hint of Barnes’ passivity from preseason has vanished, and he’s beating opponents to angles, eating space with his stride, and forcing the issue as much as possible.
Rim pressure from the Raptors is night and day with Barnes on or off the court. With him playing, the team takes significantly more shots at the rim, shoots more efficiently when there, and sees more of its at-rim shots assisted. Part of that is Barnes himself — he’s shooting more than 10 percentage points more efficiently out of his drives. He cuts beautifully off of Siakam, whether the star is in the post or facing up. When he catches at the rim, he’s so long and decisive that it’s automatic points.
But there’s more to Toronto’s at-rim success with Barnes on the court than Barnes’ own scoring in the halfcourt. He’s a great connective passer, slinging dimes to teammates at the rim. He’s bulldozing in transition. He’s one of the best and highest-frequency cutters in the league. Barnes’ free-throw rate may be down this season, but the team’s is up when he’s on the floor versus on the bench. That wasn’t true last year.
In fact, none of that was true last year. The 2021-22 Raptors were better at creating and finishing rim attempts with Barnes on the bench. He cut less often and was less efficient when shooting out of cuts. He was individually brilliant for the Raptors, but he was statistically less important to the team than he could have been. The team’s offense was better with him on the bench than on the court; this season, he has the best on/off differential on the team on the offensive end. His individual talents are converting to team success in a way they didn’t in the past.
Much of that is because of Barnes’ metamorphosis. He may have woken up from a cocoon as a butterfly, but it was less cute and more ready to sting like a bee. Offensively, he is doing just what the Raptors need. He did some of that last year, but not to this extent. And defensively, many of his own weaknesses seem to have not made the trip to the (NBA) calendar year. He is now reading plays and players better, staying down better (but not perfectly) when guarding the ball. His steal and block rates are higher — both are elite now. He is turning into the honed defensive weapon that so many Raptors already are. But overlap there is never a bad thing.
This might be burying the lede, or it might be nothing, but Barnes is also shooting a very solid 37.5 percent from deep, albeit on fewer per-game attempts as last season. Whether he’s improved or not is really in the eye of the beholder at this point, as it takes a long time for 3-point percentages to stabilize to a predictive rate. And Barnes has taken a paltry eight 3-point attempts so far this season. Barnes has gone through hot streaks before, and it’ll take months and months (if not years) of good shooting to prove he’s a good shooter.
But Barnes doesn’t have to be too much better than last season’s 30.1-percent accuracy from deep to make a difference. He just needs opponents to perceive him as better. Hot streaks are significant there and can help sway perspective. If opponents are slightly more worried about him making triples, then his defender will cheat less when he doesn’t have the ball, opening up the lane for his teammates. His defender will sag less when he does have the ball, opening up the lane for Barnes himself to drive. Toronto’s weaknesses are integrally interrelated, and so too are Barnes’ incremental improvements.
From any spacing Barnes can scrounge flows the entire rest of the game. And the Raptors had putrid spacing last year. If Barnes can do anything to widen it, even by a few inches at a time, that will pay off in mountains of extra points. The inches the Raptors need are all around them, and Barnes has turned himself into a purveyor of prime real estate, in many ways this season. If shooting becomes one of those ways, look out.
Barnes is still growing as a player, both literally and metaphorically. He could wake up one day soon and be seven feet tall. That wouldn’t really change anything, as he’s already long enough to extend over virtually any player in the league in the paint. But the boundaries of his game, his contours and comforts, his preferences and abilities, shift every day. His instability is both a strength and a weakness. It means Barnes could do anything on an individual possession, be anything, and that should strike fear in the hearts of a rotating defender. He might go up and under on the same side, switching hands, showing the type of kinetic creativity reserved for the greats. At the same time, he is by definition inconsistent, testing the limits of his skills rather than doing what works and hammering that nail, day in and day out.
Fortunately for the Raptors, his growth doesn’t seem to be random. He is pushing his game in the same direction that the Raptors need, molding his abilities to the same cast with which Toronto’s flaws are built. At the same time, he sharpens the team’s strengths on the defensive side of the floor. He is turning into an organization hub, a bureaucrat of the best kind. For many years Siakam built his game to fill the hole left by Kawhi Leonard. He’s there now, not learning or growing, but dominating every possession, every dribble, in ways consistent and replicable. And Barnes is building his game to match the requirements alongside Siakam. Growth is both localized and generalized, and it takes brilliance to match the two together. Barnes is doing just that.
It’s hard to know what Barnes will be when his edges crystallize into form, when he ossifies and hardens. When he becomes repeatable. Both Samson and I took a crack at answering that question this summer. But ultimately, not even Barnes knows yet. He’ll change, day in and day out, for a long time yet. And yet as we can see so far this season, that won’t come at the team’s expense; he’s contributing massively as he’s learning. That is perhaps the best sign of all; when Barnes is a finished product, nothing, not even his own growth, will be able to stand in his own way.
