DreamTeam09 wrote:A lot of these responders wanted to tank from the outset, yet they expected a significant jump from the main player in a year of tanking & development.... If that's not counterintuitive and practically unlikely, I feel like most wanna complain for the sake of complaining or to prove to themselves that they understand the game of basketball better than others (which again is very self-centered)
So, at least from my POV, that isn't it. Lots of guys go into bad situations and are able to still perform well. The problem with Scottie is how profoundly horrible he has been relative to even that modest expectation (strictly speaking of his scoring). It isn't a viable, legitimate thing to say "oh, the team was bad so he didn't do well." That's something which holds true for roleplayers. But people were touting Scottie as the next offensive focal point and face of the franchise and all that. Players worthy of that mantle don't suck out as badly as Scottie did. But that's what happens when you're a weak shooter without elite athleticism, with inconsistent aggression and mediocre handles, and a player who was never
supposed to be a high-end scorer, never projected that way.
Barnes has loads of strengths, and lots of ways to provide value to our team. But it wasn't a real stunner when he couldn't hack it as a primary scorer. He's not as bad as he looked last year, I think that is clear. Last year, he had the worst scoring efficiency among 61 guys scoring 19+ ppg. It was one of the worst scoring seasons we've seen in a quarter century. And it was on a TS% we saw from him in his second season, as well, as it happens. He isn't an efficient guy, he isn't a dominant scorer. He isn't at the level we saw from Pascal when he was with us as a 20+ ppg scorer, nor near a BI-level scorer. This shouldn't
surprise anyone. Dude wasn't even efficient when he was taking 12 FGA/g, so he was never going to suddenly and magically
become efficient with a higher level of scoring responsibility, that would have been a senseless expectation.
What he has shown is that he's an excellent defender and a good rebounder who can pass pretty well. He showed us he could develop any kind of mid-range game, and that he's quite bad from 3 everywhere (but especially above the break). So that tells us some of what he can do, and some of what he can't do. And now we have opportunities to adapt and re-position his role on offense to better leverage his strengths while mitigating his weaknesses. And with Quickley and Ingram around (and RJ, and maybe Gradey, etc), we shouldn't have to lean on him for volume scoring, which is also encouraging and will also be helpful. And whilst he's bad relative to league average, he still shoots 36% from the corners, so that's another angle we can explore to help him be individually more useful to us (maybe as like a stretch 4 type thing).
What he has consistently shown, however, is that he lacks burst, lacks shooting ability and can't really score efficiently. His best season was still below league average, and that was with him posting outlier levels of 3pt shooting in an abbreviated season. Which largely tells us everything we need to know about him as a scorer and what we can expect from him.
Guys who aren't elite athletes need certain things in order to be good scorers. And we can tolerate only so many guys who flirt with league-average efficiency before we're going to have some problems fielding a competent offense. It's worth realizing that among guys who played 1,000+ minutes last year, only Jak, Battle and Ochai were 100 TS+ guys or better. That's a problem. We need someone to drive our scoring far more effectively than that. Now, Ingram inbound, that should help a little and that might make Scottie at like 98 TS+ a little more palatable if he can get back there.
But yeah, circling back, we have years of Scottie, in various circumstances/environments and shooting volumes. We were a 48-win year his first season, a .500 team the year after. It's only these last two seasons where we have sucked. And over those first two seasons, at 12.6 and 13.2 FGA/g, he was a 98 and 90 TS+ player. Subsequently, 98 and 91 on 15.7 and 16.4 FGA/g. He's not even floating huge usage, he just doesn't produce strong scoring results. He's been below average from inside the arc every year after his rookie season (and well below in 2023 and this year), he's a disaster from 3 (even in 2024, he was a 93 3P+ guy), he's generally below average at free throw shooting (was about spot-on average in 2024)... but he's actually pretty good at drawing fouls. He's been -1.3, -7.1, -2.9 and -3.7% relative to league average from the corners, which isn't very encouraging at all.
His issues aren't about the team putting him in a bad spot. They're about his weaknesses, and about never projecting as a major scorer. So we just need to find a way to play him in a role which is more natural for his skill set, and minimizing the impact of his scoring weakness so that we can benefit from his strengths, which are noteworthy.
