On the final play of the third quarter on Monday night, RJ Barrett slowed down at the top of the key but continued dribbling with his right hand as the game ended. He gestured patiently, waiting for his desired matchup—Chicago Bulls rookie Matas Buzelis to guard him on the perimeter.
With that accomplished, Barrett does what he does best: cross to his dominant left hand and attack the paint. But when he got there, with all eyes on him, he deftly worked his way through the tight area and passed the ball to Jonathan Mogbo, who scored a layup but was met by foul.
This all happened with 2.6 seconds left on the game clock.
It’s a game any point guard would be proud to pull off, but perhaps even more so for Barrett, who has never been anyone’s idea of ​​a point guard, not even his.
“I’m just trying to go out there and find out,” said Barrett, a natural scoring wing who has logged more minutes at the point guard position as the Raptors have been plagued by injuries. Take the time you deserve.
He has made tremendous progress. He had 32 points and nine assists in a 122-121 loss to the Chicago Bulls on Monday night. The loss was the Raptors’ fifth straight loss, dropping their season record to 7-20.
Barrett made a lot of smart and crafty decisions with the ball and inevitably made the kind of games he wanted back. He averaged a career-high 6.1 assists per game, but also committed 3.5 turnovers. He committed six turnovers against the Bulls. This is a process.
“I haven’t played a lot of point guard in the NBA, so I’m just trying to go out and be a playmaker,” he said the other day of his different roles. “I’m just trying to make the right plays on both ends of the floor.”
The Raptors’ best performer against the Bulls was rookie Jamal Shedd, who came off the bench like a Rocket in the fourth quarter and contributed 10 points, 6 assists and 1 steal in 12 minutes. Shedd’s performance helped the Raptors come back from a 16-point deficit with 10:55 left in the game. Barrett made one of two free throws to tie the game with 2:01 left. to one point.
“(Tonight) was a weird night for us. Everybody on both sides seemed a little tired,” said Shedd, who played 40 minutes for the Raptors in Sunday’s G League game. “It was like a dull night. With him (Raptors coach Darko Rajakovic) bringing me in, I knew what he was asking of me and it was just about giving me energy. …
“I think just talking and trying to motivate each other and trying to be a little spark. I wouldn’t say it’s anything that I do. I think it’s just my positivity and my demeanor. Everything when we step on the field. It’s all about moving on.”
The Raptors’ first choice at point guard is Immanuel Quickley, but he is currently unavailable due to injury. He has only appeared in two games this season.
The next best option for Raptors point guard is Scotty Barnes. The Raptors All-Star has done a great job in that role, and it’s a testament to who he is as a player, no matter what.
In the past six games, Barnes averaged 21.3 points, 8.3 rebounds and 8.8 assists per game, shooting 51.6% from the field, including 38% from nearly 7 three-pointers per game. The only point guards in the league who won’t sign their name on the scorecard are Luka Doncic and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who will win the battle for annual league MVP honors.
But alas, Barnes is out — or didn’t play Monday night against the Bulls at Scotiabank Arena — because he sprained his ankle in last Monday’s loss to the New York Knicks.
There’s some encouraging news on that front: Barnes participated in the Raptors’ shootaround on Monday morning and is expected to be cleared to practice on Tuesday, which would set him up for playing Thursday when the Raptors host the Brooklyn Nets Good sign.
Of course, the Raptors are the Raptors this season, and it looked like they might be without center Jakob Poeltl for at least a while after he slipped awkwardly on a slippery patch of the court early in the fourth quarter. and sprained his left hand. groin. More testing will follow, but the Austrian center was in pain after the game and a return on Thursday seemed ambitious.
What’s interesting about the Raptors’ point guard situation is that they’ve declined to start their most experienced point guard — Davion Rice — while Quickley and Barnes are out and Shed has been playing relatively little lately. Chel.
Mitchell has plenty of playing time — he’s averaging 27 minutes per game and has made 13 starts, which is the same number of starts he had in Sacramento the past two seasons.
But more often than not, Barrett holds the key to the offense when Quickley and Barnes are out.
Being able to focus on player development during a rebuilding season is a luxury.
“Of course, but this is (an opportunity) to speed up the process,” Rajakovic said. “When you play two guards, you’re not handling the ball as much, running pick-and-rolls, having the ball in your hands. It’s not your responsibility to frame other people. It’s really just to speed up his decision-making process and how he runs the offense. sexual communication.”
That’s not what one would expect considering Barrett’s career average of 2.8 assists per game before joining the Raptors 12 months ago. Learning how to call a script and read on the fly is new territory.
“He’s been really good. He’s been jumping from position to position on the basketball court all year long because of (our) injuries,” Schade said. “And he’s adapted really well. When we need to play point guard, he’s averaging about eight assists a game. When we need him to be our primary scorer, he’s averaging 25 points a game at home. He’s A very good player and it shows.”
For long stretches of Monday, he was as good as he was in that role with the Raptors. He deftly found Poeltl in the pick-and-roll early in the game and made a nice play just before halftime when he broke off a screen and passed to Jakoby Walter in the corner before re-tapping the ball. Positioned and hit a ball. Two of his triples that night. Barrett found Ochai Agbaji for a baseline dunk, and Chris Boucher got behind the defense for a layup. His best pass of the game didn’t result in an assist, as he dribbled a right-handed rocket to Grady Dick who was cutting inside, but the sophomore guard couldn’t complete the layup.
Dick later proved his innocence, scoring 13 of his 27 points in the fourth quarter to help the Raptors comeback.
Barrett’s biggest challenge is figuring out when to look for offense and when to take it back and make his passes count. He was an expert at it for much of the game, keeping the Raptors offense in good shape on nights when no one else was involved. But there were some questionable moments: When the Raptors cut Chicago’s lead to six on Dick’s ill-advised 3-pointer with six minutes left, his pull-up three in transition POINT – The Bulls made up for the miss the other way, winning a two-point free throw to extend the lead to eight. back
Barrett’s free throws in consecutive games kept the Raptors within his own number, getting blocked at the rim on one drive and missing the next with his left hand.
If he had changed one or both, the game might have been different, but the burden of the game point is that your decisions will be judged as much as your execution.
The easier approach might be to keep the 24-year-old Barrett in his lane and let a true point guard like Mitchell or Shedd take the load while Barnes and Quickley are out, but the Raptors Be willing to let Barrett learn on the job. Hopefully at the end of the day, the ultimate reward is becoming a more well-rounded, well-rounded player. So far, there are signs it might pay off.
