As with Devin Booker, the Raptors’ Scottie Barnes will need to work to climb
TORONTO — Toronto Raptors coach Darko Rajaković recalled the 2015 NBA Draft, one of his first years as a full-time member of the Oklahoma City Thunder coaching staff.
“He entered our facility as an 18-year-old, and you could see swag and desire to be great,” Rajaković said of Phoenix Suns guard Devin Booker . “And that stays until this day today. He’s been able, every season, to add to his game. To be honest with you, I was thinking (to) myself: ‘Oh, (this year’s Suns) don’t have a point guard? How are they going to be this year?’ He’s doing an outstanding job.”
After a rough start, the Suns are doing fine. The Raptors snapped their seven-game win streak Wednesday with a thoroughly unlikely 112-105 win, after not getting home to Toronto until early in the morning following a loss in Brooklyn and a flight delay. Through 10 games, Booker is averaging 8.5 assists, with the five he had Wednesday dragging him down. Booker left the game twice with an ankle injury, with Kevin Durant , fresh off his own foot injury, taking the bulk of the late-game opportunities. Booker’s career high before this season was 6.8, which he was doing as the only real threat on the pre-Chris Paul Suns. It was Paul’s departure that has put Booker into more of a facilitator role once again. Booker has grown immensely, and that doesn’t happen without diligent work.
The Suns did not play their best game, with Raptors third-year forward Scottie Barnes one of the primary reasons why. Whereas Booker came into the league as a natural scorer who had to add more playmaking to his game, Barnes has to make the opposite journey to make him the most dangerous player he can be. Barnes had 23 points, seven rebounds and four assists, including 12 points and five boards in the fourth.
“I don’t know,” Barnes said when asked about his late-game success. “I got that dog in me.”
Someone alert Patrick Beverley .
After a hot start to the season, Barnes had shot just 42.2 percent over his last 10 games before Wednesday. His contributions still far outpace last year, when he regularly disappeared from halves of games. The efficiency drop is real, though.
No one can deny Barnes’ playmaking in the open floor. He made two great passes in the same possession to get Jakob Poeltl a basket, finding OG Anunoby seconds before, leading him to where he needed to be instead of where he was heading to maximize a fast-break opportunity. The vision is special. His assist numbers will climb if and when the team surrounds him with more shooters.
He has also gone from a good off-ball defender to a great one, making at least one eye-popping play per game.
Barnes has made a notable jump on his 3-point shooting this year, although 19 games are far too few to assume he is now a 38 percent shooter for good. For now, it’s an important step Barnes seems intent on taking, which is good.
Elsewhere, efficiency remains an issue. He entered the game shooting just 40.3 percent from in between 3 and 10 feet after shooting 44 percent there last year. Against the Suns, he showed nice touch from just outside the restricted area , helping to prop up the Raptors’ much-maligned bench-heavy units. Last year, 28.1 percent of Barnes’ field goal attempts occurred at the rim. That has fallen to 23.3 percent this year. Either he has to get better in that floater range or he has to get right to the rim more often. It’s clear what his coach would like.
“When you see how teams are guarding him, they’re kind of like inviting him to shoot the 3s,” Rajaković said. “He needs to be able to take those and make those, and he’s doing a much better job this year. The next layer to it is when he’s attacking, the defence can do two things against a player like that. ... (He can) be in a completely square stance or (he) can open up his feet. (Barnes) needs to be able to recognize those situations and to have counter moves.
“When I think about Giannis (Antetokounmpo), the defence is guarding him that way, but that’s not preventing him from getting all the way to the rim. Because over the years, he found his Euro step, he found his spin move, he found ways to get all the way to the rim. He improved his left-hand finishing, and that’s something that we’re slowly working and trying to implement and talk to him.”
Rajaković said Barnes is going to need to focus on his finishing package one summer to get the requisite reps in his game to get to that stage. That is fair: Booker, who entered the NBA after just one year in college like Barnes, averaged more turnovers in his third season, when he averaged 4.7 assists, than he is averaging now. In Antetokounmpo’s third year, he shot 68.4 percent from the rim; that number was at 78.9 percent last year.
Improvement is coming. How much? Well, if Barnes can channel Booker’s love for the craft, an awful lot. It depends on him.
• The Raptors shot 18 for 21 from the free-throw line. If they had shot that well in Cleveland, they almost certainly would have won. It might have done the trick in Brooklyn, too.
• I don’t want to be that guy, but there is no way this basket from Pascal Siakam should have resulted in an assist for Barnes. An assist used to mean something, damn it!
• I think Rajaković made the right call putting Anunoby on Booker, given he is a far better perimeter defender than Siakam or Barnes, and they can at least replicate Anunoby’s length on Durant. Still, there is something natural about wanting to see Anunoby, one of the best defenders of today, against Durant, one of the best scorers ever. The matchups switched down the stretch, with Anunoby on Durant regularly, Barnes on the hobbled Booker. Both Anunoby and Durant won some rounds, and seeing the battle was a treat. Durant missed some good looks and was clearly a bit rusty coming off his injury. But holding him to 30 points on 30 field-goal attempts is an accomplishment.
“It was physicality during the whole game that paid off,” Rajaković said. “OG did a really good job from the jump of being physical with (Durant), making it very uncomfortable for KD to catch the ball outside his zone, and also his size and his ability to contest those shots, he made him miss some of those.”
• Help defence is cool, and Barnes and Precious Achiuwa made it look really cool on this play .
• Dennis Schröder has started to lean into the midrange jumper a little too much, but he remains a wizard with the ball . He had 12 assists, no turnovers and the biggest bucket of the game.
(Photo: John E. Sokolowski / USA Today)
