Harrison Barnes is scoring like he’s really good

I think Harrison Barnes was alright with the Golden State Warriors. He’s not always going to be “0-for-8 in 16 minutes in Game 6 of the NBA Finals” Harrison Barnes. He’s probably also not always going to be Franchise Player Harrison Barnes, either, the one who’s averaging 22.9 points on nearly 50 percent shooting from the field and nearly 60 percent on deep 2s past 16-feet.

There was some early worry that the Dallas Mavericks made a mistake in the preseason, when Barnes was shooting 26.7 percent from the field in seven games. There’s some early optimism now, which, of course, is because the whole thing with Barnes is that you’re supposed to keep swinging back and forth until you have no clue of what’s rational any more.

But scoring like this against Marcus Smart, who shut down Paul Millsap in the playoffs last year, is not easy. It takes real, tangible shot-making skill:

That’s a whole lot of isolation work in the mid-post, and with that, you’re always anxious about whether it holds. We’ve already pointed out that Barnes is shooting too well on deep 2s for his current percentage to hold — the elite finishers in midrange field goal percentage from year to year usually top out in the 45 to 50 percent.

It’s a good look that Barnes shot 50.9 percent from that range last year, but he did so on fewer than two attempts per game. This season, he’s averaging over five shots from that area on harder, more self-created shots. He’s not going to shoot this well, although by the same coin, his 3-point percentage should come back up from 31.3 percent to somewhere around his 39 percent clip from the last two seasons.

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Fundamentally, Barnes has the scorer’s toolbox. You can see it in the Boston Celtics game, and you’ve seen the makings of it over his Warriors career. Much of it wasn’t pretty, with odd-looking footwork and a generally discordant manner of getting from Point A to Point B, but Barnes has worked at it over time and his moves genuinely look good right now.

Triple threat moves alone don’t explain away hot shooting, and those moves look a lot worse if they were leading to bricks. Partly due to injuries, Barnes has become the focal point of the Mavericks’ offense and is being asked to create in situations where he was being joked on as the fourth option last year. It makes no damn sense that he’s playing this well, although “makes no damn sense” is par for the course of his career.

If the shooting stays even decent, though, Barnes stays dangerous. Everyone wants to go small and switch on screens now to avoid covering one player with two, so the benefit of having someone like Barnes who can take a Marcus Smart to the post is that you can make teams really feel the pain of the switch. Get a defense to throw doubles at the post or adjust their pick-and-roll scheme, and business is booming.

This is something you can work with.

The guy the Warriors groomed was supposed to be a mismatch killer, a big wing who could drive, shoot, post, board and defend four positions. In the time of small ball and pick-and-roll switches, beating up mismatches with versatility is the way to go. Barnes has a long way to go to prove he can do anything more than adequately — his first step is still janky, his court vision questionable — but things are starting to look up.

The $94 million max contract hinges on the optimistic outlook. Mark Cuban’s going to throw his money around in free agency every year, but as long as they have Dirk Nowitzki and Rick Carlisle (and no returns from the draft), taking a shot on Barnes is better than a slo-mo slide out of the playoffs. Most projections had the Mavs around ninth in the West, so they’re alive for another year and there’s not many of those left before Dirk hangs it up.

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I don’t want to boil this down to “Harrison Barnes is just 24 and you never know,” because you always sort of know. Even with Barnes, where it’s a little less knowing and a little more smashing opinions of polar extremes together until they collide at a middle point somewhere, you still sort of know who he is, what he can do, how he might still grow.

Barnes will be alright. With some luck — and he’s had it so far  — he’ll be even better than that.