Scottie Barnes’ drive to be an elite defender finally pays off. After the Raptors’ turnaround to 46 wins and a playoff return, Barnes becomes Toronto’s third player to earn NBA All-Defensive Team recognition, finishing sixth in voting and producing a season de
TORONTO — Four years ago, Scottie Barnes was still explaining what he wanted to be.
Before the 2022-23 season, after his second training camp, he made it plain that defense was his mission. “I feel like that’s what I do best,” Barnes said. “That’s one thing I always pride myself on, trying to guard. That’s my goal.”
He also spoke earlier about winning rookie-of-the-year honours, and he did. But even with goals stated so clearly, nothing in the NBA rewards you for confidence alone.
Barnes didn’t make the NBA’s All-Defensive team in his second season. Then came a stretch where Toronto couldn’t quite translate Barnes’ momentum into results: the Raptors went through three increasingly rough years as they searched for how to build after the post-championship era. with Barnes driving a new identity alongside Fred VanVleet. OG Anunoby and Pascal Siakam.
He missed All-Defense again in his third and fourth seasons — years complicated by record struggles and an on-the-fly rebuild. Toronto won 25 games in 2023-24 and then 30 in 2024-25. Progress was there, but it didn’t always show up on ballots.
This past season, though, the Raptors turned the corner.
They won 46 games, reached the playoffs for the first time since Barnes’ rookie year, and pushed through their first-round loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers. Cleveland, meanwhile, moved on to the Eastern Conference Finals.
And on Friday night, Barnes finally reached the goal that had sat in his own language for years.
The fifth-year star became just the third Raptor in franchise history — after Kawhi Leonard and OG Anunoby — to be recognized as one of the NBA’s 10 best defenders.
Barnes received 42 first-team votes and 46 second-team votes and finished sixth overall in the voting conducted by a panel of media members. He also notes that he’s the kind of player whose impact shows up most clearly when you watch for it — and he wasn’t just collecting reputation. He was collecting hardware.
The Raptors didn’t just improve. Their defense changed.
They finished the regular season with the league’s fifth-best defensive rating, allowing 112.1 points per game. That’s a jump from 17th in defensive rating last season and 25th the year before.
NBA awards voting takes place before the playoffs, but the groundwork was already there in the regular season.
Toronto’s offseason roster additions were limited in a way that made the defensive leap harder to explain by personnel alone. Brandon Ingram and Sandro Mamukelashvili were the significant additions, and neither is considered a “plus” defender. Immanuel Quickley and RJ Barrett were willing defenders, but they aren’t seen as game-changers on that end. Jakob Poeltl — the Raptors starter with the best defensive acumen other than Barnes — played just 46 games and spent much of the season dealing with back problems. Even Collin Murray-Boyles. the rookie who teamed with Barnes in Toronto’s best defensive lineups. played 57 games and averaged 21.9 minutes per game.
So the question wasn’t whether the Raptors had better defenders on paper. It was how the style of play suddenly started working.
Rajakovic and his coaching staff deserve credit for pushing a high-effort, high-event defensive approach designed to create the kind of turnovers Toronto needed to ignite its offense. But none of it holds together without Barnes.
He didn’t simply improve in one role. He morphed in-game — from off-ball menace to deep-in-the-paint rim protector to perimeter shutdown — across a season where the Raptors were increasingly relying on him to handle different threats without losing structure.
That versatility helped produce numbers that didn’t leave much room for doubt.
Barnes was the only player in the NBA to rack up at least 100 steals (114) and 100 blocks (116) this season. It made him the first to reach the double century in seven seasons.
When Barnes was on the floor, the Raptors were 4.3 points per 100 possessions better. He was also the common denominator across nearly all of Toronto’s best defensive lineups. Among players with at least 2,000 minutes, Barnes ranked seventh in defensive versatility and 14th in match-up difficulty, per craftednba.com.
The statistics were persuasive. The film looked even more relentless.
Utah Jazz head coach Will Hardy described what it felt like to face Barnes late in the regular season. “He’s impacting the game defensively more (than in the past), I feel like,” Hardy said. “Counting stats can be very misleading. We talk a lot about blocked shots, for example. There are some players in our league that people won’t go near. so they maybe don’t get as many blocks as they could because people see them and go. ‘I don’t want to do that.’”.
Hardy kept going, pointing at how Barnes affects decisions rather than only outcomes. “I think Scottie’s become such a great all-around player. When you watch him on film. it’s hard to say. ‘Oh. this is the one thing he does that will change the game.’ He can affect it in a bunch of different ways. Consistency in terms of contributing to winning, sometimes it’s quiet. There are players in our league who produce very loud stats and that’s great. but Scottie is one of those guys where you coach against him or play against him and go. ‘Man. he had 14 and 12 but it felt like he was everywhere.’ That’s the great part about our sport: you still have to watch.”.
Raptors head coach Darko Rajakovic pointed to how Barnes chooses his challenges. “Every single night. he gets the best match-up on the opposing team and he’s not shying away from that. ” Rajakovic said. “He prides himself on the defence end. and that’s a hard job … he’s going to be guarding point guards. wings. and five-man … he does a lot for us.”.
That’s exactly what the best defenders do — and it’s why the “All-Defensive” label suddenly fits.
In late March, Barnes was the primary defender on Cade Cunningham, the Detroit Pistons point guard who will almost surely earn first or second team All-NBA honours in the coming weeks. He also took on two-time MVP Nikola Jokic of the Denver Nuggets.
Barnes’ impact wasn’t limited to normal-season possessions either. He led the NBA with nine “clutch” blocks. Four came in the final minute of games when Toronto protected leads of four points or less.
Two moments stand out because they were so close to the buzzer. On Jan. 25. Barnes rose up and blocked Oklahoma City star Chet Holmgren to preserve a two-point lead with 29 seconds left in a win over the Thunder. Later. on March 13. Barnes made another late statement against Phoenix Suns guard Jalen Green: Toronto led by four with 43 seconds to play.
That postseason reputation didn’t begin in the first round, but it was impossible to ignore there.
During the first-round loss to the Cavaliers, Barnes was a game-plan breaker. He took turns bottling up Cleveland big man Evan Mobley and star guards Donovan Mitchell and James Harden. The series still ended in Toronto’s defeat. but Barnes led Cleveland’s attention — and he led the Raptors in points. assists and blocked shots.
Cleveland guard and former Raptor Dennis Schröder didn’t soften the message when asked about Barnes after the series. “Scottie Barnes, man, he’s a dog,” Schröder said. “He’s an animal, that was like some Kawhi (Leonard) stuff.”
That comparison matters inside Toronto. Kawhi Leonard’s two-way mastery helped lift the Raptors to the 2019 NBA championship.
Barnes isn’t there yet. Leonard was a two-time defensive player of the year by the time he joined Toronto in his eighth season and had been recognized as an all-NBA defender four times, with accomplishments offensively to match.
But even without the full parallel, the direction is visible.
After the regular season concluded, Barnes framed his own work in plain terms. “I feel like I’ve been great defensively,” Barnes said. “For sure, I took it to another level. But we’re winning. I feel like once we’re winning. my name is going to be in those conversations (for all-defence and defensive player of the year). I feel like I’m great defensively. I help our team a lot and I’m one of the best defenders in the NBA. I take pride in that.”.
He said the part that matters most: they’re winning.
Now Toronto has to keep helping him build on it, because the honor was earned — and it also set a new expectation. Barnes has already reached one significant goal. There’s no reason the next one can’t be bigger.
Scottie Barnes Toronto Raptors NBA All-Defensive Team Darko Rajakovic Kawhi Leonard OG Anunoby Cleveland Cavaliers Nikola Jokic Cade Cunningham Chet Holmgren Jalen Green Donovan Mitchell James Harden Evan Mobley Immanuel Quickley RJ Barrett