Weaponizing the pass: how Scottie Barnes creates in the pick n’ roll
An interesting conversation had by scouts, analysts, front office members (and anyone who cares to peek a little closer at basketball) is what the ideal pass percentage on drives is. It kind of leans into the conversations surrounding true point guards — which can get caught up in aesthetics pretty quickly — but gets to focus itself a little bit more on tangible basketball outcomes. Of course, the process by which numbers come about is always more important than the numbers. The true point guard conversation is had because of the wingification of the NBA, and the robust-but-less-varied style of playmaking that a lot of leading scorers provide. That’s why Scottie Barnes is such an interesting lead ball handler. He is the wing who is a more gifted passer than he is a scorer. He is, in RJ Barrett’s words: “The most unselfish superstar I’ve ever played with.” He creates in unique ways.
“First of all, he’s the player that’s trying to make the right decision every time. That’s very important in the pick n’ roll.” Coach Darko told me. “I think his decision making is really good. He’s a big guard, he can see a lot, and in pick n’ rolls he can play over the defense because he sees the court really well. He’s willing to make those decisions, those right passes every time. The more he’s doing that, the more his teammates are going to get accustomed to it, they learn how to play off of him. ‘Where are the opportunities for cuts? Where are the opportunities for shooters to space out and be ready?’. It’s just about getting a lot of reps and continuity with his teammates.”
Barnes’ lack of advantage creation, scoring punch, and points generated in the pick n’ roll from year 2 made me take a look at every single pick n’ roll he ran to try and make sense of it. He saw far too many straight switches and push-switches at the point of attack. This created a situation where his best pick n’ roll partner (by the numbers) was Pascal Siakam, who would receive a pass against a switch and score. The line of scrimmage teams threw up against Barnes led to him being in the 18th-percentile as a pick n’ roll scorer. At the end of year 3, he had jumped from 18th to 47th, right next to Immanuel Quickley. He doubled how often he scored out of pick n’ rolls and doubled how often he used them. As we all know by now, volume and efficiency going up at the same time is a wonderful thing – however, that’s just the scoring, the weaker part of his pick n’ roll prowess.
Naturally, since I watched all of his pick n’ rolls when things didn’t go well, I had to watch when things did. Barnes’ All-Star leap came in a lot of places last season — as a 3-point shooter, as a defender, basically everywhere — but most importantly for this piece and this point: he launched himself into the 80th-percentile as a pick n’ roll ball handler (including passes). For the stat nerds, we’re talking a jump from about .900 ppp all the way up to 1.064 ppp. The team’s field-goal percentage jumped by 9-percent. Everything was way better.
When seeing ball pressure, blitzes, and shows out of the pick n’ roll, Barnes started to hang onto the ball longer instead of opting to quick ball reversals immediately like he would in the past. Barnes with a live dribble is a lot more dangerous than other Raptors with a live dribble, it turns out. That patience (and a better handle) allowed Barnes to probe for more gaps to punch through, and when you’re as strong as Barnes is and as long as Barnes is, players haphazardly stepping into driving lanes is more a recipe for and-one opportunities than it is a recipe for good defense.
With this change, Barnes was able to command drop coverage on almost 40-percent of his pick n’ roll possessions, nearly 10-percent higher than the year prior. More 2-on-1, 3-on-2, and 4-on-3 opportunities for one of the best players in the NBA at finding the ultimate read.
As an example, Nikola Jokic — who is a better player, no doubt — eviscerates defenses with the post-up (1.12 ppp) and it’s his most common playtype. However, that post entry places Jokic on a specific place on the floor where teams can be uniform and specific in how they want to help/shade to that action. The Nuggets still score a lot of points, but that’s because they’re fantastic at teasing and pulling with shooters and cutters in addition to Jokic’s unreal post-scoring ability. Jokic as the roller (be it short, long, or otherwise) is even better at 1.23 points per possession, and that’s largely because it’s a more dynamic play, with more variation in where Jokic catches, that can create more breakdowns in the defense. As a pick n’ roll ball handler, Barnes has gotten a lot better at engaging the defense in more places with live dribble.
To his credit, Darko Rajakovic drew up a lot of interesting looks for Barnes — as he told me he would before the season had started — and the Raptors were, to me, objectively more creative in how they used Barnes in the pick n’ roll. Different moving parts are an important part of confusing and beating defenses, and we saw the Raptors try a lot. Lots of Spain concepts, lots of specific floor balancing (Gradey Dick & Bruce Brown exchange to bring Dick one pass away and to put Brown in the corner as a cutter in case his man steps up into the gap, for example). During the Raptors preseason game in Montreal I could often hear Rajakovic yelling “DOUBLE DRAG” which you can actually hear on the broadcast occasionally, most of the players just say “77”, and if the Raptors are employing a shooter in the action — like Immanuel Quickley, Gradey Dick, or Gary Trent Jr. last year, or anyone who shoots it, I suppose — you can hear Rajakovic yelling for the shooter to shallow it – the intent being to pull defenders out of the lane for Barnes.
As was the case with Barnes’ huge jump in 3-point attempts resulting in an influx of long closeouts against him, Barnes’ jump in on-ball scoring made teams respond to his pick n’ roll ball handling less in the 2-man sense and more in the team-wide sense. More opportunities to reject screens when teams iced, and more opportunities to pass his teammates into baskets – and that’s really what Barnes is there for. As I predicted before last season, the screen rejects/ice opportunities became more frequent for Barnes, and resulted in heaps of points at a robust 1.2 points per possession.
During Barnes’ ho-hum sophomore season, Nick Nurse told me repeatedly that to improve in the pick n’ roll as a team, more players would have to threaten as scorers and that they couldn’t bend the defense often enough – Coach Darko echoed this sentiment to me a couple days ago. In year 3, Barnes became more aggressive looking for his own shot, and met that extra aggression with a brash confidence in his pull-up, an improved handle, and all that god given size and ability to run roughshod towards the rim.
Coach Darko also cautioned against the statistics a bit: “When we look at the pick n’ roll numbers, it’s not necessarily just his (Barnes) shots, it’s not just the player he’s playing pick n’ roll with he’s gonna find with a drop off pass to Jak for a finish or Kelly, or Bruno. It’s gonna be everybody else. He might just find a wide-open man for a shot. So, those numbers can sometimes be a bit taken out of context depending on teammates making or missing shots.”
Luckily, we look at more than the numbers, we watch all the film. It seems to me that Barnes really did earn his 80th-percentile finish last season, and in a less positive sense — but, it’s in the past, who cares — he earned his 39th-percentile placement the year prior. He was pretty damn good in 2023-24.
“In order for any pick n’ roll to be successful, whoever is handling the ball needs to be aggressive and looking to score.” Rajakovic told me. “I’m always telling guys ‘you gotta be aggressive, that’s gonna make the defensive attracted to you, then you need to make the right decision.’ You can not be predetermined entering any pick n’ roll situation, saying ‘I’m gonna do this or do that’. We don’t know what the defense is gonna do. We don’t know if they’re gonna put two on the ball, we don’t know if they’re going to go under screens, and those are situations that we gotta continue getting better at – reading those situations and making the right adjustments.”
Barnes is one of the best passers in the world. Ever the Cheshire cat, his gaze disorients and misdirects those who oppose him, and guides those he likes. The real danger of his pick n’ roll possessions is in how surgically he delivers buckets to his teammates.
He is an absurdly upright dribbler, Barnes. It’s part of why he struggles to blow by anyone in isolation or from a standstill. It goes against a lot of the conventional wisdom of driving – which scouts pore over to find hip flexibility, ankle flexion, shin angles and the like. A bunch of things that spring you more quickly toward the hoop and past your man. Watch Shai Gilgeous-Alexander step towards the rim and you’ll see his knee nearly scrapes the hardwood. However, with Barnes who is so utterly confident in finishing over the top of defenders or plowing through them – his upright stance makes him more dangerous while scanning the floor and more readily available to throw any pass of his choosing.
His height as a passer creates more direct lines to his teammates. Less arc, more speed, carrying more of the advantage. Whether Barnes is spraying the ball to the corner against a team that’s trying to camp in the lane, over the top of a blitz, or threading the needle into the heart of the paint – it comes quicker, and that means he lands more of them. His size, quite frankly, adds a dimension that a lot of teams can’t bother to extend themselves to cover.
Part of what makes these massive deep dives I do — on Barnes, Anunoby, Siakam, Barrett, whoever — so rewarding is seeing the small things become big things. A lot of players put something on tape, and it never materializes consistently. With Barnes in year 2, the numbers were bad, but there was fun, good and intriguing things to highlight. In a way that many other players don’t, Barnes continues to convert all the small things into bigger things. At this point I’ve tracked so damn much of this guys career and put it out to public record and he just keeps raising the bar.
Cool player, and a player whose approach helps reframe what fits and what works. The robust-and-very-varied wing creator. Let’s hope for some big numbers this year.
Have a blessed day.
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