FanPost

Barnes is ready to take off

Barnes' 26 points were highly, highly eye-opening for a number of reasons. While yes, it wasn't a particularly efficient 26 points, given that the Warriors won the game, the takeaways are wonderful.

  • Seeing that he can, indeed, mentally take on a primary scorer role when needed.
  • While he had a lot of misses, the types of shots he took were almost all good. They were within the flow of the offense when he had a clear advantage over his defender and/or saw an open lane to exploit.
  • Multiple efforts, following his own misses
  • Did not relax on the defensive end, playing well
  • Did not settle for jumper most times unless he had a good look
  • Made all of his free-throw attempts

The main parts of his game I think he can improve on in the short term are his hands/handles -- he still fumbles the ball a bit more than I'd like, he sometimes fails to protect the ball when driving or when inside (he had a horrible attempt at a totally unnecessary power dribble after an offensive board in game 4, for instance). He also needs to pick up the Kobe Bryant (and others) habit of making audible sounds when he gets bumped so he can get an extra foul call or two per game. He takes contact silently and simply tries to adjust every time, rather than occasionally accentuating the contact in order to draw attention to it. Hard, subtle skill to learn, but he'll benefit from it.

In any case, as far as the missed shots, they weren't at all shots that I expect him to continue to miss, especially the ones coming off of drives and post-ups. He was putting the shots up softly and the balls were all around the rim, but unlike say, Tony Parker, does not have that knack of knowing where to place the ball off the rim & backboard in order to get the best rolls. I guess we'll just call it "touch" around the rim.

We'll have to see what happens for how ever many games the Warriors have left to play -- a lot of Barnes' strides have been as a result of the extra amount of attention being paid to defend against Warrior threes, specifically against Curry and Thompson, so that Harrison is being forced into more mismatches and isolations. That being said, it's really wonderful to see that he's apparently developed more facets to his game during the season than I thought.

This FanPost is a submission from a member of the mighty Golden State of Mind community. While we're all here to throw up that W, these words do not necessarily reflect the views of the GSoM Crew. Still, chances are the preceding post is Unstoppable Baby!