Scottie Barnes is the Raptors’ best do-it-all player. He can guard multiple positions, play the four, battle with opposing centers in the paint, or act as the team’s point guard. The latter has been on display recently. With Immanuel Quickley out, Darko Rajaković put Barnes into the starting point guard role—something many fans have been waiting for for quite some time—and it worked out well. Barnes now has four consecutive games with at least ten assists, and the Raptors won three of them.
And yet, Barnes could become even more versatile and difficult to guard. He’s 6’8”, can attack the rim, hit a mid-range shot, be either the ballhandler or the roller in pick-and-roll actions, and make the right pass to his open teammates. Now, imagine him with a more reliable 3-point shot on top of all of that. How would opponents even guard that?
Scottie Barnes hasn’t been a great 3-point shooter so far in his career
Barnes is most efficient in the restricted area. This season, he is shooting almost 70% close to the rim. He’s also pretty good in the paint and the mid-range, shooting 46% and 44.9% in those areas, respectively.
He’s not nearly as efficient from three. Barnes has made 64 of his 210 3-pointers so far this season, which comes out to about 30%. That number is pretty consistent with his shooting averages for the first four seasons of his career—he only shot above 30% once—but he’s taking fewer shots than in the previous two seasons. Trading for Brandon Ingram added 3-point shooting to the mix and helped shift the focus away from Barnes.
Right now, Barnes can punish defenses from three on occasion—he went 2-2 in a big win over the Magic, for example—but if opponents have the choice to either let him attack the rim or let him shoot a three, they will choose the latter.
No one expects Barnes to shoot 40% from three next season, but just getting his percentage consistently up to around 34-36% would already make a huge difference—especially on a Raptors team that struggles to make threes and starts a non-shooting center. Jakob Poeltl hasn’t even attempted a single 3-pointer this season.
If Barnes becomes a true three-level scorer while maintaining his defensive effort and playmaking, there’s no saying what his ceiling could be. He could even play his way into the MVP conversation.