Early in the second quarter, Scottie Barnes, the Toronto Raptors‘ point guard for the night against the visiting Atlanta Hawks, was pushing the ball up the right side of the floor when he turned to his left around mid-court and passed the ball to a teammate running the middle lane.
It wasn’t clear why Barnes — or anyone — would pass laterally at that point and said teammate — rookie centre Christian Koloko — was as surprised as everyone else in the building that Barnes would pass the ball to him, of all people, while on the move, 50 feet from the basket.
Koloko was so convinced the pass couldn’t have been intended for him that he pulled his hands back from catching it, lest he prevent it from arriving in the hands of the intended target, who couldn’t possibly be him.
The ball kept moving, as if in slow motion. On the opposite side from where the pass started, O.G. Anunoby was running the floor, minding his own business really. He never saw the pass because, in fairness, why would he? After playing possession after possession of his trademark suffocating defense, he was enjoying a brief respite in transition before starting whatever offensive action the Raptors were planning.
It was not his time to catch the ball, and not his place either.
And so the ball sailed, untouched, out of bounds and into the scorer’s table. End of possession.
Let’s just say that Fred VanVleet — who Barnes was filling in for at point guard — would never have made that pass.
OK, no one said that starting Barnes at point guard would be without its hiccups. In fairness, the 21-year-old started at centre on Friday, so he’s learning a lot on the fly early in his second NBA season.
But damn, it sure was fun on Monday. And it was pretty damn effective, too.
Two nights removed from turning in their most desultory performance of the season the Raptors turned in one of their best with a 139-109 dismantling of the Hawks, who came to Scotiabank Arena at 4-2 and seemingly energized by the off-season trade that brought All-Star guard Dejounte Murray to Atlanta from San Antonio.
Instead, it’s the Raptors who can take some satisfaction from a 4-3 start against some of the best competition in the Eastern Conference has to offer before heading to Texas for games against Dallas and San Antonio later this week.
Defensively, the Raptors got it done. In Murray and Trae Young, the Hawks have one of the most dynamic backcourts in the NBA. Blink and you’ll miss them.
It wasn’t one of the easier teams against which Barnes could make his 2022-23 point guard debut.
“It’s difficult. Obviously you’re going to get a high dosage of those two guys,” said coach Nick Nurse before the game. “… They’re coming at you fast or they’re trying to play in the open floor or early. They’re trying to get something early with those guys. There is a lot of range in the 3-point shooting and a lot of shiftiness, speed and quickness with the ball. We’re gonna have to get back, first of all. We’re going to have to continue to challenge as best we can. Try to keep the ball in front, somewhat. If not, then we’ve got to start helping and continue to fly around and make their passes challenged and make their shots challenged.”
For the most part, mission accomplished. The Raptors were successful in turning Young – who was averaging 31.5 points a game coming in – into a distributor, primarily. Young finished with just 14 points on 3-of-13 shooting and while he did rack up 10 assists, he made 10 turnovers too as the Raptors hounded him with multiple defenders at every turn. Murray had a strong game, with 20 points and nine assists, but he had four turnovers too.
Meanwhile the Raptors got their point guard play wherever they needed it.
The Raptors took control of the game early in the fourth quarter with Barnes on the bench and Pascal Siakam running the offence. He proved too big, too smart and too shifty for anything the Hawks could draw up on his way to another outstanding game in an uninterrupted string of them as he put up 16 of his 31 points and four of his six assists in the second half.
When Barnes checked back in, he created problems again, as he drew two defenders in a pick-and-roll action with Koloko and reached to his full height to deliver a pass to the centre — in the rookie’s wheelhouse this time — that ended up as a dunk.
Barnes then put the finishing touches on the win with his fifth three, a new career high, as he ended up with 21 points, eight assists and seven rebounds in his 34 minutes.
On the defensive end, Anunoby ended up with six steals as he caused havoc for the Hawks guards all game long.
The Raptors had six players in double figures scoring and shot 50 per cent from the floor and 14-of-34 from deep and won the turnover battle 18-7. The Hawks shot 46.4 per cent from the floor and 11-of-29 from deep. Led by Siakam (13-of-16), Toronto shot 34 free throws to Atlanta’s 25.
The move to start Barnes as the primary ball-handler in what is — in fairness — a fairly egalitarian offense was prompted by VanVleet being a late scratch with back stiffness.
Would VanVleet, who has just seven turnovers all season, have made the pass to nowhere that Barnes did, plus a couple of other ill-advised passes that ended up sending the Hawks on fastbreaks the other direction?
No, but Barnes made plenty of plays that more than justified Nurse’s decision to put the ball in his second-year star’s big mitts and let him go to work.
Barnes’ four first-half threes – three of them consecutively in the space of 68 seconds in the first quarter – was a very VanVleet touch, but there were elements Barnes delivered that the Raptors incumbent point guard can’t deliver, not as a six-footer who relies on craft rather than speed or explosiveness.
More than once, he pounded himself into the heart of the paint and delivered easy baskets by passing over the teeth of the defence, using his burly six-foot-eight frame to maximum advantage. And he made up for some of mistakes the way only Barnes can: A moment after a sloppy giveaway that led to a Hawks score the other way, Barnes broke up a pick-and-roll, made a clean steal and led a fastbreak that ended with a Precious Achiuwa dunk from a sparkling no-look pass on the run by Barnes, this time his pass finding his intended target on time and in stride.
It was enough to give the Raptors a 34-28 lead after one quarter, and after a back-and-forth second quarter was broken open somewhat by 20-6 run that was finished off by Barnes’ fourth triple of the half (on seven attempts), he claimed a big role in the 64-53 lead that Toronto started the third quarter with.
Is Barnes the Raptors point guard of the future? Well, maybe, sometimes.
The plan from training camp was to play VanVleet less this season, with an eye towards keeping the Raptors’ only proven point guard healthy and — ideally — feeling fresh and ready to peak for the playoffs.
There were skeptics about the plan to limit VanVleet’s minutes, foremost among them the man himself.
“We got better [in the off-season],” said VanVleet in training camp. “In theory, [a]better team requires less from their top guys and that would be the hope. We’ll see, I’ll believe it when I see it but all we care about is winning, whatever that takes.”
VanVleet was correct in his suspicions. Through six games before Monday, the 28-year-old guard was averaging 37.9 minutes a game — or exactly the total that had him tied for the league lead in minutes per game last season.
It’s impossible to know if the heavy minutes through six games had to do with the back issues that began hampering VanVleet during Friday night’s loss to the Philadelphia 76ers where he looked out of sorts all game and finished 0-of-11 from the floor.
But if the goal is to trim back on VanVleet’s minutes, Barnes’ showing in his fill-in role is that those minutes can be out to good use.
