It would be an understatement to say Harrison Barnes has come a long way in his first season as a Maverick.Remember when he shot 26 percent during the preseason? That feels like an awfully long time ago at this point. He’s had seven games this season with a scoring output higher than the percentage he shot during exhibition season.Player development is not always linear; a player does not simply improve at every single facet of his game without ever taking a step back in a different area, and sometimes growth can take days, weeks, months, or years. Every case is different. In Barnes’, though, he has improved dramatically since signing as a Maverick. That, combined with a hugely increased workload over the one he carried during four seasons with the Golden State Warriors, has resulted in one of the most unexpected, pleasant surprises of the 2016-17 season: Barnes is averaging 20.7 points per game. Of the 32 other NBA players who can make that same claim, only eight are younger than him.And while in most cases achieving mastery might not follow a linear progression, Barnes’ first season in Dallas has followed an extraordinarily linear path. This feels like the right time to look back at how far he’s come this season, for two reasons. The first: Tonight the Mavericks will play their 41st game, reaching the halfway point of the season, and that has at least some symbolic value. The second: With 40 games in the books, and having appeared (and scored in double-digits) in every game so far, it’s a really round number and makes looking back in time much more convenient.So, without further ado, below is a chart displaying some of Barnes’ numbers during each 10-game segment of the 2016-17 campaign, as well as averages from both this season and his career before coming to Dallas.(Note: Effective field goal percentage, or eFG, measures a player’s field goal proficiency while factoring in the added value of the 3-point shot. True shooting percentage factors free throw attempts into the equation. Assist percentage measures the percentage of his teammates’ field goals he assisted while on the floor. Usage percentage, or USG, is an estimate of the percentage a player “used” while on the floor, meaning he took a shot, drew a foul, or turned the ball over. If each player had equal shares of the offense, their usage rate would each be 20 percent.)Barnes more than doubling his per-game scoring average is what will be the thing that is most obvious of all to most fans. In half a season he’s gone from fourth option to 20-point scorer. He will set his single-season career-high for points scored with his first basket tonight.But what is most striking and impressive about the season he’s had is that he’s increased his usage rate by more than 10 full percentage points while also maintaining higher effective field goal and true shooting percentages. What’s more, Barnes is playing a new position in the lineup, he’s taking mid-range shots more often than ever before, more of his shots have been contested, he’s consistently creating his own looks for the first time in his career, and he’s left behind three All-NBA teammates to become the lone 20-point scorer on his new team. And he’s hitting 3-pointers well below his career average. (What would his numbers look like if he was shooting 37 percent from 3, not 34 percent?) All of those factors should reduce efficiency. But they haven’t.This is not common.The next most impressive item to note is his upward-trending assist percentage from one 10-game set to the next. In his last 10 games, Barnes has assisted on more than 10 percent of his teammates’ makes while he’s been on the floor, and that’s particularly surprising because he had two zero-assist games during that stretch. They were balanced out, however, by two five-assist games, a mark that represents his career-high. He was never a fulcrum of the offense in Golden State, the player around which the entire offense revolved almost on a possession-by-possession basis, but that’s become the case in Dallas, especially late in games. He’s taken advantage of those opportunities lately both by scoring himself and distributing the ball to others.It is extremely rare for a player to see such a dramatic increase in usage rate while maintaining similar (or better) shooting numbers than the season before. That’s typically because 20-point-caliber players very rarely ever change teams, especially after their rookie contract. But the circumstances of last summer led to significant roster overhaul in the Bay Area, and Dallas took advantage by scooping up Barnes in free agency.
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