DALLAS -- Harrison Barnes has been everything the Dallas Mavericks hoped for when they handed him a maximum contract this summer.
Too bad it hasn’t translated to any wins, but the season is only two games old.
From the Department of Things Nobody Said Last Season: If only Barnes could get a bit more help ...
There were a lot of eyebrows raised in July when the Mavs made a $94 million deal with Barnes. They bet that a good role player for the Golden State Warriors could blossom into something much more for the Mavs. It sure looked like money wasted when Barnes bricked all but 26.7 percent of his shots during a miserable preseason, but that seems like a distant memory after two efficient, prolific performances in his first two games that mattered in a Mavs uniform.
Barnes is averaging 25 points on 56.8 percent shooting in the infant stages of his Mavs tenure. The fifth-year veteran set career highs with 13 field goals, 23 field goal attempts and 31 points in his Dallas home debut Friday night, when Barnes was a bright spot in a 106-98 loss to the Houston Rockets.
“I expected Barnes to play extremely well,” coach Rick Carlisle said. “I think he has a chance to be a very special player. I’ve felt that all along. I like the way he competed tonight. This is what we expect. We expect him to play at a high level on both ends. I don’t know what the numbers expectation is, but we’ve got to win games, and we need him to do whatever is within his abilities to help us win games.”
It’s a whole new world for Barnes, who averaged 8.5 shots per game during his Golden State stint. He’ll get more than that in a lot of quarters with the Mavs.
“Coach has given me the green light to go out there and be aggressive,” Barnes said of the offensive freedom he certainly never had as the fourth or fifth option with the Warriors. “I think there’s a balance I’m still learning in terms of when to make a play for others, when to be aggressive and not settle for a pull-up, get to the rack, get to the free throw line. There’s still things I have to learn in terms of being that kind of scorer. But I plan to be aggressive every single night.”
Even if Barnes manages to maintain his offensive brilliance -- and that’s an awfully high standard for a player with a career average of 10.1 points per game -- it won’t matter unless Dallas improves to be at least a decent defensive team.
The absence of Dirk Nowitzki due to an illness in the home opener might explain some of the Mavs’ offensive struggles. Barnes probably benefited from getting to play primarily power forward, feasting on human traffic cone Ryan Anderson, but it wasn’t a pretty performance for his teammates, who combined to shoot just 38.6 percent from the floor.
However, it’s not like Nowitzki’s absence negatively affected the Mavs on the other end of the floor. And defense has been Dallas’ downfall in its first two games, as the Mavs are allowing an alarming 110.5 points per 100 possessions.
“The film’s going to be ugly tomorrow with Coach, and deservedly so,” center Andrew Bogut said, moments after Carlisle criticized his team’s lack of aggressiveness in the final 15 minutes. “We’ve got a lot of things we need to improve on. A lot of the things aren’t X’s and O’s. They’re effort, they’re mental awareness-type things. If we clean those up, we win that game.”
Of course, if Barnes didn’t light it up, the Mavs would have been blown out.
It’d be foolish to believe that Barnes can sustain this level of efficiency. But can he keep up the aggressiveness? Can he consistently be a threat to create his own shot? Can he handle the responsibility of being a primary offensive option? He will have plenty of opportunity to prove himself.
“This is the challenge that I accepted to come here,” Barnes said. “I’m excited about it.”
That’s one of few things Mavs fans can be excited about after their team stumbled out of the gates with an 0-2 start.