Breaking Down The Harrison Barnes Enigma
By Matt Hamm
I recently asked the question “Should the Bobcats draft Harrison Barnes with the #2 overall pick?”. Barnes may be the most talked about, over hyped, miss understood player to come through Chapel Hill. What will Barnes be at the next level? What would he have been if he had stayed at UNC longer? Who knows? Barnes is a mystery.
When asked to predict how Barnes’ career will end up I take the cop out. Barnes could end up a first team All-NBA, top of the league kind of player. Or he could end up a journeymen role player playing 12 minutes a game. But why is that? Why do we all doubt him so much? For a third team All-American that led a very talented Tar Heel team in scoring and improved all his efficiency measures. Barnes sure is scrutinized a lot.
The reason is obvious only to those who have watched Barnes throughout his entire Tar Heel career. Even more so to those of us who got to watch him play during his high school days in Iowa. Barnes has all the talent in the world, he has size, speed, the fundamentals are solid, the pieces are all there.
What we don’t see is Barnes taking all those talents together the way we think they should be. Barnes has disappeared in many big games. He failed to take on a bigger role when Kendall Marshall and John Henson were hurt in March. He failed to step forward and take control of the offense. And nobody can understand why. Why is this kid with all the talent in the world not dominating like a superstar?
I’ll tell you why, because he doesn’t have all the talent in the world. He’s still developing, not everybody is Lebron James. What Barnes lacks is simple. You don’t see him taking over games and showing the “killer instinct” we think he should have because he’s yet to develop his game off the bounce.
Stars need to be the guy that the team can throw the ball to down the stretch and rely on him to get a shot off. Barnes is not that guy. He’s awesome in transition, he’s got a nice jump shot, he can finish at the rim when he’s by his defender. He’s just not someone you who can face up and drive to the basket. Yet.
Barnes worked hard at his ball handling and improved all his efficiency marks his sophomore season. He took less three pointers, turned the ball over less and shot a higher percentage from the field. Yet he seemed to regress when you weren’t staring at the stat sheet. The reason was while taking less threes, he wasn’t scaring the defense anymore with his game and teams were clamping down on his perimeter game. Rendering Barnes less effective as a result in the half court.
When judged alone, Barnes has a very good mid range game. If he can apply emphasis on learning to use his size and athleticism to get the basket off the dribble, his mid range game will improve by default. A reader commented that Barnes needs a go to move in a recent Barnes column.
After I pointed out that Barnes does in fact have a go to move. His jab step, one dribble, pull up jump shot. I realized I hadn’t given much thought to how dangerous that move could become if the threat of Barnes taking it to the rim were real. Barnes was often double teamed and always defended by the oppositions best defensive player. A jump shooter with that kind of attention on him will always have a hard time getting going. With a little room, Barnes is deadly, and when he gets going from deep can be unstoppable. And that’s without much of a game off the dribble.
Harrison Barnes does not need to become one of the greats at taking the ball to the basket. He simply needs to build some credibility in that department.