What To Make Of Scottie Barnes' Season

Outstanding defence, leadership has grown, offence has questions

There are 12 games remaining in the Toronto Raptors’ 2024-25 campaign.

With the lineups the team has trotted out over the last several games and only one game remaining against a plus-.500 team (Detroit Pistons on Apr. 4), it feels safe to say there aren’t many more meaningful minutes for Scottie Barnes to play.

Keeping that in mind, I thought now would be a good time to look back on his season and assess where he’s at relative to expectations coming in. It felt like a good way to take a break from all the tank talk, too.

Barnes has played 55 of Toronto’s 70 games thus far, averaging 19.7 points, 7.8 rebounds, 5.9 assists, 1.5 steals, and a block. We will get into the crux of those numbers below but that’s the core of the layers we’ll delve into.

Expectations Coming In

From an offensive standpoint, the hope was that Barnes would add a go-to move or two to his arsenal. In 2023-24, his 3-point shot looked good through the first third of the season before falling off a cliff the rest of the way. It was reasonable to believe that he would put in the work over the summer to extend the consistency of his outside shooting.

Perhaps the biggest goal coming into the season was to see him and Immanuel Quickley develop some genuine chemistry with each other. They looked clunky operating in the pick-and-roll with each other last season and so there was a desire to see the two improve their understanding with more time alongside each other this season.

Defensively, Barnes showed his potential as part of a fearsome backline alongside Jakob Poeltl. He thrived when in a bit of a free safety role and could contest players at the rim. He also showed a propensity to defend bigs quite well in the post because of his own size and strength. His biggest weakness was defending on the perimeter and screen navigation. Barnes’ lateral quicks weren’t where they needed to be and defending too aggressively often found him getting blown by.

The leadership aspect was probably the biggest aspect to examine this season. Having just been handed the keys to the franchise midway through ‘23-24 after the Pascal Siakam trade, Barnes had several lessons to learn from. There was the Thunder game in Oklahoma City and the San Antonio Spurs game in Toronto where Barnes’ lack of engagement showed he was a deer in the headlights as far as being the face of the Raptors was concerned.

Alright, that’s enough background. Let’s dig into this season’s progress:

Defence

You can’t praise Barnes enough in this regard. If the Raptors had a winning record, he would likely be figuring into All-Defensive team conversations. He has been that good on that end of the floor.

I think his lateral quickness and overall quickness has improved, and that would have required a lot of good off-season work. You can see it in his effort level, whether it’s through ball pressure or ball denial, Barnes is a bullying pest. Smaller defenders are pesky but you can be physical enough to fend off their efforts — unless they’re the strong guard type a la Kyle Lowry, Fred VanVleet, Davion Mitchell, and Jamal Shead.

There’s no swatting Barnes away no matter the size of the opposing player. He occupies spaces that leaves you with limited answers and then preys on those insecurities.

The Raptors’ defence allows 5.6 points fewer per-100 possessions when Barnes is on the floor. Among forwards, he is in the 94th percentile in defensive rebounding, 92nd percentile in block percentage, 90th percentile in foul rate, and 83rd percentile in steal percentage.

What’s great to see with Barnes this season is the amount of homework being done on a nightly basis. He is studying opposing players’ weaknesses with great detail and playing them accordingly. The highlight of this season is probably when the Raptors took on the Phoenix Suns and Barnes stifled Kevin Durant at every opportunity.

Now, there is still room for improvement against smaller, quicker guards on the perimeter and there is still the odd occasion where he gets blown by being a little too overzealous. Where he’s at now as a perimeter defender is till a significant development.

With Barnes able to defend the perimeter like this, it will actually allow Brandon Ingram to play his most preferred role on the backline more often. Though skinny, Ingram uses his length inside really well and also has a good knack for helping on drives while still being able to extend back out to contest shots after a kick out.

Offence

Barnes has the most shot attempts (17.7 FGA) and worst efficiency of his career, not a good combo. He is shooting 51.1% on twos and 26.7% on threes for an effective field goal percentage (eFG%) of 48.2%. In what was a disappointing sophomore season, his eFG% was 48.7%.

I do think there has been improvement, though. While has become a little mid-range happy (especially the turnaround from the left block), that is a sign of progress. There was a stretch when Barnes was on fire from that area of the floor and he’s currently at 47.6% on shots between 10-16 feet. He was under 30% from that range in each of the past two seasons. That’s a huge jump.

What makes Barnes inefficient this season is that area of the floor accounting for 18% of his offence. 27% of his offence is shooting threes and 26% of his offence is in the 3-10 foot range where he makes 44.1% of his attempts. When we all became enamoured with Barnes’ rookie season, he had a feathery touch in and around the basket and made 50.2% of his attempts between 3-10 feet. He needs to regain that touch.

With the 3-point stroke, I think Barnes has to abandon pull-up threes almost completely. He’s now attempted one more (78) than Gradey Dick this season, and made just 18 of them for 23.1%. While we’re here, Dick is at just 24.7% on pull-up threes.

Barnes is shooting 28.8% on catch-and-shoot threes this season and that’s worrisome. In today’s NBA, having two players in the starting five who can’t stretch the floor (yes, Jakob Poeltl’s 3-pointer against Portland was nice but let’s be real) can make life pretty difficult so Barnes simply has to improve in this regard. One would hope that a fully healthy team can help with the quality of his catch-and-shoots, too.

Now, process-wise, Barnes has not had much offence created for him this season. There’s relatively not as much by the way of cuts or screens, even as a roller in PnR actions. The Warriors game was a good example of how things can look for Barnes when his offence is more simplified. He’s able to get more in semi transition, he’s scoring in the post as well, making good decisions receiving the ball after screening, and leaking out in transition.

In the same way that I said Barnes’ improvement as a perimeter defender can help put Ingram in a better position defensively, I think Ingram’s strengths as a scorer can help put Barnes in better positions offensively.

Leadership

I think Barnes has made really significant progress in this area. He leads in his own way, his energy and joy has been a lot more consistent relative to last season. You want a leader to set the tone on the defensive end of the floor and Barnes has absolutely done that with impressive intensity and verve.

In a tanking season, there are bound to be lulls so I’m willing to give him a pass on the occasions it hasn’t been quite up to scratch. Even some of the offensive process would have struggled as a result.

In terms of saying the right things, he has consistently emphasized his desire to compete in a tanking season, has acknowledged when the team’s intensity hasn’t been good enough, and has taken ownership of having to be the one to show the way.