barnes

Today at 12:05 AM

The Toronto Raptors have a Scottie Barnes problem.

The problem is that when he's on the floor, the Raptors are pretty good.  All their positive process yields some actual results. The reason that's a problem is because the organization would like to take this one season to troll through the bottom of the standings and the top of the draft lottery. The Raptors want to find another young all-star-level talent that they could pair with Barnes, who already has shown he's able to elevate the mostly unproven group around him, even in a season where wins have been scarce until lately.

But since Barnes returned from an 11-game absence with a fractured orbital bone, the Raptors are showing themselves to be at worst respectable, at best competitive, and by either definition, too good to be bad enough to tank.

He was up to it again Tuesday night as he was the difference in the Raptors’ 122-111 win over the visiting Indiana Pacers. It was Toronto's second straight win and third in the past four games.

The Raptors have won five of their last eight starts and are now 6-4 at home. They are still just 7-15 on the season, but they are trending up. The Pacers fell to 9-13.

The Raptors delivered a solid team effort. RJ Barrett continued looking like an all-star, at least when he takes the floor at Scotiabank Arena, as he contributed 29 points, nine rebounds and five assists on 9-of-16 shooting, including two-of-five from deep and nine-of-12 at the line. Ochai Agbaji was five-of-seven from the floor for 13 points, Jakob Poeltl had 17 points and 10 rebounds. Toronto forced 20 turnovers, which made up for the 20 the Raptors made on their own. They knocked down 13 threes on 33 attempts and held former Raptor Pascal Siakam to 13 points on four-of-13 shooting before Siakam fouled out in the final minute.

But the game boiled down to two main components: when Barnes was on the floor, the Raptors were fine, dominant even; Toronto was +18 in his 36 minutes. He finished with a career-high 35 points, six rebounds and nine assists and shot 13-of-20 from the floor and 3-of-7 from deep. When he wasn't on the floor, there were some challenges.

The Raptors led by 24 points with 8:34 left in the third quarter when Barnes scored on the break on a pass from Barrett and were leading by 23 when Barnes went to the bench a little bit later. But the Pacers quickly began to shave into the Raptors’ lead when Barnes wasn’t playing.

Barnes wasn't perfect. He ended up with seven turnovers and was on the court during the early part of the fourth quarter when the Pacers began coming back in earnest. They hit a pair of threes and got a three-point play form Obi Toppin to suddenly be trailing by just two with 6:18 to play.

But unlike so many Raptors losses this season, they were able to keep their heads down the stretch, and Barnes was a big part of why, though Barrett was sharp as well.

"I thought our execution down the stretch in the last four or five minutes was really, really good, so I think we're getting better in that aspect," said Raptors head coach Darko Rajakovic as his club finished the game on a 13-6 run.

There are plenty of encouraging signs around the Raptors if you overlook the fact that winning games might not be in their best long-term interest. The growing chemistry between Barnes and Barrett is part of it.

"It looks good, don't it?" said Barrett. "I like playing with Scottie. It's fun. We don't step on each other's toes at all. Playing with Scottie is fun."

Barnes would say the same thing: "When we're both being aggressive, we're both getting downhill, we're both pushing the pace, finding each other in transition, it pays off really well," said Barnes. "Our games complement each other really well, we're finding each other with that space we're able to create and play off that."

But Barnes is the engine that seems to make the Raptors go. As an example, the Pacers had a few moments in the first quarter when they looked like the team that made the Eastern Conference Finals last season and the Raptors the rebuilding project. For a stretch of about two minutes and 30 seconds, the Raptors seemed lost. Passes to nowhere. Stagnant offence. Out-of-rhythm three-point attempts that rimmed out. Defensively, a lot of running around. Confusion.

All of this was with Barnes off the floor, of course. The Raptors opened the quarter with a 23-12 edge built mostly by the do-it-all ballhandler’s orchestration on both ends. He started the game with a steal that he fed to Agbaji for an uncontested dunk. Did that help Agbaji loosen up on his way to going three-for-three from deep? Who knows, but it likely didn't hurt. Barnes hit a three, then found Poeltl for a lay-up. Everything seemed easy.

And then after the hiccup with him out, Barnes checked back in, and everything was right again. He rolled hard down the lane against the Pacers zone. He didn't get the ball, but drew the defence anyway, with Chris Boucher wide open for a made corner three. A minute later, it was Barnes rifling the ball into the corner for a Jamison Battle triple. Barnes then ran the floor and scraped the ceiling to finish an alley-oop after a Jonathan Mogbo steal. On the next play, he skied to block Pacers high-flyer Toppin at the rim. The Raptors took a 31-23 lead into the second quarter and eventually pushed their lead to 21 before halftime, with Barnes throwing seeing-eye passes over the defence to set up threes by Agbaji and Barrett.

Pacers head coach Rick Carlisle broke into the NBA as a player alongside Larry Bird, one of the NBA's all-time great and most versatile forwards, and coached Hall-of-Fame point guard Jason Kidd – who used size to great advantage – to a championship in Dallas in 2011. He knows something about the benefits of big ball-handlers who can pass. He sees it in Barnes.

"More size opens up vision, the ability to shoot over people, the ability to finish in crowds, you know," said Carlisle. "In the case of Toronto, they’re such a good transition team … and the fact that they’re doing it with a 6–8 point guard is pretty, pretty impressive. It's a lot of problems to deal with, a lot of skill, and now he’s been shooting the three well for the last couple years. And you got to deal with the drives … before he’s done his career, he’s going to have a very high number of triple-doubles."

Barnes didn't have one on Tuesday night, but he did play close to flawlessly, save for his turnovers, and even those were mostly errors of commission. Rajakovic said he's OK with mistakes when they come in the name of trying to make the right play.

The Raptors led 65-48 at half before Barnes made three triples – all set up by Barrett – in the opening six minutes of the third quarter. The Raptors were mostly coasting until the Pacers mounted their fourth-quarter run. But this time, the Raptors didn't get rattled and they were the team making the smart plays that win games down the stretch.

How this all affects Toronto in the big picture will be fascinating. Before Barnes came back and the Raptors got on their current mini roll, they were safely ensconced at the bottom of the NBA standings with just two wins. If a team is serious about tanking, it helps to finish with a bottom-three record, assuring that squad of a 52-per-cent chance at a top-three pick and a guarantee of picking in the top seven.

Before Tuesday’s win, the Raptors had the fifth-best lottery odds, which would give them a 42-per-cent chance at a top four pick but could see them slip as far back as ninth. Now they find themselves two games behind the Pacers in the race for the final play-in spot, and with Immanuel Quickley, Gradey Dick, Bruce Brown and Kelly Olynyk still out of the lineup with varying return dates, you have to like a healthy Raptors team's chances based on what we've seen lately.

Drafts are crapshoots, but the higher a team picks, the more likely they are to pick the player they believe can help the most, which is the ultimate prize in a rebuilding season.

When Barnes is rolling, it's easy to close your eyes and imagine him as the centrepiece of a team that can do some special things. But the more talent around him, the bigger the dreams.

With the way he's starting to play lately, he might be lifting the Raptors to unexpected heights sooner than planned, which could cause some challenges long-term.