Harrison Barnes has had a unique career. He was considered a potential star when he was in high school and was selected seventh overall in the 2012 draft, which shows how highly Golden State thought of him. So far he hasn't lived up to the hype, but it's hard to consider him a bust or a failure. After all, he's an NBA champion who has played big minutes on the best regular season team ever, albeit in a relatively small role.
Is Harrison Barnes actually good? The NBA Finals will finally tell us.
No one knows how good the fourth-year wing really is but a good performance against LeBron James and the Cavaliers could change that.
Four years in, it’s still incredibly hard to tell just how good Barnes really is. The numbers say he’s been utterly mediocre, a role player who has benefited from being in the perfect environment. Yet, there are enough flashes of brilliance to suggest he could be much more than he is now.
That’s why these NBA Finals are so important for him. It’s his last time to impress before he enters free agency in the offseason. He will face scrutiny like he never has in the past and, for better or for worse, the NBA will collectively decide what his worth is. After the series ends, Barnes will have either established himself as a core player for Golden State and a sought-after free agent, or will be considered a role player until he proves otherwise.
The Warriors, who drafted and developed him, clearly think of him as someone they want to keep around, as their reported four-year, $64 million contract extension offer back in October shows. Most young players with career averages of nine points and four rebounds would have taken a deal that would have payed them $16 million a year, but Barnes decided to bet on himself, knowing that the jump on the salary cap could net him a better contract if he excelled in his fourth season.
So far it's not looking like the best decision. The leap never came. His numbers have remained largely the same and have even regressed in some areas. He had a miserable first two rounds of the playoffs, shooting just 36 percent from the floor and 25 percent from beyond the arc against the Rockets and Trail Blazers. The team did poorly when he was on the court, as well, as he had by far the lowest net rating among starters and the third-lowest among all of Golden State's rotation players.
Luckily for him, Barnes plays for the Warriors. Had his team been eliminated in the second round, he would have likely cost himself millions or at the very least remained in that $16 million prize range. His game would have been picked apart, his lack of progression harped on incessantly. Instead, Golden State coasted and he avoided criticism. Then his shot returned against the Thunder and he did a good enough job on Kevin Durant to revive his stock.
It will all mean nothing if he has a bad series against the Cavaliers, though. If Barnes continues to start, he will draw the LeBron James assignment on defense and everyone will be focusing on how he does when he gets posted up and attacked on drives and switches. If he can't handle the job and Andre Iguodala is asked to take over while his role decreases, his reputation as a defender will take a hit, especially since he's not known for making plays off the ball on that end.
On offense, Barnes will have to make James pay for roaming instead of guarding him closely. If he hits a slump, like he did in the first two rounds, the Cavaliers' defense will catch a huge break, as they would be able to smother the dive man on pick-and-rolls by leaving him open and sending his man to help. There's a good chance Tyronn Lue tries to hide either Kevin Love or Kyrie Irving on him for stretches, and he has to be willing to attack them when he gets the ball, but without forcing things.
No other player has arguably as much to lose in this series as Barnes. Irving and Love will be scrutinized if they don’t perform well, but they are widely considered to be stars and that won’t change. James and Curry have their detractors who made up their minds on them long ago, so they will be criticized no matter what they do. Most of the rotation players on both teams are under long-term contracts and know where the stand in the hierarchy of the league.
Barnes, on the other hand, needs to find his identity after being in the background for his entire career, intentionally or not.
A good showing on both ends will make a lasting impression on decision-makers, and could make the gamble he made when he rejected that generous extension seem genius in retrospect. Another disappearing act in a career that has featured a few too many already, and it will be hard to shake the notion that he’s a solid 3-and-D role player and not much else.
Despite inciting criticism when he was in college for talking about building his brand, Barnes is a blank canvass, which allows outsiders to speculate about who he really is as a player.
The believers would say that he’s a potential star who never got a chance to shine because he has always been surrounded by more talented players, who command more attention than he does, both on and off the court. He does what he’s asked and does it well, even if he could do more under difference circumstances.
The critics will point out that whenever he’s asked to step up to make up for the absence of those star teammates he’s come up short, proving that he’s only well-suited to be a supporting performer and nothing else. Even when asked to play a small part, he’s never truly excelled, never showed that he can be an elite, irreplaceable role player.
Right now, it’s impossible to know which of those statements is right and which isn’t. It will be on Barnes to use these finals to settle that argument once and for all.
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