The Dallas Mavericks, it turns out, didn’t hand Harrison Barnes a four-year, $94 million deal just for him to be an offensive decoy. They are investing in his future as a featured option, in a way the Golden State Warriors never could or wanted to.
Some will find this to be an impossible concept. Barnes had his moments as the No. 4 and 5 option on the Warriors, but he never seemed to thrive. He missed big shots, his defensive value at times became overstated and he never made a true two-way leap in any given year. By the end of 2015-16, it felt like he had plateaued.
But Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle doesn’t see it that way. He still sees featured-weapon potential in the 24-year-old, per Dwaine Price of Start-Telegram:
“We’re a different situation,” Carlisle said. “We’re working hard in ways for him to be more of a primary producer, but it’s not going to happen overnight.
“It’s going to be a process. And he’s in it for the long haul and so are we.”
Indeed, it’s going to be a process. Barnes has never averaged 10 shot attempts per game, and his usage rate has never climbed above 18. And yet, that’s where his potential lies.
Golden State reached a point where it didn’t have room to develop him. It’s easy to enter, and stay in, a funk or very specific role when you’re not given the opportunity to escape it, to move on from it.
Increased opportunity will come with a learning curve for Barnes, but that process, that trial and error, isn’t a luxury he has been afforded over the last two or three seasons with the Warriors. The Mavericks, as a fringe playoff team, have the time and touches to test his maturation as a player. And while that’s a $94 million risk, it’s still, in fact, a risk, not an unequivocally bad investment.
