Dallas Mavericks: 2016 Offseason Grades

Bagging Barnes

And now we come to the Mavericks’ biggest and most controversial move of the summer: signing Harrison Barnes to a four-year, $94 million deal. Most likely, the way you feel about adding Harry B serves as a barometer for how you feel about Dallas’ summer as a whole.

On the one hand, there are legitimate reasons to take issue with paying the Warriors’ fourth option (and fifth best starter) a whopping $23.5 million per year over the next four seasons, especially with the power of a fourth-year, $25.1 million player option.

Though he’s only 24 years old, Barnes’ limitations came to light time and time again under the microscope of playing for the NBA’s best team over the last two seasons. Originally projected to be a star coming out of high school and even out of college, Barnes was unable to live up to that hype, both at North Carolina and with the Warriors.

In arguably his best season last year, Barnes averaged 11.7 points and 4.9 rebounds per game on efficient .466/.383/.761 shooting splits. The conundrum is what to expect from Barnes now that he’s no longer benefitting from playing in a three-point heavy system with three All-NBA players.

In Dallas, where he’ll be taking on much more responsibility, Barnes can probably bump up his scoring and rebounding averages. But will the efficiency — particularly from three-point range — remain intact without all those wide open looks?

Come to think of it, wasn’t his three-point efficiency a bit underwhelming considering how open he was all year?

Barnes has hovered around 40 percent shooting from distance over the last two seasons, but will it continue now that he’s a main option on offense? We’ve seen his shooting completely disappear before, as it did in the Finals when he shot 5-for-32 (and 3-for-15 from deep) over the series’ final three games.

To be perfectly honest, it’s almost impossible to know what to expect. The Warriors rarely used him as anything more than a catch-and-shoot option. He almost never operated with the ball in his hands, and in the rare occasions where he did, they were post-ups capitalizing on mismatches.

There have been some signs of promise from Barnes over the years, even before the Warriors were a record-smashing juggernaut.

His athleticism was apparent as early as his rookie season, he quickly developed a “Playoff Harry B” moniker for his unexpected contributions in critical postseason moments, and he’s knocked down game-winners as recently as last season.

Barnes has shown the ability to score in the post, he’s an underrated defender and his versatility in being able to play the small-ball 4 spot was part of what made the Warriors’ “Lineup of Death” so formidable. But there are still justifiable questions about what happens when you subtract Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green from the equation.

Ultimately, this may simply come down to how Carlisle handles his development. There’s no question Carlisle is known for extracting more out his players than perhaps any NBA head coach, but will his sterner coaching style break a soft-spoken guy like Barnes?

Or will it inspire him to dig deep and ultimately become another Carlisle success story? I lean toward the latter, but the pressure of stepping into an expanded role may complicate matters.

Make no mistake about it, Harry B has great lengths to go if he wants to prove that his skill set was not just a product of his environment in Golden State. There’s a chance he doesn’t have that killer gene needed to be “the guy,” and Mavs fans are right to be concerned if the post-Dirk plan is to build with him as the centerpiece.

But surround him with the right pieces and encourage him to slowly but surely take on more responsibility, and perhaps this trial by fire won’t be as brutal as Twitter would lead you to believe. His contract is inflated no matter what, but the Mavs were wise to capitalize on Golden State’s fire sale in the aftermath of the Kevin Durant decision.

Harrison Barnes is not a franchise player. But he is a very good role player, and it will be interesting to see what he’s able to do in an expanded role for a team that didn’t have too many superior alternatives this summer.

Grade: C+

Next: Adding An Aussie