TORONTO — Scottie Barnes had the worst offensive game of his career less than a week ago. He didn’t make a shot, didn’t make a free throw and didn’t score a point. His team got blown out. 

In his next game — Wednesday against the Orlando Magic — he missed his first field-goal attempt and had only four points in the first quarter. But he got on track in the second half, scoring 16 points while making all seven of his field goals on the way to 28 points in a Toronto Raptors blowout win. He righted the ship. 

But he wanted more. Going 0-for-12 in an NBA game when his team needed him wasn’t something he was going to forget quickly.

So on Friday night in the second of the Raptors' two-game set with the Magic — this one marking the opening of NBA Cup play — Barnes kept the gas down. He shot seven times in the first quarter and 17 times in the second quarter.

He had 24 field-goal attempts at halftime. Had Barnes stopped there, it would have been tied for the fourth-most shots he’d ever attempted in a regulation NBA game. 

But the Raptors were losing and the Magic were doing a good job cutting off RJ Barrett, the Raptors' leading scorer on the season, so Barnes kept going, taking five more shots in the third quarter.

“He just looked like a man on a mission,” said Raptors centre Jakob Poeltl. “He was really, really aggressive out there. They tried to throw everybody at him, but it didn’t really matter too much.”

By the narrowest of definitions, Barnes and the Raptors didn’t complete the mission. 

The standings will show that the Raptors lost 121-114 to the Magic to drop to 3-2 on the season and 0-1 in East Group A in the NBA Cup standings.

But as Barnes enters the prime of his career, he is in the process of........

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