Harrison Barnes has gone missing in action at the worst possible time for the Golden State Warriors.
With Andrew Bogut done for the 2016 NBA Finals due to a sprained left knee, Stephen Curry clearly operating at less than 100 percent and Andre Iguodala now hobbled by a balky back, the Warriors have desperately needed a complementary scorer to rise up and make an oversized impact. Instead, Barnes has bricked wide-open shot after wide-open shot, casting even more doubt about whether he deserves a maximum contract come July 1.
In Games 5 and 6 combined, Barnes shot 2-of-22 overall (including 1-of-11 from deep), chipping in only five points, seven rebounds, two blocks, one steal and one assist. Not coincidentally, he’s been a minus-26 across those two contests.
Had Barnes been able to make the Cavaliers pay for their defensive lapses in the fourth quarter of Game 5, the Warriors may have been popping bottles that night:
It’s not as though Barnes was jacking up contested off-balance 26-footers like Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson are wont to do. There wasn’t a single Cavalier within five feet of him on those three treys, and he bricked all three. The 24-year-old missed all seven of the contested shots he attempted in Game 5 and went just 2-of-7 on uncontested shots.
Somehow, he was even worse in Game 6.
In his 16 minutes of playing time, Barnes went 0-of-8 overall and 0-of-5 from three-point range, finishing with a plus-minus rating of minus-20. This tweet from Bleacher Report’s Dan Favale said it all:
Five of Barnes’ eight shots on the night were uncontested, and yet he still somehow failed to score a single point. He was the only Golden State player who didn’t hit even one uncontested shot, despite being tied with Leandro Barbosa for the third-most such looks of any Warrior.
He could have set the tone early in Game 6 by knocking down a couple of open looks from beyond the arc. Instead, he shanked two such attempts within the first three minutes of the game, and the Cavaliers stormed out to a 31-11 first-quarter lead.
Though this comes with a glaring small-sample-size warning, the Warriors have averaged a horrendous 80.4 points per 100 possessions during Games 5 and 6 with Barnes on the court. To contextualize that, the 10-win Philadelphia 76ers averaged 96.6 per 100 during the regular season. In the 42 minutes sans Barnes, meanwhile, Golden State has gone off for 120.5 points per 100 possessions.
After the game, Warriors head coach Steve Kerr didn’t express much concern when asked about Barnes, saying, “He’s going to start on Sunday, and he’s still one of our key guys, and I’m very confident that he’ll come out and play well.” Kerr added that he went through similar slumps in the postseason during his playing days, as “You have a couple bad games, you think too much. You’re struggling. The focus is brighter. The lights are brighter during the playoffs, so everybody notices.”
Barnes’ struggles haven’t just been limited to offense during the past two games, however. The Cavaliers went 11-of-21 against him in Games 5 and 6, shooting 5.4 percentage points above their average. It’s dangerous to put too much stock into individual defensive metrics, particularly over a two-game sample, but Cleveland players had similar success against him through Game 4, shooting 23-of-42 (54.8 percent).
To Barnes’ credit, he contested a team-high 16 shots in Game 5, coming up with one deflection and a loose ball recovered as well. On Thursday, however, he only contested two shots during his 16 minutes of playing time while posting goose eggs in the deflections and loose balls recovered departments.
Curry and Draymond Green both found themselves battling foul trouble throughout Game 6, which contributed to the massive hole Golden State fell into early. Iguodala’s back flaring up also didn’t help matters, as he was physically incapable of keeping up with LeBron James throughout much of the night. If either Curry or Green picks up a ticky-tack foul or two early in Game 7 and Iguodala’s back continues to hamper him, the Warriors will need Barnes to make his impact felt defensively, regardless of whether he regains his offensive mojo by Sunday.
Even if Barnes lays another stinkbomb in Game 7 and the Cavaliers become the first team to overcome a 3-1 series deficit in the Finals, he’s all but certain to receive a max deal this summer. With nearly two-thirds of the league set to have copious cap space, the demand for max-caliber free agents will far outweigh the supply, particularly if James and Kevin Durant remain with Cleveland and Oklahoma City, respectively. As The Vertical’s Bobby Marks explained Thursday, “max salaries are simply a percentage of the salary cap and not a reflection of the performance level or player labels teams once used.” The skyrocketing salary cap eliminated the concept of a max player being a true franchise-changing superstar.
After Barnes turned down the Warriors’ offer of a four-year, $64 million extension last fall, Marcus Thompson of the Bay Area News Group summed him up succinctly: “His career has been defined by an amenability that crosses over into passivity. He’s a special talent whose biggest need for improvement is to be that dude more often on the court.”
In Game 7, Barnes has the opportunity to prove he’s capable of shouldering such a burden, particularly if Iguodala remains hobbled.
It’s not as though the former Tar Heel has been affixed to a milk carton throughout the entirety of the Finals. In Cleveland’s Game 3 annihilation of Golden State, Barnes was one of the Warriors’ bright spots, chipping in 18 points, a team-best eight rebounds and three assists in 33 minutes. In the following game, he scored eight of Golden State’s first 10 points and finished with 14 points (while shooting 4-of-5 from deep), eight rebounds, two assists and a steal.
For the Warriors to clinch their second straight NBA championship Sunday, they’ll need that version of Barnes rather than the one who showed up in Games 5 and 6.
Curry and Thompson are capable of catching fire at a moment’s notice, as both proved at times throughout Game 6. Unless Iguodala can get his back straightened out between now and Game 7, however, the Warriors’ supporting cast desperately needs a standout performer. Barnes might not go for 20-plus points—he did so only six times during the regular season and hasn’t topped that threshold in the playoffs—but the time is nigh for him to slide into that No. 3 role offensively.
After coming up short in two closeout opportunities, he can’t afford a third straight clunker and expect Golden State to emerge victorious. Barnes doesn’t have to be the best player on the court—good luck stealing that title away from James at this point—but he can’t be invisible, either.
Time to earn your max deal, Harrison.
Unless otherwise noted, all statistics via NBA.com or Basketball-Reference.com.
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