Vampirate wrote:For all the flaws Barnes has as a a scorer it's a shot like this which makes me think otherwise.
Barnes is confident enough apparently in this mid range shot to shoot over one of the best defenders in the league who also both is 7 feet tall and has a gigantic wingspan.
I can't say that really means anything to me. He's been straight ass from mid-range to date, so confidence taking a shot doesn't really mean too much to me. His long two is nothing to write home about. Granted, he takes around 1 or 1.5 of those shots per game at each distance, so it isn't a huge sample, but he isn't really a shooter, so I'm not holding my breath. And that doesn't suddenly give him elite burst either. Or a handle, which is not something you frequently see develop significantly once a player hits the league.
His mid range if he gets it down pat would be unstoppable.
Sure, but if my aunt had balls, she'd be my uncle, you know what I mean?
I don't deny the prospect: Barnes with a competent game beyond 10 feet would be a large difference, and he certainly has the body to take a hit. He hasn't really shown us anything at all from short mid-range ever. He shot under 30% from 10-16 feet in each of the two previous seasons. His short game, that's something else, that's actually his best asset as a scorer so far, coupled with his ability to get to the rim. His 3 has promise. Didn't look to start this season, but he's had less than half a dozen games and he had a hand injury and all that, so I'm willing to wait that one out to see if Nov/Dec was a mirage or if he's actually improved from 3. That'll help regardless of his mid-range game if he has.
As for him being a top 10 player, there's a path due to him being able to simply shoot over players and his strength, however the odds along with past data is against him. Not impossible though.
Nothing is written in stone of course but yeah.
I guess it's technically possible, I just don't care to consider the possibility. He doesn't fit the profile of the guys who are. The skill-based guys hit the league with more tools than he did and the athleticism-based guys have a lot more than he does. It's very clear that he isn't going to turn himself into Luka, right? And he doesn't really have the explosive athleticism to make up enough of the gap, IMHO.
As a rude start, the specifics being quite debatable, let's look at the top 10 guys in the league by O-EPM last year. By no means a definitive list, but a decent start. In descending order:
Jokic, Brunson, Embiid, Doncic, Steph, Haliburton, Giannis, SGA, Lillard, and Booker, with Kyrie and Tatum just past that.
Then you have other border guys like Maxey, Markkanen, LaMelo Ball, Lebron, Donovan Mitchell, Harden, PG, DeAaron Fox and so forth.
As you step through that list, you find a whole crapload of guys who are unattainably-superior shooters and a whole pile of superior athleticism and handles.
Most guys who hit the league as bleh scorers don't make the leap to elite. Some of them get to decent, right? Kemba Walker was a fairly poor scorer for about 4 years and then figured out how to hit 3s... but he was also an 83.7% FT shooter by his 3rd season and eventually figured out how to sort his long two. He was slithery and mobile and able to generate shots at the rim, plus he had a competent handle. He was just small and didn't have a lot of power but he had the mobility, which is more of a premium than a thick body without burst. Most of those guys are considerably more dynamic ball handlers. IN fact, basically all of them except for Giannis and Embiid, both of whom have massive physical advantages over Scottie.
So as you start looking at that athleticism/skill ratio, where does Barnes fall? How much would he have to develop his skills to overcome not having ATG physical tools? How frequently do we see those specific types of development later in a player's career?
As you say, it's technically possible and nothing is written in stone, but so much needs to come up Millhouse for him to reach that level of player that I'm not buying into the notion. IMHO, we will have better luck extracting maximum value from him by focusing on him in another role. He has value, and not a trivial amount of it either, but hoping that he's going to suddenly improve his handle and his shot to an extent sufficient to overcome his lack of burst is a tall order. He basically needs what SGA and Booker have, with a little less, because again, as you noted, he DOES have the frame to create a decent amount of space if he can get near his spot.
But mid-range scoring is a highly skill-intensive process. And Dirk he is not, so my skepticism remains.
