Official Scottie All Star Barnes Thread 9

[Godaddycurse]

agbaji needs to take scottie through whatever training he did last summer and come back with improved finishing and shooting

[HiJiNX]

Reading this back in year going to be fun.

Oh absolutely haha. The pendulum has swung in the other direction. The reality, as is often true, is somewhere in the middle. I think the crux of the issue is folks are saying what Scottie will never be able to do based on what he hasn’t done yet, completely removing context from the conversation.

I also think fans are stuck to outdated narratives that players don’t improve their skills, particularly their handling and shooting beyond year five or so in the league, which just isn’t true anymore. In the last ten to fifteen years we have seen so many examples of players figuring out these key skills later into their developmental paths. I’d go as far as to say that developmental curves have extended significantly. And since Scottie started out so raw, there’s a lot of distance left to travel on his developmental pathway. It might be year seven or eight before we get the actualized version of Scottie.

Now this doesn’t excuse his performance this year. And it doesn’t mean that he absolutely will improve. All it means is that there’s lots of space for improvement and quite a few case studies in recent years that improvement beyond year four is possible.

That is to say, in recent years a lot of players have learned how to shoot in the back half of their 20s. Will this happen for Barnes? Who knows. But to eliminate the possibility, in my opinion, is shortsighted and assumptive.

[Indeed]

Reading this back in year going to be fun.

Oh absolutely haha. The pendulum has swung in the other direction. The reality, as is often true, is somewhere in the middle. I think the crux of the issue is folks are saying what Scottie will never be able to do based on what he hasn’t done yet, completely removing context from the conversation.

I also think fans are stuck to outdated narratives that players don’t improve their skills, particularly their handling and shooting beyond year five or so in the league, which just isn’t true anymore. In the last ten to fifteen years we have seen so many examples of players figuring out these key skills later into their developmental paths. I’d go as far as to say that developmental curves have extended significantly. And since Scottie started out so raw, there’s a lot of distance left to travel on his developmental pathway. It might be year seven or eight before we get the actualized version of Scottie.

Now this doesn’t excuse his performance this year. And it doesn’t mean that he absolutely will improve. All it means is that there’s lots of space for improvement and quite a few case studies in recent years that improvement beyond year four is possible.

That is to say, in recent years a lot of players have learned how to shoot in the back half of their 20s. Will this happen for Barnes? Who knows. But to eliminate the possibility, in my opinion, is shortsighted and assumptive.

The crux of the issue is based on people claiming he can take over when the blame was on VanVleet and Siakam. Now looking back in a year, clearly it was funny.

As for next year, the crux of the issue is based on his near-max contract. Even Barnes is able to shoot in the average, he is still not near a near-max contract player. So if he is going to be better in ten years, that is still a discussion on whether his current contract is reasonable.

[Godaddycurse]

Reading this back in year going to be fun.

Oh absolutely haha. The pendulum has swung in the other direction. The reality, as is often true, is somewhere in the middle. I think the crux of the issue is folks are saying what Scottie will never be able to do based on what he hasn’t done yet, completely removing context from the conversation.

I also think fans are stuck to outdated narratives that players don’t improve their skills, particularly their handling and shooting beyond year five or so in the league, which just isn’t true anymore. In the last ten to fifteen years we have seen so many examples of players figuring out these key skills later into their developmental paths. I’d go as far as to say that developmental curves have extended significantly. And since Scottie started out so raw, there’s a lot of distance left to travel on his developmental pathway. It might be year seven or eight before we get the actualized version of Scottie.

Now this doesn’t excuse his performance this year. And it doesn’t mean that he absolutely will improve. All it means is that there’s lots of space for improvement and quite a few case studies in recent years that improvement beyond year four is possible.

That is to say, in recent years a lot of players have learned how to shoot in the back half of their 20s. Will this happen for Barnes? Who knows. But to eliminate the possibility, in my opinion, is shortsighted and assumptive.

The crux of the issue is based on people claiming he can take over when the blame was on VanVleet and Siakam. Now looking back in a year, clearly it was funny.

As for next year, the crux of the issue is based on his near-max contract. Even Barnes is able to shoot in the average, he is still not near a near-max contract player. So if he is going to be better in ten years, that is still a discussion on whether his current contract is reasonable.

If he can put up his current numbers on even average efficiency while maintaining that great defense i would say his contract is reasonable

[tsherkin]

I also think fans are stuck to outdated narratives that players don’t improve their skills, particularly their handling and shooting beyond year five or so in the league, which just isn’t true anymore. In the last ten to fifteen years we have seen so many examples of players figuring out these key skills later into their developmental paths.

Have we?

I think what's happening is more that we're realizing that advanced handles aren't actually nearly as important as quick decision making and ball protection. Straight 1v1 isolation is far less a thing when all you need to do is control the ball until a screen or you can walk into a DHO or whatever. With someone like Scottie, his handle isn't his issue at all, for example.

That said, as you say later, some elements of development curves have been extended because guys hit the league 2, 3, 4 years younger than they used to, sure. But 4, 5 years into a guy's career, you don't generally see a guy who wasn't already trending in a given direction making enough strides to make a huge leap in player tier, is really the criticism with Barnes. It's very likely he'll have a peak with him shooting in the 80s at the foul line and maybe shooting 33-35% from 3, especially if he gets into the corner more. But that isn't going to suddenly make him worthwhile as a focal scorer. But as he eases off volume and focuses more on his known strengths, it could very much raise his utility.

(EDIT: TL;DR, it isn't just about CAN he improve, it's about what's a reasonable MAGNITUDE of improvement in the context of the role the team is trying to force upon him. There are not a lot of examples even in recent days of a guy flipping the script so radically from being a very, very bad scorer to being a worthwhile top-2 shooting option on his team)

I’d go as far as to say that developmental curves have extended significantly. And since Scottie started out so raw, there’s a lot of distance left to travel on his developmental pathway. It might be year seven or eight before we get the actualized version of Scottie.

Ah, the old "let's wait a decade for him to be worthwhile" path...

That is to say, in recent years a lot of players have learned how to shoot in the back half of their 20s.

Again, though, we'd have to go over those guys in more detail. A lot of it is assisted C+S from the corners. Scottie would instantly look better if his only 3PA came from the corners, because even though he sucks there relative to league average, he's still a 36% shooter or so from those spots, which is at least workable, especially if we want to start using him more off-ball and in lower total usage, right? He's a good defender and rebounder, and we know he can advance the ball and run a basic set, so if we can ease him off having to create so much for himself once BI gets back, there are various paths to him being a mid-teens scorers and still very useful to us.

[HiJiNX]

I also think fans are stuck to outdated narratives that players don’t improve their skills, particularly their handling and shooting beyond year five or so in the league, which just isn’t true anymore. In the last ten to fifteen years we have seen so many examples of players figuring out these key skills later into their developmental paths.

Have we?

I think what's happening is more that we're realizing that advanced handles aren't actually nearly as important as quick decision making and ball protection. Straight 1v1 isolation is far less a thing when all you need to do is control the ball until a screen or you can walk into a DHO or whatever. With someone like Scottie, his handle isn't his issue at all, for example.

That said, as you say later, some elements of development curves have been extended because guys hit the league 2, 3, 4 years younger than they used to, sure. But 4, 5 years into a guy's career, you don't generally see a guy who wasn't already trending in a given direction making enough strides to make a huge leap in player tier, is really the criticism with Barnes. It's very likely he'll have a peak with him shooting in the 80s at the foul line and maybe shooting 33-35% from 3, especially if he gets into the corner more. But that isn't going to suddenly make him worthwhile as a focal scorer. But as he eases off volume and focuses more on his known strengths, it could very much raise his utility.

(EDIT: TL;DR, it isn't just about CAN he improve, it's about what's a reasonable MAGNITUDE of improvement in the context of the role the team is trying to force upon him. There are not a lot of examples even in recent days of a guy flipping the script so radically from being a very, very bad scorer to being a worthwhile top-2 shooting option on his team)

I’d go as far as to say that developmental curves have extended significantly. And since Scottie started out so raw, there’s a lot of distance left to travel on his developmental pathway. It might be year seven or eight before we get the actualized version of Scottie.

Ah, the old "let's wait a decade for him to be worthwhile" path...

That is to say, in recent years a lot of players have learned how to shoot in the back half of their 20s.

Again, though, we'd have to go over those guys in more detail. A lot of it is assisted C+S from the corners. Scottie would instantly look better if his only 3PA came from the corners, because even though he sucks there relative to league average, he's still a 36% shooter or so from those spots, which is at least workable, especially if we want to start using him more off-ball and in lower total usage, right? He's a good defender and rebounder, and we know he can advance the ball and run a basic set, so if we can ease him off having to create so much for himself once BI gets back, there are various paths to him being a mid-teens scorers and still very useful to us.

Who said we should wait a decade? You’re not arguing in good faith.

The ultimate point that you’re making is we should scale back his usage because he doesn’t project to improve his scoring ability very much. I disagree with that premise. I think that would be treating Barnes as a sunk cost, which would have a domino effect on the team on and off the court — we’d have to blow it up. But even more so, Barnes, for all of his issues scoring in isolation, particularly from the perimeter in a half court set, is still dangerous with the ball in his hands because of his ability to see the floor.

I’d also argue that improvement as a catch and shoot three point shooter is very sufficient for how Scottie plays. He shouldn’t be taking stepbacks and side step jumpers, especially given his physical power. All he needs is for the defence to respect his jump shot enough that he can get into the middle of the floor and pick teams apart with the pass or his midrange.

I also disagree that with the premise that Scottie is so far away that he needs to improve in orders of magnitude with his scoring to be a much more effective offensive player. I think if he improves his shooting percentages as you’ve predicted that it significantly increases how dangerous Scottie is with the ball in his hands.

But most of all, we need to hope that Scottie does improve as a scorer because there’s nobody else on this team that we can run the offence through if we want to be a contender. BI and RJ simply don’t play make or score well enough for us to be a high level team with those guys leading it. Of course, Barnes isn’t good enough now to lead us to being a contender either, but he’s the only guy on the team with a ceiling high enough to get there (especially because when he’s got it going he’s been the best player on the floor against some HOF talent players). And I don’t think he’s that far away. Because I think those incremental improvements in shooting become a very strong lever for making his best offensive skill, passing, much much more dangerous.

He doesn’t need to be an elite scorer. He needs to be a good one. And he doesn’t need to be some iso handles guy from the perimeter, just a guy who can attack a lane that opens because teams are scared of his creation, or a good enough shooter that teams can’t completely back off on him. Get him the ball in the middle of the floor and let him pick teams apart.

Anyway, like I’ve said before, we will see how it goes haha. I’m not going to do the back and forth.

[tsherkin]

Who said we should wait a decade? You’re not arguing in good faith.

I was having a bit of a laugh with the "eight years" bit, I didn't mean for that to be the overall takeaway It's just memories of Demar all over again.

The ultimate point that you’re making is we should scale back his usage because he doesn’t project to improve his scoring ability very much. I disagree with that premise. I think that would be treating Barnes as a sunk cost, which would have a domino effect on the team on and off the court — we’d have to blow it up. But even more so, Barnes, for all of his issues scoring in isolation, particularly from the perimeter in a half court set, is still dangerous with the ball in his hands because of his ability to see the floor.

I have no faith that he has much ability to improve as a scorer, personally, within the parameters of how the team wants to use him. This, I think, is clear. I'm trying to focus on how we CAN use him, though, because he has a bunch of non-scoring things going for him which are valuable and we have RJ, Quick and BI shaping up for next year.

I’d also argue that improvement as a catch and shoot three point shooter is very sufficient for how Scottie plays. He shouldn’t be taking stepbacks and side step jumpers, especially given his physical power. All he needs is for the defence to respect his jump shot enough that he can get into the middle of the floor and pick teams apart with the pass or his midrange.

A 36% corner 3 isn't going to be enough to make him useful at 15 FGA/g, though.

I also disagree that with the premise that Scottie is so far away that he needs to improve in orders of magnitude with his scoring to be a much more effective offensive player. I think if he improves his shooting percentages as you’ve predicted that it significantly increases how dangerous Scottie is with the ball in his hands.

And I don't. He's not good enough at anything he does as a scorer to really be worthwhile in that regard. And remember, for that percentage to matter, he'd have to do nothing but take corner 3s, which actually doesn't have the effect of making the D respect him with a live dribble above the break.

But most of all, we need to hope that Scottie does improve as a scorer because there’s nobody else on this team that we can run the offence through if we want to be a contender.

We will 100% never be a contender if Scottie is a featured scorer for us. He flatly isn't that level of player. That isn't really a sin, nor should it feature too prominently in how we handle him on our roster, though. Such players are very uncommon, and there's basically always some indication of their upward trend far earlier than anything we've seen from Barnes.

And I'm not really interested in playing the "hope against hope" game with Barnes after having done it so recently with DeRozan. It's abundantly clear that he isn't going to be a title-level scorer. That's fine, he has plenty of other utility, but it's not worth the effort trying to force a round peg into a square hole.

BI and RJ simply don’t play make or score well enough for us to be a high level team with those guys leading it. Of course, Barnes isn’t good enough now to lead us to being a contender either, but he’s the only guy on the team with a ceiling high enough to get there

Is he? There's literally nothing about his scoring skill set or other attributes which suggests that he projects at a higher level. Not a thing. There is only hope.

He doesn’t need to be an elite scorer. He needs to be a good one

I contest that point very much. We are missing strong scoring rather badly, and his impact right now is low enough that unless he really turns his scoring around, there are some serious limitations to his ceiling. Again, this is in the bounds of us speaking of contention. If our goal is to get taken out in the first round, then we can tolerate him being something more like a -1% rTS guy, or league average. And that's a whole other discussion, to be fair, because we're trying to build forward a culture of success, after all.

But in the context of winning a lot? Yeah, he's gonna need to be considerably better than he is, and if we ever want to be a reasonable mention among contending teams, he'd need to be an elite scorer.

. And he doesn’t need to be some iso handles guy from the perimeter, just a guy who can attack a lane that opens because teams are scared of his creation, or a good enough shooter that teams can’t completely back off on him. Get him the ball in the middle of the floor and let him pick teams apart.

I agree. I just got finished saying this earlier, but I don't think handles are a meaningful impediment for Scottie.

Anyway, like I’ve said before, we will see how it goes haha. I’m not going to do the back and forth.

*shrug*

The discussion here is an interesting one. Projecting utility on guys based on what they can and cannot do. Barnes isn't a competent shooter past the foul line, in essence, isn't an elite finisher inside, isn't elite in his short game and isn't elite at drawing fouls. He also isn't an elite athlete. So projections about his scoring become problematic when they don't acknowledge this, nor his limp improvement since draft day (and all that being well in keeping with his pre-draft profile). The counterpoint is, and this is something I've acknowledged elsewhere ITT and in other threads, that he seems more mobile with the ball and very much more regular about getting to his spots. That's encouraging. It's not encouraging on a timeline which will make me care, but it's nice to see, and it means that he has more utility as a playmaker in the halfcourt than he might otherwise, and more than just as a transition playmaker. That's good, because it'll alleviate some of the pressure from BI and from Quick and Shead and so forth, because Scottie's a pretty good passer.

We know exactly what he does do well, and what he is quite poor at doing. We can afford for him to take the occasional pull-up at the elbows or fade from the mid-post if his overall volume is down. We can reduce his ATB 3pt volume, and that'll help draw him closer to league average. We don't have GREAT signs that he'll do better off-ball, because his first two years weren't very good as a scoring threat even on that lower volume and higher proportion of shots created by others, but it'll help. And we can look at leveraging his passing more like you would from a less-proficient point (speaking of scoring threat), right?

Advance the ball, attack in transition, play some PnR when things slow down. Look to move the ball. And we need to have an offense which is moving our guys a little more, which will be more possible with BI. Using him as a movement shooter can maybe create some seams which Scottie can exploit. Having a little more spacing should help. Not a ton, because his issue is primarily finishing, not finding shots against mostly single coverage, but it's better than nothing.

Barnes has utility. He's a net-positive for the team. I just don't understand the unflagging optimism about his potential to improve as a scorer when we've seen nearly nothing in 4 seasons.

[tsherkin]

If he can put up his current numbers on even average efficiency while maintaining that great defense i would say his contract is reasonable

I think we'll find him valuable, yeah. If he gets near league-average efficiency and isn't overshooting, he does a ton of other stuff which will make him worth our time. And with BI incoming, we have not just a better scorer, but another perimeter playmaker to mess around with.

I'm curious to see if we run any Scottie/Ingram PnR (straight-up or inverted) during the season, because that might be very interesting to see.

[HangTime]

in 2023/24, when Scottie shot 70/177 from 3, before OG was traded, only 10 of those makes were from the corners.

I'm just saying the on the fly switch, to take on OG's defensive role, and incorporating RJ and IQ messed with that.

Then this season, the eye, ankle, hand injuries, were a huge reason for the drop off. The comfort level too shoot is what mattered this past season, even with the injuries.

[Scase]

If he can put up his current numbers on even average efficiency while maintaining that great defense i would say his contract is reasonable

I think we'll find him valuable, yeah. If he gets near league-average efficiency and isn't overshooting, he does a ton of other stuff which will make him worth our time. And with BI incoming, we have not just a better scorer, but another perimeter playmaker to mess around with.

I'm curious to see if we run any Scottie/Ingram PnR (straight-up or inverted) during the season, because that might be very interesting to see.

A league average efficiency player putting up 20/8/6 with great defence and calling his contract "reasonable" is wild to me That's all NBA/defence 1st or 2nd team, year in and year out.

[tsherkin]

in 2023/24, when Scottie shot 70/177 from 3, before OG was traded, only 10 of those makes were from the corners.

We'll have to wait and see. The injury-shortened season presented an overrepresentation of his usual "shoot well for a month or two" routine, though, so I'm not super confident that he'll do that again any time soon. His career ATB shooting isn't encouraging.

A league average efficiency player putting up 20/8/6 with great defence and calling his contract "reasonable" is wild to me That's all NBA/defence 1st or 2nd team, year in and year out.

I've been seeing "All-Defense" thrown around a bunch lately. I don't really see it. He's a good defender, but he's never felt All-D-ish to me. And 20/8/6 on league-average efficiency shouldn't really be all NBA. Ingram was a 24/6/4 player from the 4 slot and didn't get even get 3rd Team recognition. Obviously, not the same caliber of defender, of course, but that tends to factor less into All-NBA consideration. He was an AS and MIP that year, though.

But yeah, if Scottie makes a fairly large trend reversal on his offense and is able to hover around league-average efficiency, it will meaningfully alter his value to us. There are a bunch of things I hope to see us try next year in order to help him get there.

[ConSarnit]

I also think fans are stuck to outdated narratives that players don’t improve their skills, particularly their handling and shooting beyond year five or so in the league, which just isn’t true anymore. In the last ten to fifteen years we have seen so many examples of players figuring out these key skills later into their developmental paths.

Have we?

I think what's happening is more that we're realizing that advanced handles aren't actually nearly as important as quick decision making and ball protection. Straight 1v1 isolation is far less a thing when all you need to do is control the ball until a screen or you can walk into a DHO or whatever. With someone like Scottie, his handle isn't his issue at all, for example.

That said, as you say later, some elements of development curves have been extended because guys hit the league 2, 3, 4 years younger than they used to, sure. But 4, 5 years into a guy's career, you don't generally see a guy who wasn't already trending in a given direction making enough strides to make a huge leap in player tier, is really the criticism with Barnes. It's very likely he'll have a peak with him shooting in the 80s at the foul line and maybe shooting 33-35% from 3, especially if he gets into the corner more. But that isn't going to suddenly make him worthwhile as a focal scorer. But as he eases off volume and focuses more on his known strengths, it could very much raise his utility.

(EDIT: TL;DR, it isn't just about CAN he improve, it's about what's a reasonable MAGNITUDE of improvement in the context of the role the team is trying to force upon him. There are not a lot of examples even in recent days of a guy flipping the script so radically from being a very, very bad scorer to being a worthwhile top-2 shooting option on his team)

I’d go as far as to say that developmental curves have extended significantly. And since Scottie started out so raw, there’s a lot of distance left to travel on his developmental pathway. It might be year seven or eight before we get the actualized version of Scottie.

Ah, the old "let's wait a decade for him to be worthwhile" path...

That is to say, in recent years a lot of players have learned how to shoot in the back half of their 20s.

Again, though, we'd have to go over those guys in more detail. A lot of it is assisted C+S from the corners. Scottie would instantly look better if his only 3PA came from the corners, because even though he sucks there relative to league average, he's still a 36% shooter or so from those spots, which is at least workable, especially if we want to start using him more off-ball and in lower total usage, right? He's a good defender and rebounder, and we know he can advance the ball and run a basic set, so if we can ease him off having to create so much for himself once BI gets back, there are various paths to him being a mid-teens scorers and still very useful to us.

Who said we should wait a decade? You’re not arguing in good faith.

The ultimate point that you’re making is we should scale back his usage because he doesn’t project to improve his scoring ability very much. I disagree with that premise. I think that would be treating Barnes as a sunk cost, which would have a domino effect on the team on and off the court — we’d have to blow it up. But even more so, Barnes, for all of his issues scoring in isolation, particularly from the perimeter in a half court set, is still dangerous with the ball in his hands because of his ability to see the floor.

I’d also argue that improvement as a catch and shoot three point shooter is very sufficient for how Scottie plays. He shouldn’t be taking stepbacks and side step jumpers, especially given his physical power. All he needs is for the defence to respect his jump shot enough that he can get into the middle of the floor and pick teams apart with the pass or his midrange.

I also disagree that with the premise that Scottie is so far away that he needs to improve in orders of magnitude with his scoring to be a much more effective offensive player. I think if he improves his shooting percentages as you’ve predicted that it significantly increases how dangerous Scottie is with the ball in his hands.

But most of all, we need to hope that Scottie does improve as a scorer because there’s nobody else on this team that we can run the offence through if we want to be a contender. BI and RJ simply don’t play make or score well enough for us to be a high level team with those guys leading it. Of course, Barnes isn’t good enough now to lead us to being a contender either, but he’s the only guy on the team with a ceiling high enough to get there (especially because when he’s got it going he’s been the best player on the floor against some HOF talent players). And I don’t think he’s that far away. Because I think those incremental improvements in shooting become a very strong lever for making his best offensive skill, passing, much much more dangerous.

He doesn’t need to be an elite scorer. He needs to be a good one. And he doesn’t need to be some iso handles guy from the perimeter, just a guy who can attack a lane that opens because teams are scared of his creation, or a good enough shooter that teams can’t completely back off on him. Get him the ball in the middle of the floor and let him pick teams apart.

Anyway, like I’ve said before, we will see how it goes haha. I’m not going to do the back and forth.

What type of plays are you running for Barnes if he’s just a catch and shoot player? Go and look at all of the efficient pnr ball handlers in the league. They pretty much all can shoot off the dribble and the select few who don’t and are still good are great at getting to the rim and drawing fouls.

ISO and pnr ball handler account for 30% of Barnes possessions. If we remove half of those possessions he’s going to be a 15ppg scorer. If we keep giving him those possessions our offense is going to struggle.

If Barnes only needs to improve his C&S shooting that’s not enough to actually give him the ball as a 1st/2nd option creator on a good team. If you want to give him the reps that’s fine but the results aren’t going to be good. The player you are projecting Barnes to be is a very good role player, not a top option.

If you want Barnes to be a key on-ball player for this team he has to either a) be able to shoot off the dribble or b) get to the rim and draw fouls at a high rate. He hasn’t shown the ability to do either. C&S shooting improvement helps but it doesn’t extrapolate to him deserving more creation touches in the way you want.

[ConSarnit]

in 2023/24, when Scottie shot 70/177 from 3, before OG was traded, only 10 of those makes were from the corners.

I'm just saying the on the fly switch, to take on OG's defensive role, and incorporating RJ and IQ messed with that.

Then this season, the eye, ankle, hand injuries, were a huge reason for the drop off. The comfort level too shoot is what mattered this past season, even with the injuries.

It’s not a drop off. It’s the status quo. Barnes 2 months of hot 3pt shooting are outliers.

In the past 21 months of NBA play Barnes has shot above average from 3 in 3 total months.

[mdenny]

Oh absolutely haha. The pendulum has swung in the other direction. The reality, as is often true, is somewhere in the middle. I think the crux of the issue is folks are saying what Scottie will never be able to do based on what he hasn’t done yet, completely removing context from the conversation.

I also think fans are stuck to outdated narratives that players don’t improve their skills, particularly their handling and shooting beyond year five or so in the league, which just isn’t true anymore. In the last ten to fifteen years we have seen so many examples of players figuring out these key skills later into their developmental paths. I’d go as far as to say that developmental curves have extended significantly. And since Scottie started out so raw, there’s a lot of distance left to travel on his developmental pathway. It might be year seven or eight before we get the actualized version of Scottie.

Now this doesn’t excuse his performance this year. And it doesn’t mean that he absolutely will improve. All it means is that there’s lots of space for improvement and quite a few case studies in recent years that improvement beyond year four is possible.

That is to say, in recent years a lot of players have learned how to shoot in the back half of their 20s. Will this happen for Barnes? Who knows. But to eliminate the possibility, in my opinion, is shortsighted and assumptive.

The crux of the issue is based on people claiming he can take over when the blame was on VanVleet and Siakam. Now looking back in a year, clearly it was funny.

As for next year, the crux of the issue is based on his near-max contract. Even Barnes is able to shoot in the average, he is still not near a near-max contract player. So if he is going to be better in ten years, that is still a discussion on whether his current contract is reasonable.

If he can put up his current numbers on even average efficiency while maintaining that great defense i would say his contract is reasonable

He's definitely worth a max rookie extension. Which is what he got. Those things are given out like candy. That's the market norm. Any rookie who flirts with top 50 player status during their first 4 years gets it. Any rookie contract player who gets an allstar nod DEFINITELY gets it.

Whether he's worth it or not is determined by the market. And this market says he gets it.

[Scase]

in 2023/24, when Scottie shot 70/177 from 3, before OG was traded, only 10 of those makes were from the corners.

We'll have to wait and see. The injury-shortened season presented an overrepresentation of his usual "shoot well for a month or two" routine, though, so I'm not super confident that he'll do that again any time soon. His career ATB shooting isn't encouraging.

A league average efficiency player putting up 20/8/6 with great defence and calling his contract "reasonable" is wild to me That's all NBA/defence 1st or 2nd team, year in and year out.

I've been seeing "All-Defense" thrown around a bunch lately. I don't really see it. He's a good defender, but he's never felt All-D-ish to me. And 20/8/6 on league-average efficiency shouldn't really be all NBA. Ingram was a 24/6/4 player from the 4 slot and didn't get even get 3rd Team recognition. Obviously, not the same caliber of defender, of course, but that tends to factor less into All-NBA consideration. He was an AS and MIP that year, though.

But yeah, if Scottie makes a fairly large trend reversal on his offense and is able to hover around league-average efficiency, it will meaningfully alter his value to us. There are a bunch of things I hope to see us try next year in order to help him get there.

I don't think you can call anyone all defence on a bad team regardless of impact, but I'm more talking about into the future. If he can manage to show his defensive impact on a good team, and become average efficiency, aint no one gonna complain about that contract.

[tsherkin]

I don't think you can call anyone all defence on a bad team regardless of impact, but I'm more talking about into the future. If he can manage to show his defensive impact on a good team, and become average efficiency, aint no one gonna complain about that contract.

I mean, I think you can absolutely be an All-Defensive guy on a bad team, and Toronto wasn't a bad defense, especially in the second half. Of all things Scottie-related, I'm most open to revisiting my opinion of his defense. There are specific markers he doesn't meet which I typically use in evaluating that, but defense is a little harder to quantity than offense , you know?

He's a good defender. He isn't a volume shot contester in the way of a classic big, and he isn't a Caruso-level deflections guy, isn't huge with taking charges and stuff like that, but he seems to dig in and try to stay in front of or at least shade his man pretty well, and he does get semi-reasonable stocks for a wing.

[Indeed]

I don't think you can call anyone all defence on a bad team regardless of impact, but I'm more talking about into the future. If he can manage to show his defensive impact on a good team, and become average efficiency, aint no one gonna complain about that contract.

I mean, I think you can absolutely be an All-Defensive guy on a bad team, and Toronto wasn't a bad defense, especially in the second half. Of all things Scottie-related, I'm most open to revisiting my opinion of his defense. There are specific markers he doesn't meet which I typically use in evaluating that, but defense is a little harder to quantity than offense , you know?

He's a good defender. He isn't a volume shot contester in the way of a classic big, and he isn't a Caruso-level deflections guy, isn't huge with taking charges and stuff like that, but he seems to dig in and try to stay in front of or at least shade his man pretty well, and he does get semi-reasonable stocks for a wing.

Yet, even being an all defense, I think that is still not at the near max value, particularly, those who claim Anunoby is overpaid. Barnes is making more than Anunoby.

[tsherkin]

Yet, even being an all defense, I think that is still not at the near max value, particularly, those who claim Anunoby is overpaid. Barnes is making more than Anunoby.

Sure, and he hasn't been terribly healthy either, at least these past two seasons.

His value will be heavily dependent upon what we try to do with him offensively and how that plays out, for sure. I only meant to note that I don't have a full grip on his defensive value.

[Indeed]

The crux of the issue is based on people claiming he can take over when the blame was on VanVleet and Siakam. Now looking back in a year, clearly it was funny.

As for next year, the crux of the issue is based on his near-max contract. Even Barnes is able to shoot in the average, he is still not near a near-max contract player. So if he is going to be better in ten years, that is still a discussion on whether his current contract is reasonable.

If he can put up his current numbers on even average efficiency while maintaining that great defense i would say his contract is reasonable

He's definitely worth a max rookie extension. Which is what he got. Those things are given out like candy. That's the market norm. Any rookie who flirts with top 50 player status during their first 4 years gets it. Any rookie contract player who gets an allstar nod DEFINITELY gets it.

Whether he's worth it or not is determined by the market. And this market says he gets it.

Not sure I agree it is given by default who has an award. And the Ben Simmons contract is an easy example.
I understand there maybe teams who would make a near max offer, much like Ayton, but those contracts are dumpster fire, the result matters afterall.

[Tripod]

I don't think you can call anyone all defence on a bad team regardless of impact, but I'm more talking about into the future. If he can manage to show his defensive impact on a good team, and become average efficiency, aint no one gonna complain about that contract.

I mean, I think you can absolutely be an All-Defensive guy on a bad team, and Toronto wasn't a bad defense, especially in the second half. Of all things Scottie-related, I'm most open to revisiting my opinion of his defense. There are specific markers he doesn't meet which I typically use in evaluating that, but defense is a little harder to quantity than offense , you know?

He's a good defender. He isn't a volume shot contester in the way of a classic big, and he isn't a Caruso-level deflections guy, isn't huge with taking charges and stuff like that, but he seems to dig in and try to stay in front of or at least shade his man pretty well, and he does get semi-reasonable stocks for a wing.

Yet, even being an all defense, I think that is still not at the near max value, particularly, those who claim Anunoby is overpaid. Barnes is making more than Anunoby.

That's not totally true. Barnes avg is higher because his contract starts a year after OG's did.

OG made more this year, obviously, and will make more than Barnes every year the next 4 years. But Barnes has that 5th year locked in and OG's won't be known for awhile.

It's fair to say OG makes more considering he will every year the next 4...and the 5th is TBD. But it's only approx by 500,000- 1 million each year, but still more.

As of now, OG is 29th highest next year, Barnes 36.

Barnes play will dictate how his contract ends up but he was always getting it having ROTY and an All-star selection under his belt.