The following is part of Raptors Republic’s series of pieces reviewing the season for the Toronto Raptors. You can find all the pieces in the series here.
Told in forward and reverse chronology, with colour scale alone distinguishing which timeline is moving ahead and which backwards, Memento is one of Hollywood’s most twisting and enjoyable tales.
Spoiler (I know this movie is very old, but it’s exceptional and not as famous as it should be, so if you haven’t seen it and don’t want the plot spoiled, don’t read this or the next paragraph): It’s hard to say if Leonard, played by Guy Pierce, is the hero or the villain. He has no short term memory and is hunting the man who attacked his wife (hero!). Yet he also kills Teddy who maybe is helping him and maybe is taking advantage of his condition to rob drug dealers (villain!). And of course he might have also been the one who killed his wife himself via insulin (Sammy Jankis!)
But he’s also a philosopher who exposes the viewers as the ones with real short-term memory loss, and his line “I have to believe in a world outside my own mind. I have to believe that my actions still have meaning, even if I can’t remember them. I have to believe that when my eyes are closed, the world’s still there,” is, in some way, redemptive.
All told, Leonard is unquestionably a bad guy. But at the bare minimum he’s a fun-to-watch guy. “Okay, so what am I doing? Oh, I’m chasing this guy. No, he’s chasing me,” is gold.
There’s no villainy or heroism when it comes to sports, but one Toronto Raptor did mimic Memento’s twisty-yet-enjoyable viewing experience: Scottie Barnes.
Only three days before Christmas, the Toronto Star’s Doug Smith fired a broadside at Barnes: “It takes hard work to become an NBA player. It takes work of an order of magnitude much greater than ‘hard’ to become an elite star in the league,” he wrote. “[Barnes] has not quite gotten [that realization] yet.”
Smith is as connected as they come among Raptors’ media, and it’s crucial to note that he would note write such inflammatory things without people within the organization telling him it was the case. Masai Ujiri reportedly had a testy meeting with Barnes during the season. I can assure you that media is not trying to drive Barnes out of town. Nor is the organization. But the smoke-fire corollary would seem to point towards some within the organization being unhappy with Barnes’ development in his second season — and trying to light a proverbial fire under him.
(It’s worth mentioning here that Samson and I disagreed with the criticism of Barnes’ effort at the time. I feel pretty vindicated by that take in hindsight — Barnes’ issues were really just the canary in the coal mine, indicative of structural issues that soon would affect everyone on the roster.)
So did Barnes have a down sophomore year?
Well, no, not really. As with virtually everyone else on the team, the context offered to him did not make success any easier for him to come by. In fact, the team practically never called plays for him — he simply had to suit up and figure out how he was going to impact the game. In the one area that he did see play calls — post-ups — Barnes saw his frequency increase from his rookie season by approximately 0.5 post-ups per game. (He also improved in efficiency there to over 1.0 points per chance.) His impact came in different ways from night to night, from opponent to opponent, from play to play. Sometimes it didn’t come at all; he had 13 games scoring in single digits in his rookie year and 14 in 2022-23.
In fact, in the two games prior to Smith’s scathing article on Barnes’ work ethic, he was virtually invisible. He scored six points in 30 minutes against the Philadelphia 76ers then two in 27 minutes against the New York Knicks. Sure, he disappeared at times. But very few players in the league would not disappear at points on a team that called no plays for them, had no spacing, and started multiple other players at the same position.
Compared to his rookie year, Barnes’ scoring stayed the same while his efficiency plummeted. He showed no improvement in his 3-point jumper, and his commitment to physical components like attacking the paint and rebounding slipped.
And yet, Barnes had in many ways a better season in 2022-23 than the one prior. Perhaps most importantly, the Raptors were a fair amount worse with him on the floor versus on the bench in 2021-22 and significantly better in 2022-23. Even discounting the ‘off’ component of on/off numbers — the Raptors in only Barnes’ minutes were simply a better team in 2022-23 (net rating of plus-3.2) than in 2021-22 (net rating of plus-1.8). That’s a far cry from stagnancy, and it gets at the impact Barnes offered that the box score simply refuses to show.
Barnes himself didn’t score more, but he did more to help the team. He improved in several tangible ways.
Perhaps most importantly, Barnes became a more impactful defender. He was better at harnessing the chaos of his length and closeout ability; he improved his block and steal rates, and he fouled less. He didn’t improve everywhere — for example, he was not better in isolation. But he became a better team defender, if not a better lockdown defender.
Elsewhere, Barnes turned good skills into very good ones.
He dealt with a stretch of unique defense midway through the year when opposing centers guarded him and camped in the lane, daring him to shoot. His response was by and large phenomenal, not challenging them as they so clearly desired, but instead pivoting into rapid handoffs, screens, and off-ball movement to harness the (lack of) attention into open shots for teammates.
He continued becoming a great clutch player and was one of Toronto’s only performers who improved in the fourth quarter. Even though his touch from the short midrange dried up this year, there are real indicators that he’ll be an exquisite finisher down the road. He developed, for a brief moment, tag-team chaos energy with Precious Achiuwa. He played every position, and he added successful minutes as a center — both on offense and on defense — to his resume.
His passing improved to the extent that he is now one of the most creative and visionary passers in the league. He may not have all the skills required to be a primary initiator, but he has passing on absolute lock. His bag contains no-looks, one-hand gathers, touch passes, baseball passes, lobs, outlets, no-looks, quick inbounds, ambidexterity, more no-looks. His passing is artwork, perhaps more than any other individual component of basketball contained within the Raptors’ franchise.
And yet, despite his improvement — if Guy Pierce can vacillate from hero to villain to hero (or something) — then this review can be twisty, too — Barnes did not see much improvement in the major areas that will determine his chances at future stardom. He still can’t beat defenders from a standstill, with both his quickness and his handle lacking. He still can’t space the floor. If he adds one of those — boom, stardom. If he adds both — boom, superstardom. He can of course reach stardom in other ways, while adding neither, but those are the simplest routes.
And that’s probably why the team seemed to have some frustration in Barnes’ development. He did get better from 2021-22 to 2022-23. But not in the ways that mattered most. It was a twisting season for him, and it was an enjoyable one, and I’m sure if it could have been viewed in both forward and reverse, it would have been more confusing, too.
It’s probably unrealistic to expect non-shooters to become shooters, or non-point guards to become point guards. Barnes isn’t a primary initiator or a floor spacer, and he may never become either. And you know what? That’s okay. It was an issue for the Raptors in 2022-23, yes. But so were 150 other things. It doesn’t have to be an issue going forward if Toronto solves its structural problems this offseason. Perhaps the first step Toronto needs to take to move forward after such a miserable season is identifying how to weaponize Barnes without asking him to be someone he’s not. He’s already a hugely skilled and impactful player, and he only became more skilled and impactful in his sophomore year. Now it’s on the team to figure out how to transmute those skills into a winning season.
