Should the Denver Nuggets target Harrison Barnes?

The Denver Nuggets are in the market for a wing this trade deadline. The idea behind the move is to help the team win this season while also adding to the strength of next season’s roster. Is Harrison Barnes an ideal candidate for that move?

Barnes has been mentioned in trade rumors for more than a year and there is a “rising belief around the league” that the Sacramento Kings will pull the trigger on a deal by the deadline in February according to Marc Stein via his Substack.

HB has one season after this one remaining on the four-year, $85 million deal he signed with the Kings and could be one of the hotter commodities at the deadline.

He’s currently averaging 16.3 points per game while shooting a career-high 42 percent from behind the arc. That 3-point shooting figure is astounding as this Kings team is currently 24th in offense according to Cleaning the Glass and the roster struggles to find efficient shots.

While he does find himself open for plenty of open 3-pointers in the corners, this season, he’s also making the contested ones, especially off his teammates’ drives.

Most of Barnes’ made shots come off a Haliburton pass this season and the catch-and-shoots he’s making can easily be replicated off a Nikola Jokic post outlet, or Jamal Murray drive-and-kick in the future.

When it comes to putting the ball on the ground, Barnes gets a little less efficient. He’s making 54 percent of his shots at the rim when using Cleaning the Glass‘ metric, good for the 21st percentile among all forwards.

He’s hyper-efficient at the long-mid-range shot and after watching him warm up for most of his games in Golden State, I’m not surprised, I have never seen anyone practice the one-dribble pull-up more.

As with all trade candidates, he’d get the ‘Jokic bump’ from playing alongside the best passing big man of all time and just like how Aaron Gordon is having a career year, Barnes would get some very open looks at the basket.

For a trade to work, the Denver Nuggets would almost have to move on from Will Barton and it might not be something the front office would be happy doing.

This trade would shatter a lot of the Denver Nuggets depth but it would settle the starting lineup for this season and the next. Aaron Gordon can slide down to the four, his natural position, Jeff Green can move to a bench role, and Harrison Barnes could play the three.

It would also give Michael Malone much more positional flexibility. Instead of squeezing JaMychal Green in next to Jokic, cramping the team’s spacing, he’d always have a shooter in at the four slot next to Jokic and the newly-acquired DeMarcus Cousins can act solely as Jokic’s backup.

When this team is at full strength, Malone could go with a supersized lineup of Murray, Michael Porter Jr., HB, AG, and Jokic. MPJ hasn’t shown that he has the speed or discipline to keep up with elite perimeter players, but Barnes has. MPJ could hide on the weaker wing option while Harrison capably takes the task.

The only downside with Barnes is his contract. When writing an article on wing targets for this year’s trade deadline, options like Terrence Ross, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, and Robert Covington do nearly all that Harrison Barnes does but on a much cheaper deal, meaning Denver would only have to part with JaMychal to make the money work.

The positive spin is that this trade deadline looks like it’s full of viable trade candidates for Tim Connelly, so if he’s willing to part with some tangible assets, there are players out there.