Blazer news: Barton's contact guaranteed for next year

Will Barton is now officially guaranteed to be a Blazer next year.  Joe Freeman reported in the Oregonian that the Blazers were excited by the development, and impressed by the progress Barton has shown over the past year.

Blazer GM Neil Olshey had the option of waiving the contract and opening the door to possibly releasing Barton, but this was an unlikely move.  The issue of bringing him back for another year was really only, as Freeman put it, “a formality.”  Upon the decision not to waive him, the contract became fully guaranteed through next year at $915,000.  After that, the Blazers can offer a contract of $1.1 million and make him a restricted free agent or let him pursue the market.

Indeed the agreement was such a formality that Barton had to be reminded during exit interviews about it.  It was generally assumed the Blazers would bring him back after everything he did this year.  He played less, only 41 games compared to 2012-13 season’s 73 games (with 5 starts), and an average of only 9.4 minutes a game, down from 12.2 minutes the previous year.  But he did more, and did everything much more precisely, in a year where the Blazers avoided using their bench unless absolutely necessary.

Barton averaged 4.0 points and .8 assists last year—which was serviceable, given how little he played and how much Mo Williams dominated the scoring and assist-making functions of any bench lineup. The improvements, indeed, came in the more subtle statistics.  He cut his turnover average in half, as well as increased his field goal percentage significantly from 38% (on 309 attempts) to 42% (on 156 attempts).  He also turned from a liability from behind the three point line, making only 19% of his many attempts, into a (albeit minor) participant in the long-ball barrage the Blazers brought last season, making 30% of them.  This was a very large shift, given that his game has always been focused on the long-two, and has continued apace.  If Summer League was any indication of the progress of his three point shooting, he will even have matured into an viable three-point option beside that of McCollum and Blake.

The other improvements were intangible, but they were actually even more important to those on the staff and on the team.  Terry Stotts was absolutely convinced at the end of the season that he was the player who most matured in the season.  As he put it in exit interviews:

…[t]he biggest growth was Will Barton. Will Barton, from last year to this year, grew as a player, he grew as a professional on and off the court. His basketball IQ, I don't know if I've seen a player make that big of a jump from one season to the next.

Barton’s almost neglectful approach to the waiver issue leading up to this moment is a great example of precisely that maturity.  He now seems so focused on playing the right role on the team and improving himself as a player to fit it that issues like these which may have irked him in the past or made him anxious now seem to bounce off of him.  He came into the league focused on his status as one of the top draft picks, despite the fact that his stock bizarrely plummeted on draft night.  But since then he has taken it upon himself to do many of the selfless things on the court and off that make for winning basketball.  He embraced the quirky role of People’s champ for the fans, he served as hype man on the bench, keeping up morale, and he seems to have developed a great working relationship with Stotts—which issued, this year, in his being assigned point guard duty and trusted with the responsibility of running plays.  The formality—which another player might have worried about—became an ancillary issue for him.

Don’t however assume this means Barton is anything less than a fierce player determined to excel, to score, and to make more money.  In fact, opponents who underestimate Barton’s competitiveness are in for more of a surprise than ever—as we saw in Summer League.  There, Barton averaged 14.4 points 3 assists and 6.4 rebounds a game, along with 1.2 steals.

With so much up in the air next summer for the Blazers, it isn’t quite clear if they will come through and keep him for the long haul.  But of the current bench group, the team seems to value his contributions more than anyone else’s except Robinson’s, and if he doesn’t go for too high a price, it would not be a bad thing for the team if they held on.  For now though, we can look forward to another season of Barton’s highlights—what will surely be his best yet.