Scottie Barnes spent his sixth season giving the Raptors exactly what they needed most: a defense that could carry them. By the end of the year, he had his first All-Defensive Second Team selection, and while that was a strong honor, Barnes and plenty of Raptors fans were left wanting more after he missed out on the top five.
That frustration made sense. Barnes wasn’t just good defensively - he was one of the league’s most versatile and switchable defenders all season, and he led the NBA in clutch blocks.
That all-around impact was enough to push him into the top eight on Sam Vecenie’s and Bryce Simon’s list of the top 25 defenders, revealed on the August 23 episode of The Game Theory Podcast. Barnes landed at No. 8, between Amen Thompson at seven and Evan Mobley at nine.
Vecenie pointed to real growth in Barnes’s on-ball defense as a major reason for the rise.
“I thought that the on-ball defense improved enough where I thought it was well above average now, as opposed to before I thought it was pretty average to where at times it could be a little below average,” Vecenie said.
He also said Barnes has become more fluid laterally and more reliable when he has to recover after getting beat.
“I think he’s gotten a little bit more flexible, too, in terms of his movement ability. That was what really I struggled with in his first few years in the NBA was that I felt like you could kind of get by him as he was turning his hips. I think he’s gotten more flexible through his hips now, and he’s also gotten better at just knowing when to turn and run and play in recovery and just be like, ‘Nope, I’m just going to erase this.’”
For Toronto, that kind of improvement mattered everywhere. The Raptors made the playoffs behind the NBA’s fifth-best defense, with only the Oklahoma City Thunder, Detroit Pistons, San Antonio Spurs, and Boston Celtics finishing with better defensive ratings in the regular season. They also forced the second-most turnovers in the league behind the Houston Rockets at 17.7, while doing a strong job of keeping opponents off the offensive glass and limiting fast-break chances.
Barnes sat at the center of it all. He was the Raptors’ best rim protector, finishing with 1.5 blocks per game, and he led the team with 1.4 steals per game.
His size, mobility, and switchability gave Darko Rajakovic a lot of ways to shape the defense. He also helped finish possessions with rebounds and push the ball the other way, which fed directly into Toronto’s best offensive stretches.
The Raptors should get a boost on offense if Kawhi Leonard joins them for the 2026-27 season, but the defense is still going to be the foundation, especially in games Leonard misses. And after his strong playoff run, Barnes is expected to grow as a scorer next season. Even so, his most important value to Toronto remains clear: he is still the player who makes the defense go.
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Barnes finished the regular season with 18.1 points, 7.5 rebounds, 5.9 assists, 1.4 steals and 1.5 blocks per game, then raised his level in the postseason. For a Raptors team trying to define its next step, that kind of impact is exactly what makes Barnes such a focal point of the conversation, because the debate around Torontos ceiling now runs directly through what he can do on both ends. [Read more 🡒]
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