What is Westbrook if he is not a primary ball handler? Or do you think Barnes will be that at the NBA level.
This is more thought exercise here, as I do like Barnes a lot but I'm trying to be realistic with what his likely outcomes are.
The interesting thing about the Barnes discussion to me is that there's almost no argument about what he does well vs what he doesn't, it seems like we're all in agreement on this. The argument seems to center around how effective he can be with his current skill set and how much room he has to improve.
To me, I see major problems whenever you rely on a non-shooter to initiate and create a big part of the team's offense. You even see it with Giannis before he embraced working off ball and rolling more, and Giannis is just about as good as you can possibly be with his archetype. Shooting is the single most important and most synergistic skill in basketball- you can never have enough, and more shooting only makes things easier for your teammates and raises the offensive efficiency as a whole.
I'm also really skeptical that Barnes will ever shoot well enough to justify being a go-to option as his mechanics are a mess on the move, he shoots a low percentage from the free throw line, and I believe he also had really bad touch on floaters and push shots (?).
Even if he settles into a Draymond type player, Draymond has major limitations that really show up whenever he isn't playing with maybe the best off-ball scorer in NBA history. As much as he would allow us to be versatile with defensive personnel, he would also shoehorn us into our offensive personnel as everyone around him would need to be a great shooter.
If guys want to draft him in the top 4 because they believe he can work on his shooting to the point that it isn't a weakness, then I can see that. But if they think the shooting just isn't important for a guy with his skill-set, I just really disagree.