Raptors rookie Scottie Barnes thriving in swinging pendulum of expectations

What was going through Scottie Barnes’s head before knocking down two free throws within regulation, giving the Toronto Raptors a shot at extending the game in Saturday night’s triple overtime stunner against the Miami Heat?

"Telling myself in my head that it's easy. Gotta knock 'em down. That's it."

It's hard to believe that it’s only been about half a season for the Raptors’ fourth-overall-pick rookie. The first reason for that is the swinging pendulum of expectations viewers held heading into the NBA season, starting with his unexpected selection at fourth in the lottery, above Jalen Suggs – the player whom the majority of scouts penciled in as a future Raptor – and ending with nearly 50 games of Barnes finding his role on an unorthodox roster.

For Barnes, there’s the responsibility of integrating himself into an equally off-beat roster of players that regularly glide through positions and tasks on both sides of the ball. All this in addition to the typical growing pains of a college kid adjusting to the playing style of NBA basketball. Though these adjustments haven’t always been seamless, his maturation and learning process has been palpable. One thing’s for sure: he has not looked overwhelmed yet.

Barnes's stats have been dissected to their bare bones, but a summary so far in the season goes as follows;

The Raptors have been using Barnes in a host of ways: running point, on the perimeter, in the dunker, in the corner, throwing the high-low feed in the post, receiving the high-low feed in the post, posting up at the elbow in search of a cutter, etc.

His strengths have been obvious from the jump.

The rookie is far more offensively along than anticipated. We’d known that he was a gifted passer at his size from his time at FSU, but the 62.3 percent finishing within five feet of the rim on a shot diet of offensive putbacks, hook and push shots, and dunks gives the Raptors plenty to work with. And although Barnes's offensive dominance has come from the paint and not the perimeter, he has found harmony in an interior two-man game with Pascal Siakam – a chemistry that stems from their shared playmaking and finishing abilities.

The journey in the 20-year-old's on-ball development has been a series of peaks and valleys, rising with displays of three-level scoring and dipping with nights of low shot attempts and invisibility (as opposed to poor efficiency).

Defensively, his inexperience makes a rare appearance. Although Barnes is no liability on that end, with the Raptors pairing him for significant minutes against professional scoring like DeMar DeRozan, Luka Doncic, Khris Middleton, Jayson Tatum, and Kevin Durant to solid results – Barnes's ability to contain ball handlers for a Raptors team lacking interior defensive presence could benefit from improvement.

In spite of this, the numbers are favourable, with almost all of his most common oppositional, man-to-man matchups shooting below their average field-goal percentage when guarded by Barnes.

The good news is that, based on the positive matchup numbers coupled with his propensity to lag behind and funnel some ball handlers rather than contain them, it seems to be an anticipatory issue for Barnes, rather than a quickness issue. Trusting his length and sagging back a couple of feet would be an easy fix for the blow-bys. Interestingly, that's a tactic all of Precious Achiuwa, OG Anunoby, and Pascal Siakam regularly employ when defending quicker players and bigger-bodied wings.

The lack of rookie red flags from Barnes makes the future of his development exciting. The steady growth and game-to-game adjustments he demonstrates bode well for the latter half of his season. There are already instances of real-time changes being made, too, from boxing out more consistently to taking the three-pointers available instead of stagnating the offence. His willingness to change tendencies and work outside his comfort zone as a habitually low usage player make it pointless to gauge a ceiling for a rookie testing the limits of his capabilities.

We’ll just have to wait and see.

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