"Face of the franchise": Toronto Raptors are now Scottie Barnes' team
The Toronto Raptors officially entered a new era last week.
Following the team’s trade with the Indiana Pacers that saw Toronto part ways with star forward Pascal Siakam, the Raptors introduced Scottie Barnes in the final spot of the starting lineup on Wednesday night against the Miami Heat.
It’s a spot that’s been occupied by many star players over the years: Kyle Lowry, Fred VanVleet, Pascal Siakam, and now Barnes.
Under two and a half years removed from being picked fourth overall in the 2021 NBA Draft, it’s a clear sign Barnes is now “the guy” in Toronto: the on- and off-court leader, the main jersey sales attraction, and the sort of player that a front office tailors everyone else’s timelines around.
But when asked if the designation meant anything special to him, Barnes was pretty low-key in his answer.
“Just waiting for the game to start,” Barnes said in response to a question from Daily Hive.
The Raptors, at 16-27 and sitting 12th in the Eastern Conference, look to be headed nowhere fast this season after trading Siakam and OG Anunoby. They have 38 games left in a season that likely won’t be remembered much for the wins and losses, but rather for the foundational shift of power within the organization.
For the first time in a while, Toronto seems to be prioritizing the long-term future over the immediate one, and they’re clearly trusting Barnes to be the most important piece of their on-court unit.
It’s not like this should be exactly surprising to anyone: Toronto’s been hinting at it for weeks, if not months or years. Sometimes, it’s been a little bit more pointed.
In an impassioned speech on January 9, Toronto head coach Darko Rajakovic snuck in a bit of praise for Barnes in his viral postgame rant criticizing the referees, where he called Barnes a player who is “going to be the face of this league.”
And in just about every media availability he’s had since then, Rajakovic has doubled down on heaping the praise for Barnes.
Putting the weight of an NBA franchise that won six division titles in seven years (and a championship) before Barnes’ arrival might be a tough ask, but it seems like rightly or wrongly, the Raptors are pretty clear about their expectations of him. As Barnes goes, the Raptors will go, and vice versa.
“I don’t know if he is ready for that responsibility, but we have to put him in position,” Raptors president Masai Ujiri said of Barnes last week. “That’s our jobs. We have to put him in [a] position to at least grow and start to see dividends of the work he is putting in, yeah, to become that kind of player.”
Barnes’ legacy won’t necessarily be defined by what he does this season, and perhaps not even the next one after that. But NBA careers are a finite resource, and the clock has officially started on the Scottie Barnes era for the Raptors.
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