TORONTO — Every so often, Toronto Raptors coach Darko Rajaković says something so ridiculously positive about 24-year-old star Scottie Barnes that it makes you question how supportive the people in your corner really are.

“Scottie is defensive player of the year,” Rajaković said Sunday after the Raptors beat the Indiana Pacers. That was a prognostication, and he was just starting. “Scottie’s an All-Star. Scottie is gonna be … Finals MVP one day. Scottie’s gonna be MVP of this league one day. I’m calling it now — you can write down the date when I said that, OK?”

Feb. 8, 2026.

“Scottie’s not even close to where he’s gonna be (when) he’s 27, 28,” Rajaković continued. “There is so much that he’s improving week by week. And the more he’s improving, he’s making my job easier.”

The NBA started awarding Finals MVP in 1969. Only 20 players have won that award and MVP for the regular season in their careers. Do you know who hasn’t? Jerry West. Isiah Thomas. Dwyane Wade. Kawhi Leonard. All pretty good basketballers. And those guys won Finals MVP; it’s just the season-long award they never captured. It is a high bar.

Whether Barnes is one of the 20 best players in the NBA right now is debatable. He is now a two-time All-Star and will have a good case to make an All-Defense team and potentially an All-NBA team. Defensive player of the year? Sure, maybe. He’s been excellent this season.

But Rajaković’s excessively rosy shades underlined a fundamental truth: The Raptors, now and in the future, will grow only as much as Barnes does. As his team struggled to a 113-95 loss to a Detroit Pistons team missing its top two big men, sending the Raptors to the All-Star break with a 4-13 record against the 10 best teams in the league and a 28-10 mark against the rest, Barnes’ relative flaws shone through.

“Against top defences, everybody needs to be dialed in at all points,” Raptors centre Jakob Poeltl said, not speaking about Barnes specifically. “Everybody needs to be a threat on the court.”

With all of that said, Barnes was probably the best player for the Raptors on Wednesday. He had 17 points, seven rebounds and five assists. The Raptors lost the 30 minutes he played by just a single point. You can do the math on the other 18. The loss was not on him.

But his lack of progress as a shooter contributed to some stagnant offensive sets as the Raptors tried to recover from a poor start. He caught the ball beyond the arc a few times and doubted himself, which is all it takes for a defence as good as Detroit’s to recover. It’s not helpful that he’s surrounded by one of the worst shooting teams in the league, of course. He is shooting just 30 percent from 3, at risk of shooting worse than that for the third time in five seasons.

As much of a monster as Barnes is in transition, that shooting, combined with a loose handle for a star, makes him a particularly jagged puzzle piece in the half court. That is also the Raptors’ biggest weakness. He can be part of a good offence, for sure, but it will take more roster maneuvering than it usually does when you have a star. The Raptors, for the record, haven’t done close to enough on that count.

Barnes picked up his first foul against Detroit bizarrely, wrapping up Cade Cunningham at half court to set up a substitution for him and Poeltl, who was playing his first game in seven weeks. It didn’t seem like a big deal then, but two fluky but legitimate fouls later in the first quarter, and Rajaković had a tricky situation to navigate. Accordingly, Barnes was on the bench to start the second quarter as Cunningham promptly stepped into a trio of 3s. Barnes spent most of his time guarding Cunningham when he was on the floor.

Speaking of Cunningham, Barnes’ NBA Draft classmate, the Pistons have improved as he has. It’s not much more complicated than that. Yes, Detroit’s Jalen Duren and Ausar Thompson have taken meaningful steps forward, and the Pistons front office has put more shooting around the 2021 No. 1 pick. But the biggest difference has been Cunningham’s becoming a bully and dynamite half-court orchestrator.

It is unfair to ask Barnes to become the offensive player that Cunningham is, just as it would be unfair to ask Cunningham to become the defender that Barnes is. Barnes had three steals and three blocks, which he seems to do nightly. That should be savoured.

It was also a bad night to be compared to Cunningham, a 32 percent 3-point shooter coming into the game who poured in six en route to 28 points, seven rebounds and nine assists. But he is an offensive force even when he’s shooting poorly, a player who attracts the attention of multiple defenders, and that is the hardest type of player to find in the NBA. Barnes qualifies in only very specific situations. He needs to sharpen some of those skills.

After the trade deadline and in my one-on-one with Raptors general manager Bobby Webster on Tuesday, Webster did not commit when asked when he would make a stronger push to speed up the Raptors’ build. One comment stood out to me, though.

“The way we continued in the past is probably the way we’re going to continue to build: get players who are good, and if they exceed expectations, they kind of necessitate the next move,” Webster said.

It’s on Barnes, more than anyone else, to force Webster’s hand. He has exceeded expectations this season. That only brings higher expectations, though. That’s the reality of life at the centre of a winning basketball team.