MENDENHALL CENTER, LAS VEGAS, NV — Golden State Warriors forward Harrison Barnes was in town recently, both during the NBA Summer League in late July for some individual workouts with assistant coach Bruce Fraser as well as for USA Basketball’s Men’s National Team (USABMNT) training earlier this month.
After one of the Warriors’ last Summer League practices, Barnes let us capture a few clips as he went through some drill sets with Fraser, such as this one involving dribbling (and also passing off the dribble):
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Then Barnes did a variety of shooting drills from all areas of the court. This one is with one-handed floaters at the edge of the paint:
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Barnes got even more training while participating in Team USA’s regimen of two straight practice days of drills, followed by the Showcase exhibition, where for observers of the camp he was noticeably putting a couple of his drills in play, such as dribbling from right to left, stopping, and fading away, thus creating a shot. He actually did this at least twice in the game, en route to a nice 21-point, 10-rebound performance.
“I’m just trying to improve my handle and my post game,” Barnes told LetsGoWarriors in Vegas. “I feel like the ability to be able to push in transition, handle it, take steps and stuff with the ball a little — and obviously in the post, if you get mismatches — be more efficient, kinda raise that percentage of either makes or getting fouled to the line.”
So that makes at least two Warriors — Draymond Green being the other — who are actively pursuing an uptick in their post-up games.
Barnes has since reiterated his desire to not only improve his post play, but also his ball-handling, twice since the USABMNT experience: once on a Q&A session on his Facebook page [H/T @GSWdelivery] and then in a YouTube video shot by the NBA during his trip to China with NBA Nation [H/T @diamond83].
Hmmm, ball-handling? Does that mean coast-to-coast attacks a la Green?
“I mean it’ll look much different, that’s for sure,” chuckled Barnes. “He’s had a little more practice at it than I have, but yeah something along those lines.”
All of these drills are great, but there’s a process for getting it ingrained as part of a basketball player’s skillset and calling upon it during a real NBA game. Barnes said he would start experimenting in pickup games and looks forward to training camp late next month.
“Once September comes, I kind of get to go against actual NBA-level competition,” Barnes explained. “Instead of me going and finishing against somebody who’s a 6’5” center in pickup basketball, it’ll be someone who’s seven feet like an Andrew Bogut, so that’ll be fun.”
(Photo: Cassy Athena)
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