After an outstanding seven-game series against the Cleveland Cavaliers, expectations for Scottie Barnes’s next season with the Raptors are very high—so high, in fact, that he ended up fifteenth on The Athletic NBA Daily’s list of the top 30 NBA players, just ahead of Tyrese Maxey and below 2024 Finals MVP Jaylen Brown. The top-15 ranking is less because he has already established himself as such and more due to the expectation that he will do it this upcoming season.
“This is, in my opinion, a fork-in-the-road moment for Scottie Barnes as a player where it’s like people expect him to become a top-15 guy, and if he takes this regular season and becomes a top-15 guy, then he will solidify himself as that, or he is a guy who can elevate himself to top-15 levels in moments in the playoffs,” Es Baraheni said on the August 19 episode.
If Barnes can establish himself as one of the fifteen best players in the NBA, it will make the Raptors’ path back to title contention easier. The Raptors seem confident that he can make that jump sooner rather than later. They did, after all, choose to trade for an aging superstar after just one playoff series with Barnes leading the charge.
It’s all about the offense
Barnes may not have made the All-Defensive First Team this year, but he is one of the most versatile and effective defenders in the NBA from game to game. It’s the offense that needs to improve for him to establish himself as a legitimate top-fifteen player in the league.
He showed it in the playoffs, when he was aggressive, getting to the rim almost at will, shooting 3-pointers uncharacteristically well, and scoring 20 points in six out of the seven games. That kind of play isn’t easy to sustain over an 82-game season plus a playoff run, and with Kawhi Leonard hopefully returning to Toronto, Barnes won’t have to be that kind of player every game, but if he can play like that in most regular-season matchups, he would truly reach the next level.
Of course, the hope in Toronto is that Barnes can live up to this top-fifteen ranking. But he will also be a great player if he can’t quite get there consistently and still elevates his game in the postseason. His versatility and defensive impact would still be key to bringing the Raptors back into title contention if the front office can put the right players around him.
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