RJ Barrett is the Raptors’ low-maintenance scorer: ‘I want to represent my home very well’
BROOKLYN, N.Y. — RJ Barrett has spent some time thinking about the champs.
“The best defenders are guarding him,” Barrett told The Athletic on Tuesday morning about playing alongside Brandon Ingram. “Most teams don’t really have five really good defenders.”
The Oklahoma City Thunder have five, maybe seven, good perimeter defenders.
“That’s why I said most teams, because I was thinking about them,” Barrett replied.
The Raptors don’t play the Thunder until Jan. 25. Feel free to continue, then, RJ.
“There’s one guy that’s not gonna be as good of a defender, and he’ll probably have to be on me or (Immanuel Quickley) or Scottie (Barnes) or whoever. When there’s attention to another person who is a high-calibre player, an All-Star-calibre player who is scoring over 21, 22 points a night, when there’s someone over there with that shotmaking ability, there’s someone over there the defence has to focus on. And the defence can’t focus on five people at once. You have to give up something.”
Barrett is making a concerted effort to avoid giving himself credit for a dynamic start to the season. Even with his least efficient shooting night of the year, he still put up 13 points and a team-high six assists in the Raptors’ 119-109 win over the Brooklyn Nets on Tuesday. There was a fear that the overlapping skills of Barnes, Barrett and Ingram might get in the way of a good season. The Raptors have started 6-5, with Barrett doing what he can to make it work. He is averaging 20 points, 4.6 rebounds and 4.0 assists per game, shooting 51.3 percent from the floor. He’s never shot better than 49.5 percent for a whole season, and even that was an outlier.
With Ingram in town to take the biggest share of the Raptors’ offence, Barrett’s usage dipped by almost six percentage points from last year to this season heading into Tuesday’s game, when he took a team-high 21 attempts from the field. A greater percentage of his looks this season have been 3s, which he was shooting very well until an 0-for-7 evening. He’s down to 35 percent after going into the game at nearly 40 — you have to love the start of the year.
Regardless of the result, Barrett has been playing controlled, low-mistake, low-maintenance basketball.
On the morning before playing the Nets, Barrett and the Raptors were just north of the East River, in Manhattan — the borough that was Barrett’s professional home for the first four-plus seasons of his career. Recently, Barrett had expressed skepticism that he would have been able to play well in the Raptors’ pass-heavy, read-and-react system back then. His tenure in Toronto has not been perfect, but he’s found a way to score 20 points regularly.
“I’d been in one environment and I’d played for one coach for a very long time,” said Barrett, who is from Mississauga, a suburb just west of Toronto. “It was really different (with the Knicks) from what it is over here. It was just maybe … not knowing what else was out there, what else to expect.
“(Toronto) is home for me. I think I play with a little bit of a different passion. I think I care a little bit more because I want to represent my home very well.”
RJ Barrett did not get the offseason extension he was eligible for, but there’s been none of the pouting that could have accompanied it. (Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)
If the Raptors end up working as a concept, it won’t be because Barrett makes them, but it will because Barrett allows them to. To his previous point, a lot of the Raptors’ diagrammed offence is meant to free up Ingram, whose half-court dynamism was on full display against the Nets. That part of the offence is still very much a work in progress.
Elsewhere, Barnes will have the ball in his hands often, especially when the Raptors want to push the pace. Quickley has the go-ahead to take as many 3s as he can manage.
That leaves Barrett to feel his way through games. Against the Nets, it didn’t go so well: His 3 was off, and his bullying layups weren’t falling or drawing foul calls. He still made plays to help the Raptors close out the win, grabbing an offensive rebound for a putback and drawing a charge in the final few minutes. In general, nobody has to worry about feeding him, and that plays. His superpower, at least in the context of this team, is making decisions quickly. Given how much Ingram and, to a lesser extent, Barnes like to survey the court, Barrett’s desire to catch the ball on the move and not stop that momentum is crucial.
“He’s a guy that isn’t worried about where his shots are coming from, what plays are being run for him,” teammate Garrett Temple said. “He’s just going out and, as a lot of guys say, getting it out of the mud. He’s gonna find his way to score his 18, 20 regardless, and we need that without having … to run plays for RJ Barrett. That’s a great weapon to have.”
“Now we have BI, so I was gonna be in a position to shoot more 3s,” Barrett said of his offseason approach. “I worked on defence, closeouts, being more controlled on my drives, being able to use my body, my physicality a little more to get easier finishes. … It was really planned out.”
Barrett did not get the offseason extension he was eligible for before the season began. There are still two years on the deal he signed before his fourth season with the Knicks, so there was little urgency on the Raptors’ part to get it done before the Raptors prove they can succeed with this group.
Barrett said he was thinking about it before the year, but there’s been none of the pouting that can accompany an unsatisfactory resolution of that kind. If anything, it has honed his focus even more, knowing that the best way to secure a future in his hometown is for this team to win. Barrett and head coach Darko Rajaković believe that playing for the team he grew up loving has encouraged that adaptability.
“It’s definitely a little more incentive,” said Temple, who spent two years playing for the New Orleans Pelicans, his home-state team. “Innately, it’s going to mean a little more to you.”
“Being back home, like I was at Minnesota (in college) for two years, it’s a lot. And you can internalize that pressure,” reserve wing Jamison Battle added. “But I think he’s just letting the chips fall and just playing his hardest and whatever happens, happens. The way he’s doing his job — that’s not easy to do.”
Of course, Barrett will have to keep the numbers and the attitude, while the Raptors will have to win more than they lose to offer him much security. In a league full of star-hunting, even that doesn’t guarantee much.
For now, though, Barrett is where he wants to be, and he’ll fit in any way he can to stay put.
