Last year Achiuwa had 3 or more assists just 6 times, and all of those were in games where he had 19 or more minutes per game. Never more than 4 assists.

This season, he’s had 3 or more assists in five of his ten games, including five assists twice. And all of those were in games where he had 19 minutes or fewer. He’s currently had three straight games of 4+ assists.

Now, I’m not ignoring the warts here; he still has some very poor decisions; last night I was literally in the midst of writing a comment praising his smart game when he tried to force a pass through three defenders. And then a couple minutes later had that awful pass to nobody that went the full length of the court.

But to me that’s pretty emblematic of what Darko’s trying to do here, allowing him to work through his mistakes and fill a crucial role as an additional passer on that second unit. Barnes is so smart at every role, and there’s something to be said for putting the ball in someone else’s hands and then having Barnes make a good cut and create a passing opportunity, rather than always being the guy with the ball, waiting for other players to make the right cut at the right time.

I’m not saying it’s working yet, or that it necessarily will work… but you can see what the plan is, and it’s intriguing. Hopefully in a month or two we’re talking about playmaker Achiuwa as this brilliant successful experiment in the same way we’re talking about the transformation in Flynn.