NBA defensive award voters missed mark in robbing Scottie Barnes

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Hardcore Raptors fans were up in arms with the recent news that Scottie Barnes had not been voted onto the NBA’s all-defensive first team.

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Barnes himself seemed annoyed, though not overly surprised, by the decision, posting on social media: “Mannnn what do I tell yaBulls_ Let’s keep working.”

Barnes and Raptors supporters were right to conclude that an international panel of 100 NBA award voters had once again gotten it wrong when it comes to a deserving Toronto player. Far too often, players on the league’s only team not based in America are ignored in the annual ballot-taking.

And while Barnes had finished fifth in defensive player of the year voting (San Antonio game-changer Victor Wembanyama was the unanimous winner, followed by Oklahoma City’s Chet Holmgren, Detroit’s Ausar Thompson and four-time winner Rudy Gobert, of Minnesota), which usually translates to a spot on the first team, Boston’s Derrick White edged out Barnes for the final spot. This, even though on the defensive player of the year tally, Barnes had received three second-place votes to one by White and five more third-place selections. Yet, he somehow only made the second team. While the other four behind Wembanyama are all great defenders, Barnes had as good a case as anybody not named Wembanyama as the best defender in the NBA. Anyone who watched closely would realize this.

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The case for Barnes

Did anybody else in the league soundly guard players as diverse as three-time MVP Nikola Jokic, All-NBA point guard Cade Cunningham, big man Evan Mobley or a host of quick, high-scoring lead guards? We can’t think of any. His versatility opened up so much for Darko Rajakovic’s squad defensively.

Barnes was the only above average defender in Toronto’s starting lineup and its lone 7-footer, Jakob Poeltl, missed 44% of the season. Yet, the team finished fifth in the NBA in defensive efficiency. The team also won 46 games, just nine fewer than the previous two seasons combined and Vegas had set expectations at 37.5 victories before the year started.

It wasn’t all Barnes, but he was the driving force in a breakout year that should have showed the basketball world how great a defender he had become (ironically, this happened in the playoffs, when Barnes was by a wide margin the best player on the floor in a seven-game loss against Cleveland).

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It’s surprising that high-profile, game-clinching moments like Barnes’s block of Holmgren in a shocking win over Oklahoma City, or Jalen Green in another win over Phoenix, didn’t stick in the mind of voters. Barnes led all players with nine clutch blocks, and had the overall counting stats that usually get rewarded in voting. He trailed only Wembanyama in combined blocks and steals and was the only player to tally at least 100 in each category. Yet 10 people left him off the ballot entirely. Yikes.

(It should be noted I had an official vote and put Barnes behind Wembanyama and Holmgren for defensive player of the year, with Barnes vs. Holmgren really being close to a coin flip, and he was a no-doubt choice for the first team on my ballot. The other Canada-based voters also put Barnes on the first team and close behind Wembanyama for defensive player of the year).

Raptors consistently snubbed

Somehow, in 31 seasons, Toronto has only had three out of over 300 players to put on the uniform selected to an all-defensive team. Barnes, OG Anunoby (who joined him on the second team this year, but now as a member of the New York Knicks), and Kawhi Leonard during the championship year. No Raptor has ever made the first team. Nobody even cracked the second team until Leonard. Not Marcus Camby when he blocked 3.7 shots a game in 1997-98 (the fourth-most by anyone over the last three decades). Not Doug Christie when he averaged nearly 2.5 steals a game over a three-year run (magically Christie instantly racked up four consecutive all-defensive team selections, including a first-team nod upon being traded to Sacramento). Not Kyle Lowry, an exceptionally good defender for much of his time in Toronto, nor Amir Johnson who was criminally underrated. Not Chris Bosh before him or Shawn Marion, suddenly seen as a stiff in his brief time as a Raptor despite being a generational defender before and still good enough to get more votes than Tim Duncan the next season after leaving for Dallas. Not Pascal Siakam either. And Anunoby finally got some recognition after years of standout play only because his steal and deflection numbers were too overwhelming to be ignored.

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Anunoby is a man of few words, but we had more than one conversation with him about the lack of voting support for Raptors players. The reasoning, the ridiculousness of the lack of recognition and whether things would ever change.

A few years later, the answer is no. But maybe Barnes getting screwed out of what he deserved after the season he just turned in might at least move things in the right direction. Maybe it will even benefit Barnes (or rising Collin Murray-Boyles) in a future year.

On X: @WolstatSun

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