The legend goes that Efren Reyes didn’t touch a pool cue until he was already a master. He lived in his uncle’s pool hall for several years when he was a young child, and he absorbed the game through osmosis. He watched the hustlers and learned their tricks. He knew the tables and the angles. He slept on a pool table when the place was closed. Before he was 20, he was the best player in the world.
He watched good players, and he learned English and draw and shape from them. He watched bad players, and he learned impossible multi-bank shots from them. He learned without fear of failure. In a sense, Reyes not touching a cue for the first three years of living in a pool hall was a form of training wheels.
In that frame of mind, the Toronto Raptors have treated the first three of years of Scottie Barnes’ career as a form of training wheels, too. It has not been his team. Pascal Siakam and Fred VanVleet shared those honours for Barnes’ first two years. It has not been his offense. Plays were rarely called for him in his first two years, and his strengths — passing to shooters, quick decision — have not been emphasized in team-building. And as a result, as well as the fact that Toronto hasn’t really been contending, he has been able to learn with relatively lessened consequences to any failure.
Until now.
Much has been made of Barnes being a point guard. But against the Washington Wizards on Dec. 27, 2023, Barnes finally started at the position. The Raptors won with ease, putting up 132 points. They scored well in transition, sure — running more than they have for weeks. But the half-court offense was also solid.
On Toronto’s first possession, Barnes drove and saw the nail help disallowing him from entering the lane. Many players in this situation would simply keep the ball moving, sensing his own opportunity to score had vanished. Barnes did the opposite — taking an extra dribble into the danger zone. But that engagement drew further the extra defender from the wing, opening an extra foot of space for the shooter above the break. It was Pascal Siakam, and he missed the triple, but Barnes gathered the rebound and hit a midrange jumper of his own to finish the possession.
It was an excellent microcosm of the game, of the entire project: Barnes is going to do everything for this team. He is going to get more touches, initiate more sets, and create more shots for teammates. His assists will jump — he finished with eight against Washington, and it could have been a lot more. With Gary Trent jr. alongside him rather than Dennis Schroder, Barnes had much wider driving and passing lanes.
He found cutters throughout the game, as always. He thrived in transition, running, diming, dunking. He wasn’t thrown a Doncician load of pick and rolls to start his point-guard career — he only ran 12, far from his season high of 23. (As a point of comparison, Schroder ran 32 despite coming off the bench.) And though Toronto scored well with the ball in Barnes’ hands, his picks specifically didn’t yield as bounteous fruit as the rest of the offense. If there’s anything to keep track of, that’s the most important indicator for whether Barnes can become the dominant half-court leader championship teams require.
And Barnes also did great damage off the ball. His jumpshot remains stellar, as he cashed four more against the Wizards. But it wasn’t just the accuracy, it was the means by which he tossed ‘em up. He formed up around teammates’ drives, stepping into makes. He even launched a triple on the move, curling around a pindown. He missed it, but I’ve never seen him fire such an attempt before, at least not at speed. If Barnes can thrive off the ball as a shooter and cutter, on the ball as a creator, and in the empty spaces of the game as a rebounder and broken-play finisher, then his ceiling is limitless. He could be the best offensive player on a championship team if all that ends up true.
And defensively, Barnes may not have navigated screens well, but he was still a force. It’s helpful to have your point guard stand 6-foot-10 rather than 6-foot-2. On one possession, Barnes deterred two shots at the rim with his length and positioning, closed out to the corner and forced a fumble, and then forced a miss on a drive to end the possession. He tracked guards and blocked them from behind. He finished with 2 blocks and 3 steals — continuing an enormous season of stock collection.
Of course, the benefits to Barnes starting at point guard, for this team at this time, goes beyond Barnes himself. It helps the bench to have Schroder on it because he’s a very capable backup point guard. Perhaps he has been overmatched as a starter — certainly when you consider he doesn’t help the team’s spacing at all — but he is not overmatched against most backup guards.
Schroder finished with 10 assists and led the team in plus-minus. He attempted few shots, and he seemed to truly embrace his role of sixth man floor general. He did most of his passing damage as a second-side attacker and in transition, and that’s an ideal role for him. While his running an offense against starter-level defenders may not yield optimal efficiency, he is more than equipped to create for teammates in the open court or after others create advantages.
And with Schroder as the backup point guard, Malachi Flynn left the rotation until garbage time. While he has improved this season, the Raptors have been significantly worse with him on the floor. Not needing Flynn could help the team win more minutes.
This may be burying the lede, or at least a caveat the size of New Brunswick, but the Raptors were playing the Wizards. As in, the five-win Wizards. The worst-defense-in-the-league Wizards. So it’s not particularly hard for Barnes to look good as the starting point guard against such a foe. But you can only beat the team in front of you.
And Efren Reyes himself may have been the best player in the world at 18 or 19, but he actually hadn’t proved it to that point. He hadn’t even left the Philippines. He had beaten a few of the best players in the country (which, as we know now, certainly makes you a contender for best in the world), but he knew.
Barnes is not the best player in the world. (Not yet.) But the Raptors have spent long enough with training wheels on their foundational player. It is time to see what the team looks like with him in the driver’s seat alone, no secondary wheel for the instructor in the passenger seat. One game down, hopefully hundreds more to go.
