Skepticism Index: Evaluating Harrison Barnes’ isolation explosion
By Grant Hughes
The rise of ultra-rational NBA punditry has made cynics of us all, but it’s not enough to look askance at every out-of-nowhere production spike or unforeseen slump and dismiss it with the beloved small-sample-size caveat.
We need more.
We need to know how and why unpredictable things are happening in the NBA, and we really need to know if those oddities are going to continue.
In pursuit of that goal, I give you the Skepticism Index, a new tool we’re trotting out to gauge the sustainability of high-profile NBA outliers. If a player or team is doing something that looks too good to be true, we’ll break it down, tell you how likely it is to continue (or not) and ultimately assign it a Skepticism Index Rating. These won’t be numbers, but instead a non-mathematical indicator of how much trust you should place in the trend continuing.
Don’t worry. You’ll get it.
Harrison Barnes: Isolation Assassin
Through his first nine games as a Dallas Maverick, Harrison Barnes has scored 62 points in isolation sets. That’s the second highest raw total in the entire league, per Synergy Sports, and his efficiency on that traditionally inefficient play type is just a hair outside the 90th percentile—right in line with the likes of noted one-on-one monsters Damian Lillard, Kyrie Irving and Jimmy Butler.
Read More: The evolution of Julius Randle
For context, Carmelo Anthony is in the 74th percentile so far, while Kevin Durant is in the 69th.
It’s hard to convey just how skull-crushingly impossible this seems—particularly for anyone who watched Barnes’ mechanical moves, loose handle and inability to get all the way to the rim during his Warriors tenure.
For as long as Barnes played in Golden State, his one-on-one attacks gave the distinct impression that he was an NBA 2K avatar being controlled by a player who hadn’t learned the buttons yet. Crossovers that went nowhere, the footwork was unsure. He tossed up off-balance flings from awkward distances after a pre-shot lead-up that felt like a video buffering. Barnes’ game never hinted at isolation success, and mentally, he bore the signs of a classic over-thinker. You could just see the gears turning.
Yet now he’s unstoppable in isolation, roughly doubling the career high in scoring average he set last year, shooting more accurately from the field than ever and cutting his turnover rate. Barnes is getting to the rim less frequently; only 14.5 percent of his shots have come within three feet of the cup. But he’s hitting them at a ridiculous 78.3 percent clip. So far, so good.
Unfortunately, the rest of his shot profile is sketchy. He’s taking 31.4 percent of his field-goal attempts from 16-23 feet, and Barnes has converted 58 percent of them. Can he really live on these?
Stephen Curry’s career accuracy rate from that range is 46 percent.
That’s where doubt should start creeping in because, at the risk of getting too controversial, Barnes is not Curry. And so many of his closer-range looks are still highly contested, often off-balance and, just to keep this as plain-spoken as possible: super friggin’ difficult.
Though he has absolutely developed in unexpected ways, Barnes is still not an offensive player who routinely creates easy, high-percentage looks. And despite spiking his free-throw totals, he’s still not an instinctive contact-drawer. Barnes’ 4.1 free-throw attempts per 36 minutes underscore that point starkly.
Dirk Nowitzki’s eventual return (and to a lesser extent, Deron Williams’) is another factor that could signal an impending decline in Barnes’ prolific isolation game. Though there’s a case to be made that a Dallas offense featuring more threats to draw defensive attention could actually make it easier for Barnes to get his points, I’m guessing something different happens.
There are no stats involved here, but there’s a certain freedom in knowing you’re the unchallenged alpha scorer on a team. Barnes is an unselfish offensive player, and it’s possible this newly liberated attack-mode version we’re seeing will power down when the Mavs have other options. At this stage of their careers, Nowitzki and Williams are nothing like Curry and Klay Thompson, but the team-friendly bent Barnes showed for four years in Golden State can’t have completely washed away in one summer.
He’ll still get his chances to score, but consider this a bet that as Barnes’ high-difficulty shots start falling less frequently, he’ll also slip (even if it’s just a little bit) back into a more deferential posture.
Listen: Why didn’t Pete Maravich ever win?
We may have to recalibrate that thought if Dirk and D-Will never get healthy and/or return in forms so diminished that Barnes remains the unquestioned go-to option.
Both in terms of efficiency and volume, Barnes’ scoring has demolished expectations. But the historical record and the nature of the shots he’s creating simply don’t support this trend’s big-picture viability.
Skepticism Index Rating (how skeptical should you be?):
The High Sparrow hearing Cersei Lannister say, “No, guy, for real: I’m not even mad anymore. You’re fine.”