Knicks Star Receives Damning Assessment: ‘Little Reason to Believe’

Getty RJ Barrett (right) is struggling with shooting inefficiency.

When the New York Knicks and RJ Barrett agreed to a contract extension in September, there was optimism about his development.

However, in his fourth season, he seems to have hit a wall, and one NBA observer wrote that “regretfully” he would buy the argument Barrett might have plateaued. As strange as it might sound for a 22-year-old lottery pick, this could be it for Barrett, Bleacher Report’s Zach Buckley wrote.

“The Knicks have little choice but to stick with Barrett and hope he works his way out of this,” he wrote in a December 1 story about the Knicks’ biggest concerns. “There’s little reason to believe a breakthrough is coming, though.”

On the year, he’s averaging 18.8 points per game and is one of the Knicks’ focal points on offense, but his efficiency leaves a lot to be desired. Barrett is hovering around 40% shooting from the field despite taking the most shots on the team.

Is Barrett at His Ceiling?

At a quarter of the way through the season, some people are thinking Barrett could’ve already reached his peak. He’s shown some flashes of what the team hoped he could become when they gave him a four-year, $107 million extension, but, according to Buckley, those flashes “are few and far between.”

According to Stefan Bondy of the Sun Herald, the Knicks can’t win regularly given Barrett’s shooting efficiency.

“As Barrett’s role grows in the offense — and as he supplants Julius Randle as the team leader in shot attempts — the problem has only intensified,” Bondy wrote in his November 26 story. “In essence, this is a basic math equation. A player shooting 39% overall and 26% from beyond the arc — as Barrett mustered through 19 games — shouldn’t shoot this many times. He owns the team’s worst effective field goal percentage and the team’s most field goal attempts. It’s not a winning formula.”

Buckley said Barrett’s “position as the as the most important player for the franchise hasn’t changed.” He’s still the youngest and highest paid of the Knicks’ stars, and teammate Julius Randle faced similar criticism last year before turning things around this year.

“Barrett is too young to completely abandon hope, but he simply hasn’t become the player the Knicks need him to be,” Buckley wrote.

What Can Be Done?

Looking back, trading Barrett to the Utah Jazz for Donovan Mitchell might not have been the worst idea (if that deal were a possibility last offseason), but Mitchell instead went to the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Knicks their trust into Barrett.

Some people have already called on the Knicks to either move on from Randle or Barrett, saying the pair doesn’t work together.

“The Knicks took a measured shot on Randle and Barrett as a nucleus for a contending team,” wrote The Knicks Walls’ Mike Cortez in a story published December 1. “It didn’t go as it initially seemed it would go. The worst thing the team could be now is stubborn.”

For his part, Barrett suggested that he’s not worried about his inefficiency.

“I’m cool,” he said, according to Bondy’s story. “I always watch the film to see where I could’ve done a better job. But I’m cool. Don’t worry about me. I’m fine.”