Opinion | Raptors Insider: Scottie Barnes was sent a message this week. His response against Pelicans wasn’t well received

The Raptors made a couple of significant rotation changes this week against the Cavaliers and it came down to this: One was strategic in nature. The other was to send a message.

Shifting Gary Trent Jr. to a bench role just makes sense. He can energize a second unit offensively, he can shoot with impunity and, privately in conversations, his teammates and coaches understand both the necessity of the move and the logic behind it.

Going to Thad Young as a starter may put the Raptors at a size disadvantage some nights but that’s not a crippling problem and he’s shown to be savvy enough to keep the offence churning with his passing and infrequent shot taking. The Raptors just “look” more normal with him in that role and after all the palaver about their body types and “six-10-and-scrambling-all-over-the-court,” some normalcy doesn’t hurt.

Trent took well to the move, he gave them a solid game against Cleveland at home on Monday and he got all the shots his heart could desire in a loss to New Orleans on Wednesday.

The 20 shots he took would have been too many in a normal game but that one was anything but normal after the team’s ugly start. The goal would be maybe 18-20 minutes a night, a shooting threat off the bench that didn’t exist before this week and a more evenly distributed offence. It was a minor topic of conversation the last couple of days around the team but mostly in the “yeah, that makes sense” manner.

The “message” part of the week is more serious, and more troubling. And it has to get fixed if the Raptors are going to reach their potential.

Not starting Scottie Barnes against the Cavs on Monday was explained away by coach Nick Nurse as not wanting to be too disruptive with guys coming back from injury — putting Pascal Siakam right back into a starting role was right but the coach couldn’t see putting both Siakam and Barnes back, even though Barnes had missed only two games.

That’s logical but losing a starting job because of injury — if only for one game — is tough but the message was clear.

If someone’s going to pay, it’s not going to be a veteran. Rookie of the year status means nothing if the play isn’t up to snuff.

And it hasn’t been.

Barnes played all right against the Cavs but was a no-show in New Orleans on Wednesday, hardly the kind of bounce back effort either his coaches or teammates needed. Going 1-for-7 from the field is unacceptable, the five assists were nice but the lack of engagement in the game was obvious.

Nurse got some cover in the fourth quarter when a group of backups made a nice run and put some juice into the game so he didn’t have to go back to Barnes. But the end result was Barnes played fewer minutes — 21:04 — than he has in all but one game of his career and he was hurt that time.

One of the quietly spoken about aspects of this season around the team is that Barnes has been good at times, but never great. He’s not taken over a game, or even a half, and they need him to be better more often.

Not 25 points a night better, just better and more energetic. More a part of what they do.

No one’s ready to give up on Barnes, that’s for sure. He’s ultra-talented and a vital part of the team. Everyone knows it and he’ll get a wide berth. But the Wednesday response to the Monday lineup shift caused a few eyebrows to be raised.

A cheap call

“Ridiculous” was how Nurse described the two technical fouls that caused Fred VanVleet’s ejection in the first minute of the second half of the loss in New Orleans and that’s an appropriate word that probably won’t cost the coach a fine.

VanVleet wasn’t around to chat publicly about it but having been around him for all these years, I know he knows how to get thrown out of a game if he wants to and how to get his money’s worth ($2,000 a pop) for picking up technical or two.

He never got the chance at either on the two cheap calls; the first ejection of his career was horribly anti-climatic.

And another thing, or two

The stats agree: He’s made five three-pointers in his last four games (in 13 attempts) after going 4-for-15 in his first nine. It’s not a dramatic uptick but he is giving them more now that he’s settling into a role.

Keep ‘em coming

The Friday-Saturday road-home back-to-back is going to cut into the time available to answer the probing questions for Ye Olde Mailbag but it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t keep sending them.

All it takes is an email to [email protected] and they’ll magically be answered here sometime Sunday morning.

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