RJ Barrett’s been setting the scene for his 15-point burst to close out the Pacers on Monday all season long. Filling the playmaking vacuum left behind by Scottie Barnes, Immanuel Quickley and Kelly Olynyk’s long-term absences, the pass has been Barrett’s best and most surprising weapon this year. Live-dribble skips, pocket passes, patient dump-offs, and lately, even some behind-the-back flair — the depth of Barrett’s dish package has been ever-expansive while shouldering the weight of the Raptors’ offense.
Scoring has come a little less easy during this stretch of ultra-usage, which is to be expected for anyone scaling up in responsibility. Until last night’s 13-of-21 effort, his true shooting percentage for the year sat just below 50%, a rough mark made palatable by his creativity in setting the table for others. His deadly array of rim finishes have been scouted and dulled by extra layers of help; his three-point accuracy slashed by a heightened need to let it rip off the bounce — a shot he nearly eliminated from his chart post-trade last season after never really finding success with it in New York. He tried as many pull-up threes (3) last night as he did in 32 games as a Raptor to close 2023-24.
Per Cleaning the Glass, Barrett’s averaging just 1.03 points per shot attempt — a 10th-percentile mark among forwards — while carrying the highest usage rate among anyone in his player cohort. And yet, it’s hard to imagine where the Raptors would be without Barrett doing the thankless grunt work to guide this offense, nobly trading in his own shooting percentage to lift that of his teammates. They’d damn sure be worse than 3-12.
Barrett got to harvest the fruits of his selflessness in the fourth quarter Monday night. With a familiar script taking shape for a Raptors team that’s carried plenty of leads into the last 12 minutes but hung onto precious few, Barrett ditched the pass to close out Indy himself.
Aided by the roll gravity of Jakob Poeltl, the play-finishing monster he’s helped create, Barrett found wide open pastures within the claustrophobic part of the floor he operates from, his head bobs, off-beat handle, and ever-present threat of a dish to the lane leaving the Pacers interior defense on edge and off balance. Barrett scored 15 of his 39 points on 5-of-6 shooting in the final frame. It was a hard earned run of “my turn” basketball for a guy whose spent the last three weeks softening defenses so others can cook when he calls their number.
With word expected this week on the injury status of Scottie Barnes, among other injured Raptors, the question of where Barrett fits into a more healthy version of team is about to come into focus. The answer seems pretty simple, honestly.
It’d feel wasteful to fully relegate Barrett to the off-ball, transition-rampaging, play-finisher gig he excelled in last season. The gains in his pick-and-roll craft can’t be ignored. While his lack of pull-up juice and general finishing issues as the primary probably indicate leading man duty is a bit of a miscasting, you can’t turn your nose up at league-best numbers running the most popular play in the sport.
Of course, the beauty of Darko Rajakovic’s egalitarian system is that it defies the hooper-brained logic of stacking guys up in a prescribed pecking order. Everyone’s emboldened to get in on the creative fun.
Even with Barnes and Quickley back, there will be room for Barrett to carve defenses up with the ball on his string. Quickley’s value is largely tied to way he can flip-flop between on and off-ball roles. Barrett-Barnes pick-and-roll should be similar headache for defenses as Barrett’s connection with Poeltl. Most notably, a third credible initiator offers a way out of the muck for Raptors reserve groups, stuck in a ditch for half a decade. Militantly staggering Barnes and Quickley is possible, but tricky. Barrett credibly running offense gives Toronto more choice, and alternate backbone tandems to trot out with bench guys on their flanks.
Like a sub shop adding a new topping to their lineup, the potentially tasty combos grow exponentially with Barrett being viable with or without the ball in his hands. He’ll need to weather for a bit longer as the sole engine driving this offense, but once his brothers in ball-handling return, the unleashing of Hybrid RJ awaits. It might just be the best version of him yet.
—
On today’s podcast, I’m joined by Vivek Jacob to recap the Raptors’ 130-119 win over the Pacers, with thoughts on Barrett’s 39-9-5 outing, Jakob Poeltl keeping his heater rolling, skinny jeans, All-Star possibilities and more.
