Raptors Explain How Scottie Barnes Can Become Offensively Unstoppable

For three years now, the Toronto Raptors have been begging Scottie Barnes to be more aggressive.

It’s been a somewhat maddening experience for his coaches, first Nick Nurse and more recently Darko Rajaković. They both look at Barnes, a 6-foot-7 ultra-athletic forward and wonder why he doesn’t dominate in the paint more frequently. He’s quick enough to beat most taller defenders and he’s too big and strong to be defended by a guard. It should be easy, they figure, just take the ball inside and score.

And yet despite all his unique talent, Barnes has been far too willing to settle for jump shots.

“I’m constantly telling him nobody can stop him to be at the rim,” Rajaković said of Barnes following a loss to the Brooklyn Nets earlier this week. “When you put your mind to it, you’re going to be there.”

If only it were that easy.

For one, opposing defenses know where Barnes’ strengths lie. Until this year, he’s never had a reliable jump shot and the scouting report on him has always been to let him shoot. That’s beginning to change this year as Barnes’ three-point percentage has surged to 37.9% through the first 19 games, but still, the sample size of his career suggests giving him jump shots is a pretty good defensive strategy.

That said, taking what the defense is giving you isn’t what the Raptors want from Barnes. If he’s going to be a truly special player, he needs to take what he wants to take.

“When you see how teams are guarding him, they’re kind of like inviting him to shoot the threes,” Rajaković said Wednesday. “He needs to be able to take those and make those, and he’s doing a much better job this year. The next layer to it is when he’s attacking, the defense can do two things against a player like that. … (The defender can) be in a completely square stance or (he) can open up his feet. (Barnes) needs to be able to recognize those situations and to have counter moves.”

“When I think about Giannis (Antetokounmpo), the defense is guarding him that way, but that’s not preventing him from getting all the way to the rim. Because over the years, he found his Euro step, he found his spin move, he found ways to get all the way to the rim. He improved his left-hand finishing, and that's something that we're slowly working on and trying to implement and talk to him.”

Those skills take time to develop, lots of time.

Throughout Barnes’ career so far, the biggest focus has been figuring out his shooting. He didn’t have a broken jump shot when he entered the league, but it wasn’t exactly a pretty shot.

Over the past three years, though, that’s changed.

He’s now confident stepping into three-pointers. He’s nailing pull-up threes at a 36.8% clip this year and his catch-and-shoot three-point percentage sits at 40.3%. It’s beginning to force defenses to adjust and, as Rajaković said earlier this year, if you’re closing out on a Barnes’ three-pointer “God help you.”

In the span of two summers, Barnes transformed himself from a player who shot 27.5% from three in his lone season at Florida State to a player who is currently an above-average NBA three-point shooter.

The next step, Rajaković said, is spending the summer working on his finishing package. It’s going to be tough to do that in the season when practice time is tough to come by and what little time the team has together is spent ironing out the kinks of the team’s new offensive and defensive schemes. But come summertime, Barnes’ next task will be figuring out a go-to move.

When he does that, if he does that, there will be no stopping Barnes.