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Bradley Beal on ‘special’ Raptors rookie Scottie Barnes

Washington Wizards guard Bradley Beal discusses how unique Scottie Barnes is and how much he enjoys competing against the Toronto Raptors. Also, Fred VanVleet on the action that helped Barnes score his career-high and the rookie himself describes the player he wants to become.

Video Transcript

BRADLEY BEAL: Special. I've-- you can go back look at any interview I was talking about him like-- I've always been a fan of him since I've coached against him in high school. So I've seen him for the longest. And he's always been a special talent, you know.

And tonight he looked like a star. He was killing us.

It's crazy because he was making jump hooks all night. It wasn't like he was-- he wasn't breaking us down. He wasn't hitting us with anything crazy, kept his game simple and efficient.

I'm happy he's getting healthy. He's finding his way and he has a good group of guys to learn from over there.

- There is an ESPN post earlier this week that identified you as a screener play type, and I saw that you reacted to that. I'm just wondering if you wanted to sort of address what type of player you want to be known as in the league, and if you could just describe your own play style?

SCOTTIE BARNES: I just thought it was funny that they just said that. So I really just reacted to it. It was just a little funny thing I saw.

But really, I'm just still developing my game. I use the game throughout the season. I'm working on it. Again, my shooting's better, running the floor in transition. It's just-- my game's just going to keep expanding. So I'm not really limiting in my thing, my game into one aspect, because as time goes on, my game is just going to continue to grow.

FRED VANVLEET: Yeah you just got to hit the guy. I mean, it's not really that complicated. You're a screener, you hit the guy, you roll, you open up. I thought he was aggressive. It was a physical tonight. He was assertive from the jump.

You know, he had a couple miscues early. I think Coach took him out, got him right back in. So he was pretty locked in tonight, and obviously when-- he's got a high-high ceiling. He's a very talented young player. And any time he's got it going like that, you're just trying to get him the ball in his spots.

And he was getting good seals against guys he had a good match up against, and he was jump hooking them to death tonight, so it was good.

He had a lot of friendly rolls, some and-ones, and he just was a force in the paint tonight.

BRADLEY BEAL: You know, they definitely make it tough and it made me work. And that's-- I told Fred that. I said, I always respect that when I play you guys. You know, sometimes when we get chippy or we might talk trash, but it's a competitive game. Like I enjoy competing against that team.

It's fun. They have a fun group. They go hard and they play small, like, they didn't have any bigs out there. They were all the same size. They were just-- they just were hungry, and they just grinded it out and played hard.

That's how they always are. That's a testament to who they are, and that's their identity.

So you just tip your hat off to them and understand that that's the type of team they are. They're physical, they're handsy. We knew that coming into the game, and I just got to be better in taking care of it.