Official Scottie All Star Barnes Thread 9

[mdenny]

I don't think that's the best group of players for Scottie comps, but even then the gap isn't as wide as you're making it seem.

Over their first four seasons:

AD | 20.8 PPG | 9.7 RPG | 1.7 APG | 57.4% TS
Embiid| 23.9 PPG | 11.5 RPG | 3.1 APG | 58.5% TS
Giannis | 14.9 PPG | 6.9 RPG | 3.6 APG | 56.9% TS
JJJ | 15.8 PPG | 5.1 RPG | 1.2 APG | 56.6% TS
Scottie | 17.2 PPG | 7.5 RPG | 5.0 APG | 54.1% TS.

Scottie's not a perfect player and of course the efficiency needs to improve, but I don't see the point in acting like he's finished with development. Every single one of those players above (and the vast majority of players who get rookie max extensions) improved their volume and efficiency as they enter their prime. Why is it unreasonable to project the same for Scottie?

This is perhaps the worst stat technique of all time.

The one where you could literally take EVERY 3rd amd 4th year player and say "hey...at that time they weren't so much different from a very finely selective group of previous players who took uniprecedented leaps and became hall of famers".

The trick is that you could take ANY ROTATIONAL PROSPECT and say the same thing.

I didn't choose those players or that method of comparison, just provided more context for the stats. And the point is that the leaps are the opposite of unprecedented. Good players don't peak on their rookie contracts, they continue to improve as they enter their prime.

Averaging 17/7/5 on your rookie contract is much closer to star-level output than 'average rotational prospect'.

You gotta stop watching Pensare man. He's a certified weirdo, and aside from him I don't think the 'Scottie cult' exists. Just people who like his game and don't think he's a completely finished product at 23.

Those numbers for a third and/or forth year prospect on a tanking team are actually horrendous as indicative of future star potential.

When you are "given the keys" and all the successful vets are traded away....you are supposed to put up much better numbers than that.

There were like 20 or 30 games where scotty was playing with a g league lineup and he was still putting up 16/6/6.

Future star players should be putting up like 24/8/6 when they are the primary focus of a tanking team with that much opportunity for usage.

Scotty plays like a role player when given the opportunity to play with a tanking team lol. So how would he be anything other than a role player for a 500 team? Nevermind a team that was plus 500.

Are we really trying to build a team around a role player?

Ingram is like 10 times more talented and skillful than scotty.

[Duffman100]

We gave him the keys, he's shown he isn't going to be the #1 guy. Pretty simple as that.

Still a good player, just not hitting the heights all of us hoped for.

[earthtone]

This is perhaps the worst stat technique of all time.

The one where you could literally take EVERY 3rd amd 4th year player and say "hey...at that time they weren't so much different from a very finely selective group of previous players who took uniprecedented leaps and became hall of famers".

The trick is that you could take ANY ROTATIONAL PROSPECT and say the same thing.

I didn't choose those players or that method of comparison, just provided more context for the stats. And the point is that the leaps are the opposite of unprecedented. Good players don't peak on their rookie contracts, they continue to improve as they enter their prime.

Averaging 17/7/5 on your rookie contract is much closer to star-level output than 'average rotational prospect'.

You gotta stop watching Pensare man. He's a certified weirdo, and aside from him I don't think the 'Scottie cult' exists. Just people who like his game and don't think he's a completely finished product at 23.

Those numbers for a third and/or forth year prospect on a tanking team are actually horrendous as indicative of future star potential.

When you are "given the keys" and all the successful vets are traded away....you are supposed to put up much better numbers than that.

There were like 20 or 30 games where scotty was playing with a g league lineup and he was still putting up 16/6/6.

Future star players should be putting up like 24/8/6 when they are the primary focus of a tanking team with that much opportunity for usage.

Scotty plays like a role player when given the opportunity to play with a tanking team lol. So how would he be anything other than a role player for a 500 team? Nevermind a team that was plus 500.

The only players in the past decade to hit that metric are Lebron, Giannis, Jokic, Luka, Russ, James Harden, and Julius Randle. I don't think that's a reasonable bar for success.

[mdenny]

We gave him the keys, he's shown he isn't going to be the #1 guy. Pretty simple as that.

Still a good player, just not hitting the heights all of us hoped for.

We should reckon with all the self-appointed experts who threw our championship players under the bus for Charles Oakley.

They spent 2 to 3 years doing it too. Harassing player wives on Instagram. Colluding in secret cabals to spam message boards and harass posters.

**** was real.

The scotty cult will not be forgotten and Noone is gonna brush this issue aside.

Take a look at this bratty behavior:

https://youtu.be/03W6plZ3Ji4?si=IBUIeo-ZozAhn2hC

Scotty should kiss pascal's shoes. The real shame of this current time in Raptors history....we never had a bratty player like scotty who did this crap until now.

[tsherkin]

I am not saying differently, it does look like a fluke with hindsight now. I was not sold on Scottie as a shooter either after year 3 but I am only saying there was at least some reason for optimism heading into year 4. He did have a 30 game stretch where he made and took significantly more threes than he ever has in his career. There was certainly concern with how he ended up shooting at the end of year 3 but I disagree with the notion that we could have definitively called a fluke at the time.

I can see why someone would look at that and be encouraged by it; I was not, for the previously-mentioned reasons. We can agree to disagree on this point now, since neither of us is going to change our opinion on the subject.

We gave him the keys, he's shown he isn't going to be the #1 guy. Pretty simple as that.

Still a good player, just not hitting the heights all of us hoped for.

I'm with this. We gave up on the season with the trade, and with how we played after. It didn't come through the way the team hoped, but as you say, Scottie still has a lot of other ways in which he can contribute to the team (and has been in the interim, even though he's been a bad scorer). His D, rebounding and passing are all very helpful to us, and will have a place as we move forward in trying to win.

[tsherkin]

I didn't choose those players or that method of comparison, just provided more context for the stats. And the point is that the leaps are the opposite of unprecedented. Good players don't peak on their rookie contracts, they continue to improve as they enter their prime.

Averaging 17/7/5 on your rookie contract is much closer to star-level output than 'average rotational prospect'.

You gotta stop watching Pensare man. He's a certified weirdo, and aside from him I don't think the 'Scottie cult' exists. Just people who like his game and don't think he's a completely finished product at 23.

Those numbers for a third and/or forth year prospect on a tanking team are actually horrendous as indicative of future star potential.

When you are "given the keys" and all the successful vets are traded away....you are supposed to put up much better numbers than that.

There were like 20 or 30 games where scotty was playing with a g league lineup and he was still putting up 16/6/6.

Future star players should be putting up like 24/8/6 when they are the primary focus of a tanking team with that much opportunity for usage.

Scotty plays like a role player when given the opportunity to play with a tanking team lol. So how would he be anything other than a role player for a 500 team? Nevermind a team that was plus 500.

The only players in the past decade to hit that metric are Lebron, Giannis, Jokic, Luka, Russ, James Harden, and Julius Randle. I don't think that's a reasonable bar for success.

If you step aside from the specific numbers presented, I think the point might have been that on a disaster squad starved for offense, you'd have hoped for more raw volume output. And Scottie's been around a 21 PTS36 guy in each of the past 2 seasons, which isn't super overwhelming in the context of a bad offensive team trying to make him the offensive anchor. His lack of aggression (or inconsistent aggression, perhaps more accurately) has been discussed at some length at this point, but that's part of the context here, right?

[tsherkin]

Oh yah...where is Fred in career real plus minus?

We're talking about winning basketball right? Real plus minus is a pretty good stat. Where is Fred career wise?

Don't know; don't really put much thought into it. All of the metrics I've seen paint him as a net-positive but not an overwhelming player. A strong 6th man to good starter inside role restrictions. A nice player to have, but nothing to trumpet around about.

[earthtone]

Cool now lets dig a little deeper shall we?

Over their first four seasons :

AD top 10 DPOY votes x3, AS x3, NBA 1st x1, NBA def 2nd x1.
Embiid MVP votes x2, DPOY 4th and 2nd place, AS x3, NBA 2nd x2, NBA def 2nd x2.
Giannis MVP votes x1, AS x1, NBA 2nd x1, NBA def 2nd x1.
JJJ DPOY 5th x1, NBA def 1st x1.
Scottie AS x1.

Like I said, the closest to Scottie is JJJ, and even he eclipses him. Scottie is a massive 2.5% TS% below the LOWEST closest comparison, this isn't to **** on Scottie, I am a big Scottie booster, but it is to try and inject some realism into the wild takes that some how he's going to blossom into this massively productive player for no reason.

All those players above had huge signs pointing to large future success, his has pointed to so-so future success. People need to stop comparing him to HOF players who have been faces of the league just because they like the kid.

I agree it's a pretty poor group of people to compare Scottie to, just wanted to provide additional context for what they did while they were Scottie's age instead of including their prime seasons and peaks. None of these guys had their best seasons on their rookie contracts, and I don't see any reason to believe Scottie will either. There's more reason to believe he'll continue to develop than to believe he'll stagnate and have no improvement in efficiency throughout the rest of his career IMO.

I don't think it's overrating Scottie to say he's around a Top 50 player in the league at 23. If that doesn't point to 'large future success', what does? What do you define as 'so-so success'? If he can improve that to ~Top 25 during his prime years, that's gotta be significantly better than 'so-so', right?

For sure, and I agree. He's going to continue to develop, but the level at which he will is something I think most people need a reality check for. Case in point, TheGeneral using AD/Embiid/Giannis etc as examples to hold him up to. The level of expectations people have are way out of whack, all of the players (again, save for JJJ) used have shown way more offensive prowess from even year 1 or 2 than Scottie has even in year 4.

Scottie has to improve pretty drastically to just be average, those guys were above average in the same time frame, it's a way wider of a gap than most people care to admit. Starting from a 7/10 makes an 8, 9, 10 much more attainable, than starting at a 4 or 5.

Scottie has his flaws with efficiency and is a misfit as a primary creator, but he's already a Top 50 player in the league. I think saying Scottie has to "improve pretty drastically to just be average" is about as far from reality as comparing him to AD/Embiid/Giannis.

Are we talking average for all-stars?

[anotherhomer]

I am not saying differently, it does look like a fluke with hindsight now. I was not sold on Scottie as a shooter either after year 3 but I am only saying there was at least some reason for optimism heading into year 4. He did have a 30 game stretch where he made and took significantly more threes than he ever has in his career. There was certainly concern with how he ended up shooting at the end of year 3 but I disagree with the notion that we could have definitively called a fluke at the time.

I can see why someone would look at that and be encouraged by it; I was not, for the previously-mentioned reasons. We can agree to disagree on this point now, since neither of us is going to change our opinion on the subject.

We gave him the keys, he's shown he isn't going to be the #1 guy. Pretty simple as that.

Still a good player, just not hitting the heights all of us hoped for.

I'm with this. We gave up on the season with the trade, and with how we played after. It didn't come through the way the team hoped, but as you say, Scottie still has a lot of other ways in which he can contribute to the team (and has been in the interim, even though he's been a bad scorer). His D, rebounding and passing are all very helpful to us, and will have a place as we move forward in trying to win.

this good news, is we know what we have with Scottie and the team made adjustments accordingly, by getting Brandon Ingram.
What's amazing is if Pelicans knew they would drop to 7th, i don't think they make the BI trade, so great grab for Raptors.

I'm also optimistic Scottie can improve, and we got a great 1-5 line-up right now.

[YogurtProducer]

Oh yah...where is Fred in career real plus minus?

We're talking about winning basketball right? Real plus minus is a pretty good stat. Where is Fred career wise?

Don't know; don't really put much thought into it. All of the metrics I've seen paint him as a net-positive but not an overwhelming player. A strong 6th man to good starter inside role restrictions. A nice player to have, but nothing to trumpet around about.

IIRC he actually projects much higher than "6th man" in advanced stats.

[Buff]

We gave him the keys, he's shown he isn't going to be the #1 guy. Pretty simple as that.

Still a good player, just not hitting the heights all of us hoped for.

To be fair, when drafted he was not expected to be any of that. That's why we can take so little from these wasted seasons. We gave him the keys mostly on the assumption that we were going to lose. He was told to put up volume so he did, I don't think anybody thought it'd be pretty. Including Scottie.

For me, this is the season, he gets to play his role and hopefully he gets back to his opportunistic/inside scoring while the other teams worries about BI. I have high hopes for that.

[mdenny]

Siakam knowing that Scott Barnes is brat yet puts up some resistance to the punishment:

https://youtu.be/-GCZklRHMuw?si=TcFFDWn9p1nVuZp3

[earthtone]

Those numbers for a third and/or forth year prospect on a tanking team are actually horrendous as indicative of future star potential.

When you are "given the keys" and all the successful vets are traded away....you are supposed to put up much better numbers than that.

There were like 20 or 30 games where scotty was playing with a g league lineup and he was still putting up 16/6/6.

Future star players should be putting up like 24/8/6 when they are the primary focus of a tanking team with that much opportunity for usage.

Scotty plays like a role player when given the opportunity to play with a tanking team lol. So how would he be anything other than a role player for a 500 team? Nevermind a team that was plus 500.

The only players in the past decade to hit that metric are Lebron, Giannis, Jokic, Luka, Russ, James Harden, and Julius Randle. I don't think that's a reasonable bar for success.

If you step aside from the specific numbers presented, I think the point might have been that on a disaster squad starved for offense, you'd have hoped for more raw volume output. And Scottie's been around a 21 PTS36 guy in each of the past 2 seasons, which isn't super overwhelming in the context of a bad offensive team trying to make him the offensive anchor. His lack of aggression (or inconsistent aggression, perhaps more accurately) has been discussed at some length at this point, but that's part of the context here, right?

I agree that if the view of Scottie is as an offensive engine/focal point then his output is subpar, but I don't know why anyone would hold that view. He was a defense first prospect who's offensive game was considered extremely raw, and has exceed all reasonable offensive expectations thus far in his career.

When you include his defensive prowess and all-defensive team potential, his level of offensive output isn't "actually horrendous as indicative of future star potential", it's much closer to perennial all-star level.

[mdenny]

Scottie feeling win #14 of 54 games

https://youtu.be/ytdI8hTSRFQ?si=YesLQw8cEfvuVFoO

[tsherkin]

this good news, is we know what we have with Scottie and the team made adjustments accordingly, by getting Brandon Ingram.
What's amazing is if Pelicans knew they would drop to 7th, i don't think they make the BI trade, so great grab for Raptors.

I'm also optimistic Scottie can improve, and we got a great 1-5 line-up right now.

I think we're about to find a role for Scottie where he can thrive more readily, for sure.

IIRC he actually projects much higher than "6th man" in advanced stats.

I've not seen a ton which suggests that, but he is clearly a good player, regardless. His offensive impact is only so strong by any indication that I've come across, like very clearly not elite, but he's a good player. I generally think of playing an undersized, mediocre-athleticism guard who isn't an elite playmaker and isn't an efficient scorer is only so valuable, but he's a good playmaker and game manager and he can hit threes. That assessment lines up with my anecdotal observations and what data I have seen.

I think of him more as a 6th man because I generally don't like having weak scorers shooting as much as he typically does, and especially not playing them 36+ mpg the way he customarily does. Fred feels like a strong 28-32 mpg guy, though, as long as you have strong scorers ahead of him in the pecking order.

I agree that if the view of Scottie is as an offensive engine/focal point then his output is subpar, but I don't know why anyone would hold that view.

Ask the Cult of Barnes, man. It's a response to their unwillingness to accept flaws/limitations in their messiah. Most posters have a more reasonable approach to him as a player, of course.

He was a defense first prospect who's offensive game was considered extremely raw, and has exceed all reasonable offensive expectations thus far in his career.

Don't know about that. I think he's shown exactly what you could expect of a player of his sort. Weak volume, inconsistent aggression, weak to terrible efficiency, very clear limitations and very little improvement. As a scorer, anyway, but even before the draft, everyone was talking about his playmaking, so that part is fairly expected.

When you include his defensive prowess and all-defensive team potential, his level of offensive output isn't "actually horrendous as indicative of future star potential", it's much closer to perennial all-star level.

I'm inclined to disagree with that, because his offensive output comes at the price of him being a major anchor weighing down our offensive efficacy. He has been a brutal waste of skin as a scorer in 2 of the past 3 seasons, and below-average in the middle even when his 3 WAS falling. Like, SAVAGELY bad, like -126 (or worse) TSAdd bad, like -5% rTS (or worse) bad. Like I said earlier, this year, he was ass-last in efficiency among the 61 players who posted 19+ ppg, and by a large margin. That's BRUTAL. He was terrible, just as he was in 2023. You can't have the volume output without the efficiency concerns.

All-D with solid playmaking and terrible scoring is not "perennial all-star level" performance.

Anyway, that's the negative side of things. The positive side of things is that he DOES exhibit All-D potential. He isn't there yet, has a ways to go, but the potential is there and he seems to actually engage and enjoy defense, which is very promising. And the team context we're assembling around him should remove the motivation to use him in ways contrary to his demonstrated strengths, which is even further encouraging.

It might not seem it because I spend a lot of time discussing his weaknesses, but I'm excited to see what he can do in this new environment in the upcoming season. He'll be positioned to play his actual game, and he's shown he's pretty good at the things we already knew he was pretty good at prior to the draft. Stepping away from all the crap we were dicking around with in lost seasons, he should be a significant positive contributor this upcoming season.

[mdenny]

The only players in the past decade to hit that metric are Lebron, Giannis, Jokic, Luka, Russ, James Harden, and Julius Randle. I don't think that's a reasonable bar for success.

If you step aside from the specific numbers presented, I think the point might have been that on a disaster squad starved for offense, you'd have hoped for more raw volume output. And Scottie's been around a 21 PTS36 guy in each of the past 2 seasons, which isn't super overwhelming in the context of a bad offensive team trying to make him the offensive anchor. His lack of aggression (or inconsistent aggression, perhaps more accurately) has been discussed at some length at this point, but that's part of the context here, right?

I agree that if the view of Scottie is as an offensive engine/focal point then his output is subpar, but I don't know why anyone would hold that view. He was a defense first prospect who's offensive game was considered extremely raw, and has exceed all reasonable offensive expectations thus far in his career.

When you include his defensive prowess and all-defensive team potential, his level of offensive output isn't "actually horrendous as indicative of future star potential", it's much closer to perennial all-star level.

80% of nba players would put up scotty's raw numbers if their team traded away all their players and gave them the opportunity to play.

Not only did scotty put up bad numbers ...it appeared as though he actually resisted the opportunity to run an nba offense as was given to him. His fans were begging him to take less shots which is also hilarious. Not even because it gave us a better chance to win....we were tanking....

But his diehard supporters were literally hoping he'd do less so that his efficiency stats wouldn't continue to decline.

I mean....we are officially in the twilight zone.

Scotty cult ppl watching the game and wishing he could just become a ghost and gently sweep across the court without touching the ball so his TS% doesn't drop more lol

Let's not forget....it was the scotty cult ppl who would accuse other players of "stat padding" when they filled out a good boxscore.

What is the opposite of "stat-padding". Maybe we should call it "ghost-floating" - when you are afraid to touch the ball because it lowers your efficiency stats that naturally come easier when you serve as a role player alongside actual ballers.

The efficiency stat ppl have a conundrum: the role player you hitch your wagon will continue to thrive as long as he doesn't have a consistently significant impact on the game lol.

[tsherkin]

To be fair, when drafted he was not expected to be any of that. That's why we can take so little from these wasted seasons. We gave him the keys mostly on the assumption that we were going to lose. He was told to put up volume so he did, I don't think anybody thought it'd be pretty. Including Scottie.

This is the case. All of the pre-draft data said he was a defender who could pass well and struggled to shoot, didn't have great handles and didn't project as a major scorer.

For me, this is the season, he gets to play his role and hopefully he gets back to his opportunistic/inside scoring while the other teams worries about BI. I have high hopes for that.

That was kind of him in his first two seasons, so I'm still a bit lukewarm on that. He doesn't stun at any of those things. But it will almost assuredly be better than 2023 or this past season, for sure. And even if it isn't, it should be on lower volume. Still, if we play him more like an actual 4 and less above the break, handling, he should have a lot more opportunities for easier buckets. That's promising. And if we get north of 100 poss/g, then maybe we can get him some more transition possessions as well. That'd be good.

[OakleyDokely]

If you step aside from the specific numbers presented, I think the point might have been that on a disaster squad starved for offense, you'd have hoped for more raw volume output. And Scottie's been around a 21 PTS36 guy in each of the past 2 seasons, which isn't super overwhelming in the context of a bad offensive team trying to make him the offensive anchor. His lack of aggression (or inconsistent aggression, perhaps more accurately) has been discussed at some length at this point, but that's part of the context here, right?

I agree that if the view of Scottie is as an offensive engine/focal point then his output is subpar, but I don't know why anyone would hold that view. He was a defense first prospect who's offensive game was considered extremely raw, and has exceed all reasonable offensive expectations thus far in his career.

When you include his defensive prowess and all-defensive team potential, his level of offensive output isn't "actually horrendous as indicative of future star potential", it's much closer to perennial all-star level.

80% of nba players would put up scotty's raw numbers if their team traded away all their players and gave them the opportunity to play.

Not only did scotty put up bad numbers ...it appeared as though he actually resisted the opportunity to run an nba offense as was given to him. His fans were begging him to take less shots which is also hilarious. Not even because it gave us a better chance to win....we were tanking....

But his diehard supporters were literally hoping he'd do less so that his efficiency stats wouldn't continue to decline.

I mean....we are officially in the twilight zone.

Scotty cult ppl watching the game and wishing he could just become a ghost and gently sweep across the court without touching the ball so his TS% doesn't drop more lol

80% of NBA wouldn't put up Scottie's rebound, assist, steal, block totals. Come on. The shooting is one thing, but the other parts of his game are really solid. There are actually few guys in the league who can consistently fill the stat sheet like Barnes can.

[tsherkin]

[
80% of NBA wouldn't put up Scottie's rebound, assist, steal, block totals. Come on. The shooting is one thing, but the other parts of his game are really solid. There are actually few guys in the league who can consistently fill the stat sheet like Barnes can.

Yeah. He's a strong rebounder and a good defender, these are things which anyone needs to be able to appreciate about him. That alone is enough to make him a rotation-level player, and he has the potential to be even better on D than he is now. The passing's okay; the raw assist output is at least to some extent a function of usage/opportunity, but he is also a good passer; that's something known about him since prior to the draft. He has skills... just not much as far as scoring skills or shooting ability. But you can be a good player without being a good scorer, for sure.

[OakleyDokely]

Players who averaged 7+ rebounds, 6+ assists, 1+ block, 1+ steal in the NBA last season:

Wemby
Scottie



Scottie was probably a bit overrated after his rookie season but it's completely gone the other way and he's become underrated.