If you thought Collin Murray-Boyles missing the All-Rookie First Team was an outrage, then just wait until you hear this one: Scottie Barnes missed the All-Defence First Team, too. Unlike Murray-Boyles, he was close.
Barnes was many things to the Toronto Raptors defence this season. He averaged 1.5 blocks and 1.4 steals per game this season, both matching career highs. The Raptors finished with the fifth-ranked defence in the league, and Barnes was more or less the entire cause of that success.
He did … everything for the Raptors’ defence. Barnes guarded at the point of attack. He protected the rim. He switched onto bigs and banged with them in the post, on the glass. He annihilated the weak side of the court with his pterodactyl wingspan and coverage.
Es Baraheni wrote this in January in making the case for Scottie Barnes as the Defensive Player of the Year.
- The Raptors have the fourth-best defense in the NBA despite Jakob Poeltl missing half the season.
- Barnes leads the NBA in total stocks and is number five in stocks per game.
- He is in the top 10 in total deflections this season.
- He leads the NBA with 8 “clutch” blocks.
- Related: The Raptors have the best clutch defense in the NBA, allowing just 96.4 points per 100 possessions. Barnes has had multiple game-winning or -saving defensive plays, which gives a whole heck of a narrative to Barnes’ award case.
- He ranks second in defensive miles traveled in the NBA.
- Barnes is also in the 87th percentile in B-Ball Index’s “Defensive Positional Versatility” tool, which measures how many positions a player defends and how often.
- He also ranks in the 94th percentile in terms of matchup difficulty, via B-Ball Index.
- He grades out as excellent isolation defender, limiting opponents to 0.727 points per possession in these situations, ranking in the 83rd percentile in the NBA — better than all three of Wemby, Holmgren, and Gobert, according to Synergy Stats provided to Raptors Republic.
- Barnes is second in the NBA in on/off opponents’ rim accuracy, meaning teams shoot 7.4 percent worse at the basket when he’s on the floor, second only to Holmgren among players who have logged over 1000 minutes, per Cleaning The Glass.
Of course, that didn’t happen. But Barnes will lead the Second Team All-Defence Team, even if he perhaps deserved to be on the First Team. A deserved award.
