Why a little tough love is good for Raptors’ Barnes
Scottie Barnes’ future and the Raptors’ future will advance in lockstep. But it doesn’t have to be all flowers all the time. Barnes showed Tuesday that a little constructive criticism might have a place in the Raptors’ development tool kit, too.
PHILADELPHIA – Maybe the Toronto Raptors have been going about this just a little bit wrong?
Ever since Scottie Barnes was drafted No. 4 overall in 2021, the multi-talented forward from Florida State has been shown no shortage of love and support from the organization that badly needs him to be a cornerstone they can build their future around.
He was in the starting lineup in his first game as a professional and has started every game since but one — and that was because he was working his way back from injury.
When the team decided to move on from its championship-era core, it was Barnes who was given the status of the franchise player. At the first opportunity, the Raptors signed him to a five-year contract extension paying him the most they possibly could. An amount that will be $225 million at minimum, and could be $269 million if makes all-NBA this season, which is unlikely, but wasn’t out of the realm of possibility when the deal was struck.
It’s Barnes on the billboards, the web promos, the social media backgrounds and who is featured in the in-arena urging to vote him to the All-Star Game, a gesture not afforded to RJ Barrett, the team’s leading scorer, for example.
And for the most part, Barnes has done his part.
He was deservedly Rookie of the Year in 2021-22, filling in as jack-of-all-trades wing complementing a veteran core of Fred VanVleet, Pascal Siakam and OG Anunoby. In his first crack as the ‘main guy’ last season, Barnes was named to the Eastern Conference All-Star team as an injury replacement. He was leading Toronto in points, rebounds, assists, steals and blocked shots when his season ended with a broken hand after 60 games, Barnes not having missed a start at that point.
But it was somewhere between funny, curious and telling that after Barnes played one of the best games of his career Tuesday night in a dramatic win over the Philadelphia 76ers, the 23-year-old credited what he interpreted as criticism he saw on Instagram for his 33-point, 10-rebound performance. A game that also saw him set career-highs for free throws made and attempted and made (12 and 15, respectively) as he pounded the paint relentlessly.
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The critic?
Former Raptor and 12-year NBA veteran Matt Bonner, who – in his role as co-host of The Raptors Show with Blake Murphy – suggested that Barnes’ path to stardom might require him to develop his game just a little bit more.
It was hardly a Stephen A. Smith-level rip job. There were plenty of encouraging words on either side of Bonner’s take which was part of a longer discussion about Barnes’ overall offensive game. But the gist of it was pretty straightforward and not all that out of line with what any analysis of Barnes might offer: He’s not a finished product offensively.
“(What) I think he needs to do, if I were him, in the off-season, (is) go to the lab and get some moves. Get some one-on-one moves,” said Bonner on Monday. “He doesn’t really have a tool kit. if you watch him play, he just kind of finds his way to the paint by spin moves, backing in, maybe a (dribble handoff) or they screw up a switch or a coverage … but he never, like really gets by anyone. So (he needs to) figure out ‘how do I get by my defender and get a head of steam to the paint,’ because we’re not seeing that.”
I asked Barnes after the game in Philadelphia about his apparent focus on getting to the rim Tuesday night and Barnes — otherwise unprompted — said he had taken the comment to heart.
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“Just being able to talk to the coaches, watching film on myself, I just wanted to be aggressive going downhill, showing some burst and be able to just try to get past the defender,” Barnes said after the game. “I think (Monday), I was just going to ice, and I was watching Matt Bonner. He was talking about something (on The Raptors Show), talking about how I can’t go to the rim, how I can’t get past people. So I think that kind of motivated me a little bit as well.”
Elite professional athletes are often an unusual combination of being incredibly resilient — being able to find joy in laying themselves on the line against the best competition in the world and in front of millions of people — while also being, on occasion, remarkably thin-skinned.
Michael Jordan didn’t invent the duality, but he may have perfected it. Jordan collected sleights and insults real and imagined as fuel for a competitive fire that always burned hot, right up to and including his hall-of-fame speech, which he used to settle some old scores in a demonstration of pettiness that revealed his competitive mindset almost as much as anything he did on the floor.
So it shouldn’t be all that surprising that Barnes, who typically holds his cards pretty close to the vest, could be motivated by some outside criticism, mild as it was. (For what it’s worth, I ran Bonner’s view by a couple of NBA scouts, and no one disagreed.)
But perhaps the Raptors should take note that a little bit of tough love won’t cause Barnes to melt. Up until now, there hasn’t been much opportunity to find out.
So far the Raptors star has had little reason to question his place in Toronto’s basketball universe. His head coach Darko Rajakovic first made his way onto the NBA’s radar with his viral rant about Barnes getting unfair treatment from the referees early last season after a loss to the Los Angeles Lakers and declared Barnes as the future “face of the league.”
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He got his ‘max’ deal last summer which featured a sit-down, soft-chair interview in an events room at the top of a downtown high rise with team president Masai Ujiri, rather than say, a press conference.
And earlier this season as the Raptors trundle along to top-five lottery odds, Rajakovic doubled down on his take that Barnes will be the face of the NBA. “I stand by that statement,” he said.
And even on Tuesday night when Rajakovic was questioned about Barnes’ three-point shooting – he was coming off a 0-for-8 outing from the outside the line in a loss against Houston that pushed Barnes’ season average from deep to a career-low 26.6 per cent – his coach had his back.
“I have absolute trust in his work and the work he’s doing with coach Jama (Raptors assistant Jama Mahlalela) in developing his shot,” Rajakovic said. “… I’m a big believer that he’s going to be able to be a consistent 36, 37-per-cent plus three-point shooter.”
There was no talk about the need to attack the rim more or use Barnes’ strength to put defenders at a disadvantage and get to the free-throw line. Just belief that the best is coming. And while Barnes has had a good season, it’s not like he’s taken some kind of massive leap in his fourth year. His averages of 20.2 points, 7.8 rebounds and 6.2 assists are solid, but are basically identical to his numbers from last season with a little lower shooting efficiency. Maybe a poke here or there could help?
Now, Rajakovic has a reputation for being more direct in private settings, and having a policy of having your players’ backs in public is almost always a good idea in the NBA. It is a player’s league after all, and few coaches or even organizations can make a habit of criticizing a star player in public and maintain a solid working relationship for long.
But what was interesting about the events on Tuesday in Philadelphia was that for all the love and support, it was a perceived pinprick to his basketball self-esteem that got Barnes’ motor running. In his previous four games — all Raptors losses — Barnes was averaging 17.5 points and 4.8 rebounds and shooting just 32.5 per cent from the floor and 19.2 per cent from three on 6.5 attempts per game. It was one of the worst and most passive stretches of basketball in his career, let alone this season.
Barnes’ future and the Raptors’ future will advance in lockstep. They will go as far in this post-championship rebuild as he can take them. And supporting him in any way possible as he grows into a finished product on and off the floor is good business and the proper foundation for a long and fruitful relationship.
But it doesn’t have to be all flowers all the time. Like a lot of great athletes before him, Barnes showed that a little bit of constructive criticism might have a place in the Raptors’ development tool kit, too.
