His lateral quickness is scary for a guy his size.
That’s one of my issues with Barrett.
Someone on Twitter broke it down much better than I can, but if you watch him, he’s a straight line slasher. No real wiggle. a LOT of the time he makes what are considered “selfish” plays, it’s because he’s fighting to get past his man. Athletically he doesn’t automatically blow by people, and he doesn’t have Zion’s wiggle/lateral quickness. He doesn’t make the heads up play cause he’s gotta put his head down (figuratively) and focus on beating his man.
You can see it most easily when he’s trying to beat someone off the dribble going east/west. He has to work to get that separation, and often will pull up or look to dish because he can’t get it.
I think he can fix that by improving his handles, a la Harden. After watching him most of the season, I also think a big reason he struggles to be efficient is because in an ideal world, he’d be slashing with a head of steam a lot more (which he can’t do on this team because of Zion).
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