MEANT TO BE
A t first there was confusion, then understanding, joy and finally, a question.
RJ Barrett was having a nap at the New York Knicks team hotel in downtown Indianapolis, when his phone jolted him awake. With tipoff against the Indiana Pacers only hours away, it was his agent, Bill Duffy calling. “You’re getting traded,” was the message.
Initially his head spun. Getting traded is almost always a shock. Taken third in the 2019 draft, Barrett was the Knicks highest pick since Hall-of-Famer Patrick Ewing went first overall in 1985. There had been ups and downs while playing in one of the NBA’s most scrutinized markets but, for the most part, Barrett had held up his end of the bargain. The Knicks hadn’t made the playoffs in six years before he arrived as a 19-year-old, but Barrett was part of a new-look organization on pace to make the post-season for the third time in his five seasons. In a top-heavy draft class (Zion Williamson and Ja Morant went ahead of him), Barrett was the leader in points and minutes played, while standing third in rebounds and sixth in assists. He had delivered. But he could also sense that change was in the air. Nothing specific, but there’s a feeling a player gets when an organization’s priorities are shifting. “I kind of knew I was going to get traded last year,” Barrett says now, approaching the anniversary of the Dec. 30th deal. “You can tell when you’re treated a certain way.”
Back in that Indianapolis hotel room, as Barrett found out where he was being traded to and who he was being traded with, that sense of unease he’d been living with gave way to elation. “I was coming home,” he says.
Barrett’s teammate Immanuel Quickley, who was part of the package the Raptors received for OG Anunoby, Precious Achiuwa and Malachi Flynn, got the news at the same time. Next thing you know, the pair — besties with the Knicks — were running up and down the hallway like kids celebrating a snow day. “When I got to see him in the hallway, he was excited,” remembers Quickley. “He was jumping around and stuff. He was excited to go back home. It was real.”
A whirlwind followed. The pair caught a private jet bound for Toronto on New Year’s Eve and found themselves in the starting lineup on Jan. 1 for a win over the Cavaliers. Two days after first getting news of the deal, Barrett heard his named called in pregame introductions — “Bringing the ‘Sauga to the Six” — by Raptors hype man Mark ‘Strizzzy’ Strong.
Barrett grew up a Raptors fan. At his introductory news conference, he not only name-checked franchise icon DeMar DeRozan, but Spanish point guard Jose Calderon, and the 2012 trade for Kyle Lowry. In a later interview, he casually referenced Sonny Weems, who started 28 games for a Raptors team that went 22-60 in 2010-11. His father, Rowan Barrett, now the GM of Canada’s senior men’s national team, used to bring RJ to games, introducing him to players and familiarizing him with the league he’d been focussed on making since he put it at the top of the vision board he had framed as 12-year-old. “It was a blessing,” Barrett says of being traded home. But still a question nagged at him, one to do with timing rather than process or destination. It’s rare for big moves to go down in December, more than two months before the February trade deadline. “That’s what surprised me the most,” he says almost a year later. “I’m the first trade of the year. Like, why are we getting traded right now?”
T he occasion was a historic night in a season that, while short on wins, has still provided a number of undeniable highs as the Raptors find ways to exceed low expectations. Barrett has, in some ways, carried the flag for a team that is better than its record. And on Nov. 18 against the Indiana Pacers, he set a single-game record for most points scored by a Canadian at Scotiabank Arena, going for 39 in a win that snapped a seven-game losing streak. He did it with merciless efficiency, converting 13 of 21 field-goal attempts and draining four threes on eight attempts, all while dishing out five assists — his playmaking continuing to leap off the page as a Raptor.
Still, Barrett has resisted the idea that he’s reinvented himself since crossing the border. “It’s always been there. I’m just getting to showcase it more,” was the latest variation to his standard answer to how his game has changed as a Raptor. But then Samson Folk of Raptors Republic asked a follow up: If it has always been there, what was it like not being able to show it?
Barrett paused before answering, a wide grin slowly breaking on his face. “You’re looking at a very happy man right here,” he said, and left it at that.
What kind of player the Raptors were getting in Barrett wasn’t immediately clear when news of the deal broke. In Quickley’s case, the fit was obvious: he was a floor-spacing guard equally comfortable with the ball and playing off of it, making him the perfect theoretical complement to Raptors cornerstone Scottie Barnes. But while Barrett had his share of highpoints in Gotham — his dunk over Bogdan Bogdanović in the first round of the 2021 playoffs and his game-winning triple to cap a 25-point comeback over Boston at Madison Square Garden were both core memories for highlight-starved Knicks fans — outside the feel-good buzz of bringing home a local talent in the early prime of his career, how he would fit on the floor in Toronto wasn’t clear. His best offensive skill was pounding the paint with his long-stepping left-handed drives, and his clearest weakness was his spot-up shooting, not unlike Barnes. Both were at their best playing with the ball. There seemed a risk of overlap, which can suffocate an NBA offence. Bringing ‘Sauga to the Six was storybook stuff, but only if it worked.
Now, based on a roughly 50-game sample size, it seems those concerns can be set aside. When Barrett takes the floor Dec. 9 for his first game in Toronto against his old Knicks team, there will be no arguing with the statistics: The best basketball of his career has come since he moved back to Mississauga. As a Raptor, he’s averaging 22.4 points, 6.5 rebounds and 4.8 assists, while shooting 51.1 per cent from the floor and 36.8 per cent from three. For comparison, Pascal Siakam, the two-time all-NBA selection whose minutes and role Barrett more or less absorbed when Siakam was traded to Indiana last January, averaged 22.2 points, 6.3 rebounds and 4.8 assists on 52.2/31.7 shooting splits for Toronto last season at age 29. That was enough for the Pacers to sign Siakam to a four-year contract worth $189 million and taking him through his age-34 season. With two years and $57.3 million remaining on his deal, the case can be made that Barrett is out-playing his contract, making him — in NBA terms — a bargain with upside.
Sitting in the plush theatre-style chairs where the Raptors watch game film at the OVO Athletic Centre — a room sumptuous enough you can’t help but wonder if there’s a wine cellar off to the side somewhere — Barrett goes through the reasons for his hometown leap. They range from the passion he has for wearing his favourite team’s jersey and playing on the same floor as his childhood heroes, to finding a role in an offence that better plays to his strengths, to simply escaping from a Knicks offence with a predetermined hierarchy. “Jalen Brunson, Julius Randle — it ain’t that hard to figure out,” is how Quickley explains Barrett’s before-and-after statistical snapshot. “Two guys that were all stars, all-NBA? Anybody understands that.”
There are no hard feelings on Barrett’s side. “I think that those guys were so good that we didn’t need the cuts and stuff … they’re gonna put the ball in the basket,” he says. “In basketball sometimes, better offence wins, and it clearly worked, it’s effective … I was able to do my thing [in New York]. It’s just here, I’m more efficient.”
How?
“No. 1, the brand of basketball is different. I think it fits my style a little more. The team that we have, we’re young, we run,” Barrett says of his club, which ranks fifth in the NBA in fastbreak scoring as a team. (Barrett ranks third in the same category among players.) “I’ve always been a guy that’s been good in transition, so that always helps … and I think people heard when [Quickley] was like, ‘He only cuts when he’s gonna score.’” Barrett laughs before continuing. “But I cut more [here] just because I know I have a chance to get [the ball], and even when I don’t get it, I’m not upset about it because I know I’m getting it on the next one … If you cut all the time and you never get the ball, you’re probably not gonna want to cut.”
That’s off the ball. With the ball in his hands, Barrett has developed into a high-efficiency battering ram. Among those with at least 20 games played this season, Barrett is third in points scored at the rim – behind only Giannis Antetokounmpo and Anthony Davis — and is the only player under 6-foot-11 in the top 10. Barrett gets to the rim even though defences generally play him to drive rather than shoot and everyone in the NBA knows his first, second and third choice is to get to his left hand. He’s developed counters and is finishing right-handed better than ever, but more often than not, if he wants to get to his left, he does. Even his teammates don’t understand it. “I feel like that’s a crazy skill. When I watch him and see how he does it, I ask myself, ‘How the hell does he do that?’” says Barnes. “It’s crazy that he can get through and be able to get there so easily, through the contact and just be able to get some easy ones, too. He’s the aggressor when he’s driving downhill and he knows how to attack those spaces, take up the space. He’s just very elite at it.”
An even more encouraging development is Barrett’s ability to turn his knack for getting two feet into the paint into opportunities for his teammates. He is one of just five players in the NBA to average at least 23 points, six rebounds and 5.9 assists per game this season — that last number nearly double his career average. As a Knick, Barrett had seven or more assists six times in 297 games. In Toronto, he’s done it seven times this season, including games of 12, 10 and a career-best 15 helpers last month.
Drew Hanlen is one of the NBA’s most respected development coaches and has been working with Barrett since the young wing got a weekend of skills sessions for his 15th birthday. “I remember he still had braces on, and he was excited to get a picture with me because I was this guy who was working with these NBA players,” says Hanlen, who works with Joel Embiid, Jayson Tatum and Bradley Beal, among others. “Most kids ask for a new Xbox, you know?”
Hanlen feels like the game Barrett’s shown in Toronto has been hiding in plain sight. “I mean, I’ve seen him at the U-19 worlds [where Barrett led Canada to a historic gold medal] be a triple-double threat. I’ve seen him at Montverde [the prestigious Florida high school Barrett led to an undefeated season and a national championship] be a triple-double threat.” In Barrett’s one season at Duke, he and Zion Williamson tied for the team lead in scoring, while Barrett was second in rebounding and assists.
Indiana Pacers guard and Olympic teammate Andrew Nembhard grew up playing club basketball with Barrett and starred alongside him at Montverde. He vouches for Hanlen’s take, albeit with an old friend’s wink: “He’s always been a score-first, score-second, score-third type of guy,” Nembhard says “But he’s always been able to make those passes, he’s not one of those blackhole type of guys.”
Still, even if the pieces were there, the offensive player Barrett is showing himself to be now is the best-case scenario all concerned hoped for when he joined the Raptors. “When he got traded, I just remember texting him and saying, ‘Now you’ll be able to show people how good you really are,’” says Hanlen. “And it’s not like the second he got to Toronto we magically changed his shot and his playmaking went up. It was just his role changed and his opportunity changed, and now he’s able to showcase what we feel he’s been able to do going back to high school.”
That success isn’t solely a matter of luck and circumstance, of course. In the limited free-time Barrett had this summer — between representing Canada at the Olympics and participating in off-season Raptors mini-camps in Spain and Miami — his training focused in two areas. One was ongoing work adjusting the path of his left arm so it’s more in line with his left shoulder when he shoots, making for a more relaxed, fluid motion. The other was polishing up the playmaking skills he’s showing off this season. “We worked on not forcing drives, being able to distribute, playing in more handoffs and ball screens,” says Hanlen. “We really thought that he had a chance to do what you’re seeing a lot of this season, where he’s more of a lead guard and being able to make plays. Another thing was pace, that meant slowing down so we can make better reads. Also, that means slowing down so you can play more off two feet around the rim. We just knew that would improve his efficiency.”
Barrett’s development hasn’t gone unnoticed in New York, but for a variety of reasons, including how the trade has worked out for the Knicks, there’s no ill-will from Knicks fans about their former lottery pick reaching new heights in another market. “Not everybody can handle New York, especially a player with those type of expectations, the highest pick taken since Patrick Ewing, that’s not for everybody,” says Tommy Beer, long-time Knicks writer and founder of the KnicksCentric newsletter on Substack. “But RJ, I think, was built for it … There were stretches there he’d play really well and shoot plus-40 per cent from three and defend at a higher level, and there would be times where he would struggle, sometimes for months. But RJ, the person, was always accountable, always dealt with the media professionally, never took it out on his teammates, never sulked, always looked like he gave 100 per cent on the floor. And I think that resonated. I think that’s why, to this day, when I’ll tweet out some stats about RJ playing well [in Toronto], the comments are always: ‘Good for RJ,’ ‘Hope he does really well,’ ‘Star J, he’s the man.’ People are happy for his success.”
I f that were the full story, the Barrett to Toronto homecoming would wrap as a sweaty, fast-twitch Hallmark movie where the local kid makes good. It’s rarely that simple in the NBA, though. While Barrett has come a great distance from the player former ESPN voice Zach Lowe reported some league executives considered a negative asset based on the perceived value of his contract, there are still some kinks to iron out. The Knicks didn’t see the former Duke star they drafted as part of a championship future and, depending on which version of the story you hear, were either happy about or insistent on including Barrett and the last three years of his contract in a trade that was mostly about Quickley and Anunoby.
For as much progress as Barrett has shown, the work isn’t done. He’s still occasionally the kid in class who aces the multiple-choice part of the exam only to find out too late he overlooked one of the essay questions. He’ll still hold his follow-through on a missed three-pointer even as the other team takes the rebound and rockets out for an uncontested fast break, and his speed running back defensively doesn’t always match the vigour he shows sprinting out on offence. In the Raptors loss to Detroit on Nov. 25, Barrett’s last-minute sins included failing to notice Pistons guard Ausar Thompson sneaking behind him in transition for a much-too-easy score, and standing flat-footed after a missed corner three as the Pistons took off the other way for another easy scoring chance — two unpardonable errors in the final minutes of a game decided by a Detroit buzzer-beater. His turnovers can be untimely and out-of-nowhere, and his offence can still occasionally be tunnel-visioned, as sometimes he tries to manufacture plays that aren’t there.
Some of it is typical stuff, especially for a player relatively new to shouldering this much responsibility at the NBA level. Some of it is a result of his greatest strength — unwavering self-belief and determination to win — occasionally being a liability too.
“I loved watching [the Netflix docu-series] Starting 5 and Quarterback and The Last Dance. I love watching those because sometimes I just feel not normal, because I want to beat anybody that’s in front of me,” Barrett says. “And sometimes I play card games and stuff with my friends and people don’t like to play with me because I’m going at your neck, like I’m trying to destroy you at everything. … So it’s good to watch those and see, ‘Okay, I’m not the only person that’s like that.’ Things started to go crazy because I just want to win so bad, you know?”
In basketball terms, deploying that aggressiveness in a controlled way is an ongoing process. “I really looked at last year [with the Raptors] almost like a second rookie season in the aspect of identifying what he needed to work on, what he needed to improve, and what we thought he could really become [in Toronto],” says Hanlen. “Most higher draft picks are thrown into bad organizations and they struggle for years, but they get to learn from their mistakes. He got thrown into a situation where the Knicks had pretty good teams and expectations to win. And so he maybe didn’t get to explore aspects of his game the way that other draft picks do, early in his career. And so that’s why, I think that he’s just scratching the surface of what he can become.”
Still, not everyone is as convinced. When ESPN came out recently with its list of the NBA’s top 25 players under 25 based on future potential, Barrett wasn’t on it.
The Raptors are determined to help him explore his ceiling — and the ways he can help them to return to competitive relevance. Assistant coach Jama Mahlalela is a constant during Barrett’s pregame and off-day workouts and head coach Darko Rajakovic leans in when needed too. Early in November, Barrett suffered his first extended slump in Toronto, a six-game stretch where he shot just 33 per cent from the floor and committed nearly four turnovers a game. On a Sunday morning in Los Angeles, his team having dropped all six contests, Barrett met with Raptors coaches at the team hotel. Expectations were made clear: Be better, don’t let scoring affect his energy or attention to detail. Defensively, were his close outs good? Was he on point in his pick-and-roll coverage? Was he tagging his man on box outs? Was he staying engaged off the ball? Offensively, was he getting two feet in the paint and making the right reads and simple passes? Scoring can come go, but it can’t cloud the other parts of his game. “Players are human beings, they’re not perfect,” says Rajakovic. “I wanted him to know that I have his back, that I believe in him and that I think he’s an amazing player … you know after the rain, the sun always comes out.”
Far from Barrett getting his back up, he left the meeting feeling a sense of gratitude. “I meet with Darko a lot. Darko be on my ass,” says Barrett. “There’s been games where probably, to the fan’s standards, I played really well, but he still gave me shit. Like, it’s not just about one aspect of the game, it’s for all areas of the game and growing to be the best player that I can be.
“He’s very, you know, straight to the point, but very encouraging, very encouraging. He believes in me,” Barrett continues. “Whenever a coach has that spirit, you want to run through a wall for him.” Since coming off that road trip Barrett has averaged 24.8 points, 7.2 rebounds and 6.1 assists while shooting 49 per cent from the floor, including 37 per cent from three.
T o say Barrett has come home, doesn’t quite capture how precisely at home Barrett is while playing for the Raptors. At 24 years old, famous and with money no object, he’s chosen to live in Mississauga, a family-driven suburb perhaps best known for Square One, a shopping mall where Barrett fondly remembers spending time in the massive arcade, Playdium. Barrett swears he still slides into the mall to catch a movie or hit the food court on off-days, happy to pose for pictures if asked. “I walk around chill, you know? Because sometimes I see little teenagers and stuff. And I’m like, ‘That used to be me and my friends,’” he says. “If I were to see a Raptors player, if I were to see DeMar in Square One, I would go ask him for a picture, you know? So, it’s cool. I try my best to be normal. You know, doing normal things, it just brings you back down. This is a job that can be stressful, it can be a lot of fun. You can feel on top of the world, or you can get down. So, I always do stuff that keeps me even-keeled.”
Barrett shares a house with a big yard, where he can let his four French Bulldogs — Kobe, Princess, Cain and Rilo — snort around to their heart’s content. His roommates? A high school friend who is studying for his masters, and his grandmother, Petula, his mom’s mom. “She helps with the dogs. She cleans all day, every day, and, like, she just kind of does whatever is needed,” he says. “She’s very, very helpful. My room’s always clean when I come back. It’s nice.”
Barrett may have found his comfort zone with the Raptors almost immediately, but the answer to that nagging question — and his understanding of the timing of the deal — only came later. It was just weeks after Barrett joined the team that his younger brother, Nathan, came home too. It seemed relatively innocuous at first. While studying to be a pilot at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla., the 20-year-old developed a persistent rash. Soon after, his energy levels dropped. Rather than head south en masse, the Barretts brought their younger son back to Toronto for examination and treatment. A quick admission to hospital followed. “He was like, ‘I’m just gonna get it checked out and then I’m gonna go back to school,’ and then he never left the hospital,” says Barrett. Nathan died on Mar.12, his passing the result of an auto-immune disorder.
With the anniversary of the trade approaching and Nathan’s passing just after that, Barrett still looks back almost in disbelief that there was ever a time when he would rush out of the Raptors locker room after a game, head straight for the ICU at Sunnybrook Hospital and spend the night on a cot in by his brother’s bedside, talking when they still could, texting when they couldn’t. It had been a long time since the two brothers were in the same city for more than visits. Their age gap meant that when RJ left home to go to high school in Florida, Nathan was still in middle school. Even when Nathan joined him at Montverde, they were on different timelines and schedules. “I was on the varsity team, we practiced different times, we were in Hawaii, China — we travelled a lot. Our family is used to being away from each other,” says Barrett.
Now, though, Nathan was no longer a kid. He was an adult, coming into his own. They were getting reacquainted as peers. Their dad could see it. “[Nathan] was learning things at university, he was asking questions. I’d get a call every day, ‘Dad, I learned this, what do you think?’ And I had to be ready with an answer. So, he’s gaining wisdom and was really becoming a sounding board for RJ,” Rowan says. “For anyone that’s been through [the sudden loss of a loved one], it never goes away. Maybe the intensity that you feel each and every moment changes, but you’re still going to have your moments. The scars are always there.”
There were a lot of family decisions to be made over the course of Nathan’s illness, with RJ included in the process. His mother, Kesha, sang to her son and consulted with her sister, a nurse. Members of their church were often around. Rowan took copious notes in their daily meetings with doctors. Keeping RJ playing, staying with the team, travelling, was a collective decision too, providing an island of normalcy in a dark sea.
The Raptors were on a long road trip and Barrett had just played a superbly against Denver in an eyelash-close game the injury-ravaged Raptors had no business even being in. He got the call the next morning that it was time to come home again. “I always thought, ‘He’s gonna make it,’ you know?’’ says Barrett. “And the way my brother acted, he didn’t act like he was sick. He’d be mad. Like, they’d try to do stuff and he’s like, ‘Man, I can’t wait till I’m out of here.’ Like, ‘I’m gonna get out of here, this will be over soon. So this doesn’t matter. I’m gonna be out here. I’ll be flying planes.’ It’s like, ‘Don’t worry about it. I’ll be good.’
“And then as it got to later on, he was in a coma for a little bit before. So it was, like, at that point, you kind of knew he was going to pass. He went from being on one machine to, like, 15 different machines, yeah? So, you knew. You knew it was gonna be time, but he waited for me.”
Barrett got a flight from Denver in the morning and Nathan passed later that day surrounded by family, friends and members of their church. The doctors and nurses who had cared for Nathan for more than two months wept with them.
Looking back, Barrett understands better now why we was traded, where and when. After Nathan died, he spent most of the next two weeks at home with a quartet of old basketball friends he’s known since they were 10 or 11. Even now, his parents are around the corner, both his grandmothers close enough to check in. “It absolutely helped me get through it,” he says.
And so he has his answer. To him, it wasn’t about the Knicks’ championship aspirations or the Raptors’ plans for their rebuild. In light of everything, it had to be something bigger. “God is the only explanation I have for that,” he says. “I’m like, why did they trade me right now? It’s Christmastime, and by New Year’s Eve I was asleep in my hotel [in Toronto] and I was playing for the Raptors the next day. I was like, what’s going on, you know?”
He and Nathan stay in touch. Since they were so used to being apart as they each pursued their dreams, it’s almost become a story he tells himself that Nathan’s not gone, he’s just not here. “It’s like sometimes it just feels like he’s at school,” Barrett says. “Yeah, that’s kind of how I try to cope with it.”
Barrett still reads their text chains, and if the professional athlete in him has finely tuned his ability to compartmentalize, he still melts at certain moments, a photo memory popping up on his phone, a certain song, like “Tombstone” by Rod Wave, the video for which ends with a young boy buried too soon — “if I hear that, I’m going to cry automatically,” he says. Being at home means everything to Barrett, and more than ever because its somehow easier to keep his brother close here. He has ‘NTB Forever’ tattooed on his wrist, kissing it before he takes the floor.
“It feels like he’s over me, you know, protecting me. I always feel like he’s watching me,” Barrett says. “Or I get little signs of him, like a bird will fly to the window and it’ll just be sitting there looking at me, and I’m like, ‘What you doing here? Of all times for that to happen, it’s right here when I’m at the window?’ It’s things like that.”
Living where he does in Mississauga, it’s an easy trip to visit his brother’s gravesite. When he goes, he usually brings Nathan’s dog, Rilo, and they all talk. In those moments Barrett is more than at home, he’s exactly where he was meant to be.