BURSTOn the last possession of the third quarter Monday night, RJ Barrett slowed down at the top of the arc but kept his dribble alive with his right hand as the clock wound down. He motioned patiently, waited to get the matchup he wanted — a switch where Chicago Bulls rookie Matas Buzelis came out to the perimeter to guard him.
That accomplished, Barrett did what he does best: Crossover to his dominant left hand and attack the paint. But once he got there, with all eyes on him, he slipped a deft pass through tight quarters to Jonathan Mogbo, who made the lay-up and got fouled.
All of this with just 2.6 seconds left on the game clock.
It was a play any point guard would be proud to pull off, but maybe more so Barrett given he’s never been anyone’s idea of point guard, not even his.
“I’m just trying to go out there and figure it out,” said Barrett, a natural scoring wing who has logged more than his share of minutes at point guard as the Raptors have weathered injuries.
He’s made huge strides. He finished with 32 points and nine assists in what ended up being a 122-121 loss to the Chicago Bulls on Monday night. The loss was the Raptors’ fifth straight and dropped them to 7-20 on the season.
Barrett made a number of smart, crafty decisions with the ball and inevitably plays he’d like to have back. He’s averaging a career-high 6.1 assists but 3.5 turnovers, too. He had six turnovers against the Bulls. It’s been a process.
“I haven’t really placed point guard too much in the NBA, so just trying to go out there and just be a playmaker,” he said the other day of his different role. “I’m just trying to make the right plays on both ends of the floor.”
The Raptors point who did the best job of that against the Bulls was rookie Jamal Shead, who came off the bench in the fourth quarter like a rocket and contributed 10 points, six assists and a steal in his 12 minutes. Shead’s play helped the Raptors come back from down 16 with 10:55 left to pull within a point on a pair of Barrett free throws with 2:01 to play.
“(Tonight) was kind of a weird night for us. Everybody kind of seemed a little fatigued, on both sides,” said Shead, who played 40 minutes for Raptors 905 in a G-League game on Sunday. “It was just like a dull night. With him (Raptors head coach Darko Rajakovic) putting me in, I knew what he wanted for me, and that was just to try to bring energy…
How?
“I think just talking and trying to uplift each other and just trying to be a little spark. I wouldn’t say it’s anything that I do. I think it’s just my positive vibes and just my demeanour. When we step on the court, it’s just all about go.”
The Raptors’ preferred option at point guard is Immanuel Quickley, but he’s not available right now due to injury. He’s appeared in just two games this season.
The next best option the Raptors have at point guard is Scottie Barnes. The Raptors all-star has done an excellent job in the role, which is how he self-identifies as a player in any case.
In his last six games, Barnes has averaged 21.3 points, 8.3 rebounds and 8.8 assists per game while converting 51.6 per cent of his field goal attempts, including 38 per cent from three on nearly seven attempts per game. The only point guards in the league who wouldn’t sign that scorecard are Luka Doncic and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander in their annual duel for league MVP honours.
But alas Barnes isn’t available — or wasn’t Monday night with the Bulls at Scotiabank Arena — as he manages a sprained ankle suffered last Monday in a loss to the New York Knicks.
Some encouraging news on that front: Barnes participated in the Raptors shootaround Monday morning and is expected to be cleared for practice Tuesday which would bode well for him being available Thursday when the Raptors host the Brooklyn Nets.
Of course, the Raptors being the Raptors this season, it looks likely that they will in turn be without centre Jakob Poeltl for a little while at least as he slipped awkwardly on a wet spot on the court early in the fourth quarter and strained his left groin. More testing will follow but the big Austrian centre was in pain after the game, and a Thursday return seems ambitious.
What has been interesting about the Raptors’ point guard situation is that they have resisted starting their most experienced point guard — Davion Mitchell — when Quickley and Barnes have been out and have played Shead relatively sparingly recently.
Mitchell has had plenty of floor time — he’s averaging 27 minutes a game and has made 13 starts, the same number as he made in Sacramento in his last two seasons combined.
But more often than not when Quickley and Barnes have been out, it’s Barrett who has been given the keys to the offense.
It’s the luxury of being able to focus on player development during a rebuilding season.
“For sure, but this is (an opportunity) to speed up that up,” said Rajakovic. “When you’re playing two guard, you’re not going be handling the ball that much, running pick-and-rolls, having the ball in your hands. You’re not responsible to set up other guys. This is literally just to speed up his decision-making process and how he goes about communicating offensively.”
It’s not what might have been expected given Barrett averaged 2.8 assists per game in his career prior to joining the Raptors nearly 12 months ago. Learning how to call plays and make reads on the fly is new territory.
“He’s really good. He’s been bounced around from position to position on the basketball court all year with (our) injuries,” said Shead. “And he’s adapted really well. When we need to play point guard, he’s averaging like eight assists. When we need him to be our main scorer, he’s averaged 25 at home. He’s a really good player and it shows.”
For long stretches on Monday, he was doing it as well as he ever has while in that role in the Raptors. He started the game with a nifty find of Poeltl in the pick-and-roll and made a nice play before the horn at halftime when he came off a screen and rifled a pass to Ja’Kobe Walter in the corner, relocated and stroked one of his two triples on the night. Barrett found Ochai Agbaji for a baseline dunk and Chris Boucher for a lay-up in behind the defence. His best pass of the game didn’t result in an assist as he threw a right-handed rocket off the dribble to a cutting Gradey Dick, but the second-year guard couldn’t convert the lay-up.
Dick acquitted himself later when he scored 13 of his 27 in the fourth quarter to help spark the Raptors comeback.
Barrett’s biggest challenge is figuring out when to look for his offence and when to pull it back and let his passing do the work. He was an expert at it for most of the game, keeping the Raptors offence ticking over on a night when there were very few others along for the ride. But there were some questionable moments: His pull-up three in transition just as the Raptor had cut Chicago’s lead to six after a Dick three with six minutes left was ill-advised — the Bulls took the miss the other way and earned a pair of free throws to push their lead back to eight. After
Barrett’s free throws pulled the Raptors within one he called his own number on consecutive plays, getting blocked at the rim on one drive and missing a left-handed drive on the next.
Had he converted either or both it could have been the difference in the game, but the burden of playing point is that you’re judged on your decisions as much as your execution.
The easier route might be to have the 24-year-old Barrett stay in his lane and have true point guards like Mitchell or Shead carry the weight while Barnes and Quickley are out, but the Raptors are willing to let Barrett learn on the job. The hope is the payoff will be a more well-rounded, complete player when all is said and done. So far, there are signs that it might pay off.
