Alright hear me out here. I know that this is huge responsibility to put on a rookie, but this was one of the majorp roblems I had with the offense going into this year. In our theoretical starting five, we would have Bogut and Lee beasting down low and Barnes, Curry, and Klay being red hot shooters on the outside. Therein lies the problem, neither Curry or Klay are accomplished penetrators. In the beginning of the season, it seemed as though Curry was the best. But when Curry was too afraid of driving in because of his ankle problems (in the beginning of the season), he and Klay resorted to low-efficiency 3's and long twos, which hurt the offense immensely. Our whole offense is based on having shooters outside and two great big men having their way down low, meaning that it would be impossible for help defenders to come, since that would mean that 3 great 3 point shooter would be left wide open. However, we need penetration into the paint for this to be successful, since the other team would eventually catch onto its repetitiveness.

Here is where Barnes comes into the picture. 8 games into the season its kinda obvious that he's the best at getting into the lane. Giving our offense another dimension and another weapon. Without a frequent drive and dish, making use of our two (or three now) great bigs for easy buckets and opening up the shooters for better shots, our offense gets stale. It became quite apparent that Curry wasn't able to do that either because of a lack of athleticism or because he was too scared to go into the paint. We all know that Barnes is one of the the MOST athletic players on our team (Tyler might be the most). Barnes can take even great defenders off the dribble, like we saw with Kirilenko today. Him simply driving to the basket is the key to our offense, it makes it more unpredictable and keeps the enemy off guard. The next step for him is to drive and dish, as he is only averaging 1.2 assists per game. But these aspects of the game will come with time, as he learns the NBA game and gets more experience. However one thing is very clear, he was very much misused in college as a mid-range shooter. His real strength lies in posting up opponents, driving to the basket, and making treys.