Is Harrison Barnes worth the max?
Today, Harrison Barnes will play the last game in his rookie contract and likely his last as a Warrior. The sky-rocketing cap might allow them to keep him if there’s mutual interest, but it’s a smart bet that a young guy like him wants his chance to shine. That being said, HB finds himself in familiar territory. I remember very well when he was the No. 1 prospect coming out of high school and I remember when he played pretty well but not nearly that well for the Tar Heels.
For a lot of this season, people in the know have treated Harrison Barnes, again, as a star in waiting, and for a lot of the season it was justified. He wasn’t always that noticeable, but by book-ending the regular season with a November where he scored 14 points per game on .522/.435/.833 and an April where it was 14.7 points per game on .556/.486/.625 on a team where he was low on the pecking order, he gave a lot of people reason to hope. But then came the playoffs. Lineups get shorter, minutes tighten up, and stars get much higher usage but let’s just say our man is not helping himself by shooting 36 percent from the floor and 28 percent from three in this NBA Finals. Or with the 29.4 percent and 20 percent he managed in the first round.
Player A: 13.8 pts, 7.2 boards, 4.6 assists on .491/.352/.711 in 35.3 minutes a game
Player B: 11.7 pts, 4.9 boards, 1.8 assists on .466/.383/.761 in 30.9 minutes a game
The first guy is Lance Stephenson at 23-years old, his last with the Pacers, and the second is Harry at 23-years old with the Warriors. And the logic was the same. 1) Two guys who had succeeded with limited minutes, in a limited role and 2) the same phrase: you never get 23-year-old unrestricted free agents with this kind of potential.
There are many reasons to think things will be different this time around, starting with the fact that I don’t think there are any character concerns with HB, and that unlike Lance he’s been a good shooter (45 percent) for his whole career. But the biggest reason is that it could have been different with Lance, too. That’s kind of the point. They’re two guys who have given, or had given us at that point, just enough to think we know them but little enough to allow us to think there might be a lot more there.
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But it’s worth considering: Maybe you don’t get 23 year-old UFAs with this kind of potential because they’re right in that sweet spot of not having actualized enough of it to change things. And maybe that’s because they’re not a good bet to do it. It’s not like anybody didn’t know how good James Harden was, at 23.
Here’s what I think: basketball is as static a game as there is. Not wholly static, but outside of maybe the Thunder, the odds are wildly stacked against anyone getting to be as good as the Dubs or Cavs by this time next year. So I think a lot of what we project on guys like Harrison Barnes is about hope; hoping that someone can change the status quo to make things more interesting.
I think there are far fewer diamonds in the rough, in the NBA, then most people are willing to admit and that “finding” them is a kind of protest on how little is likely to change year to year, like the last-place team in fantasy shooting out trade offer after trade offer. And I think, for most of the year, Harrison Barnes has been a big beneficiary of that with both the media and front offices.
We’ll see who’s willing to bet on it pretty soon, and which direction this story goes. Somebody is going to take a big risk, but just how big remains to be seen.