RJ Barrett - Ever Evolving Attacker (Drives, Finishes, Floaters)

RJ Barrett has quietly been carving out space all year long. His patience, poise, improved playmaking, and route planning, has really allowed him to take the next step in his sophomore season. His downhill-oriented approach didn’t work in year one but a more disciplined diet in his shot profile has tilted the scales and brought balance back to New York. The Knicks are now knocking on the door of having home court advantage in the first round of the NBA playoffs.

Under Tom Thibodeau, his minutes have jumped up to 34.7 per game and he’s played all 63 games this season at the time of this writing. Per NBA stats, he’s bunched with Zach LaVine in terms of drives per game (12.3). Just ahead of the likes of Kyrie Irving and Paul George (12.2), Chris Paul (12.0) and reigning NBA Most Valuable Player Giannis Antetokounmpo (11.6). A big reason for that is the increased effectiveness of his outside jumper. Per Cleaning the Glass, he’s shooting 43% on corner threes and 40% overall from deep on 250 attempts. That coupled with only shooting 56% at the rim has meant defenses are likely chasing him off of the line and making him make plays. What he does when he gets a step on the defender is worth paying attention to: he’ll work to put his defender in jail and use his strength to keep the advantage.

RJ has really improved at route planning - which is to say that he doesn’t just drive for driving’s sake very much anymore - he waits, watches, and works his way into areas where he can be effective. The very first clip is from early in the season. It features a pullback move where he shakes off the defender and could attack going to his right. He does not. Instead, he crosses back so he can attack going middle. It's clunky but it work. The very next clip is from much later in the year, Fred VanVleet denies him the rip to the middle so RJ stands by until he can square his defender up and attack middle. It's more fluid than the first but arguably just as effective. That’s been his whole season in a nutshell: instead of recklessly attacking, he recognizes that he doesn’t have the space many NBA players do - so he has to optimize his opportunities and maximize his advantages. He’s got craft and an ever improving shake to his game. He leverages his lean frame and his ridiculous strength by bumping and budging his defender just enough to generate room to get where he wants to go. Jackson Frank goes into great detail in his piece (link below) as to what exactly RJ worked on in the offseason and the aspects of his game that have really grown.

Building on what was written brilliantly by Benjy Ritholtz, the Jimmy Butler-fication of Barrett’s game could help shape RJ’s career trajectory (link below).
Since the meeting of the pair in Miami where Jimmy seemed to be teaching RJ a few tricks of the trade, RJ has been red hot:
18.4 points per game on 46.5% from the field, 49.4% from the deep (on 5.6 attempts!) and shooting 3.2 free throws per game in 16 games.
That isn’t to say that Butler should be attributed for the increase in shooting percentages but it certainly couldn’t have hurt.

Long story short: every bit of RJ’s game has been refined to the point that he’s functionally generating space for himself and creating for his teammates in spite of the limited space - taking advantage of every lesson he's learned his first two years in the league.

The aforementioned Benjy Ritholtz piece:
https://www.thestrick.land/strick/how...

Jackson Frank and his fantastic work for FanSided:
https://fansided.com/2021/03/15/knick...

Mark Schindler also wrote some great stuff on Barrett:
https://premiumhoops.org/2021/04/11/r...

The NBA Stats link:
https://www.nba.com/stats/players/dri...

If you’ve made it this far into the description, I may do a little breakdown on one of the Knicks favorite early offense actions to get RJ going downhill - pistol action (8:26).

Also, just know that there are no clips of his outside jumper or passing because those are things RJ has gotten really good at. I MAY do a video on that stuff later but this is what I want people to see now. I included minimal midrange stuff just to show that he does have some counters and it was a good way to flow and connect playtypes.

Also, if you want to know what my favorite part of RJ's growing game is, it's his postups. Synergy tells me that he's very good on postups and I may make a video on that later. Depends on what it looks like in the playoffs!

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