The Toronto Raptors made Scottie Barnes the face of the franchise by trading away the team’s perennial all-star Pascal Siakam last season, as well as stalwart OG Anunoby to acquire Immanuel Quickley and RJ Barrett, who they saw as ideal fits alongside Barnes.
Everything on the court revolves around Barnes, who can score, create, rebound and defend at a high level. But Barnes will miss at least 11 games — and likely more than that — after suffering a fractured right orbital bone on Monday.
It’s brutal news for Barnes, just 23, and for the Raptors, who haven’t had Barnes, Quickley and Barrett in the lineup at the same time since March 1.
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Here’s what it all means
TIMELINE
The Raptors said on Oct. 30 Barnes would be re-evaluated in three weeks. Players rarely simply return to action around that re-evaluation date, so Barnes probably misses a 12th game, a home date against Minnesota on Nov. 21, before the team gets two days off ahead of a three-games-in-four-nights start to a trip that goes through Cleveland, Detroit and New Orleans. Toronto then gets Miami in South Beach for an NBA Cup game on Nov. 29 to end that trip.
There won’t be much if any practice time for the Raptors during that stretch, so even if Barnes is healed up, he might need a few sessions of ramp up, making a return on Dec. 1 (Miami at Toronto) or Dec. 3 (Indiana at Toronto in an NBA Cup game) seem more realistic, barring any setbacks.
WHO BARNES WILL MISS
The Raptors take a near-league-worst 1-4 record (only Utah is winless so far) into two huge dates this weekend.
Barnes will miss the only appearance of the year by LeBron James, Anthony Davis and the Los Angeles Lakers on Friday, and DeMar DeRozan’s first Toronto game as a Sacramento King the next night. That game features the Vince Carter jersey retirement ceremony at halftime.
The team lost on Wednesday against Charlotte, one of only three opponents in the season’s first 25 games not to make the playoffs last season. It’s a brutal stretch and, now without Barnes for much of it, there’s a decent chance Toronto has a bottom-three record by the time he can play again.
HOW IT IMPACTS EXPECTATIONS
Few saw this as a playoff team coming in and only optimists thought the play-in was likely. Now, forget either of those options (it’s not like Toronto was thriving with Barnes, as its NBA-worst defensive efficiency rating indicates).
Management would prefer to land a high pick in what is seen as a stacked NBA draft, anyway, and the Barnes injury just made that scenario a lot more realistic.
Quickley has played parts of one game, Barrett two, top bench options Kelly Olynyk and Bruce Brown zero. Injuries have hit early as opposed to late last season, but the Barnes news is a gut punch.
The three teams with the NBA’s worst record at the end of the season each have 52.1% odds of selecting in the Top 4 and 14% at No. 1 (Duke’s Cooper Flagg is the front-runner, but most pundits think anybody in the Top 5 would have gone first in the weaker 2024 draft and can be all-stars).
HOW IT IMPACTS BARNES
Besides being crushing for a guy who loves basketball and is coming off missing most of the second half of 2023-24, it’s also a potentially tough hit to his wallet. Barnes got just shy of $225-million US guaranteed when he signed the richest contract in Raptors history, so he’ll be fine financially, but there are provisions in the deal to make it worth as much as $270 million.
To get there on a supermax deal, a player needs to make one of the three all-NBA teams, win defensive player of the year in the preceding season or in two of the three preceding seasons or win league MVP.
Players need to suit up for 65 games to be eligible for the awards. That doesn’t give Barnes a lot of leeway as he’d only be able to miss two more games the rest of this season to be eligible for an award.
The absence also robs him of time to get used to emerging Raptors like Gradey Dick, Jamal Shead, Davion Mitchell, Jonathan Mogbo (who he knows very well, having been a close friend for years) and Ja’Kobe Walter, who is nearing his debut.
And Barnes needs gym time to get up as many shots as possible since outside shooting is his weakness at this point.
WHO GETS MORE MINUTES/RESPONSIBILITIES
Barrett was already the leading scorer both last year and in his two games healthy this year, but he’ll be asked to score the ball even more with Barnes out. Dick and Quickley will also have to get up more shots and Quickley will have to ramp up his development as a creator and not just a deadly scorer (he went a long way toward doing that in his first months as a Raptor).
Mitchell, Shead, Mogbo and possibly Walter also now get more time and Jakob Poeltl, off to a great start, probably flexes more of his passing chops as a hub of the offence than he would have had Barnes been playing.
Mogbo got the first start Wednesday, while Agbaji had been starting for Barrett previously. Mogbo has opened eyes by playing so well early after looking pretty lost in training camp.
Finally, Ochai Agbaji will be leaned on far more heavily than before to guard the best opposing wing on a nightly basis. The hope is he’ll keep hitting shots too.