The Knicks 100: No. 50 - RJ Barrett

Good morning! We’re officially halfway through this summer’s countdown of the top 100 Knicks ever. Coming in at 50 is a player who caused his fair share of robust conversation throughout his Knick tenure…

Back when I first started podding and writing about the Knicks, a Twitter follower took particular issue with one of my takes about RJ Barrett.

I’ll give you a moment to get over the shock.

Anyway, the take compared RJ Barrett - then a Knick rookie - to 15-year vet and 2007 NBA champion Michael Finley.

When I made the comparison, I figured that if anything, I was being overly optimistic. Finley was a two-time All-Star and the second leading scorer on a Mavs team that might have won it all had it not been for Dirk spraining his knee in the 2003 western conference finals. RJ (at the time) was having one of the most inefficient high volume rookie seasons in modern NBA history1.

Nope. To this person, I was chugging haterade by the gallon. The mere suggestion that Barrett would have a career as pedestrian as Finley’s was blasphemous. RJ was quite clearly destined for far greater things than to be the second or third best player on a contending team. He was the prince that was promised.

Right up until the actual prince showed up.

I’m not starting with this story to take a victory lap (ok, mostly not for that reason)

I’m starting here to show that for almost the entirety of his tenure, there was a significant portion of the fan base who felt that Barrett would be the one to lead the Knicks back into championship contention, and any suggestion otherwise was unthinkable.

And to Barrett’s credit, he always gave the true believers just enough to keep believing.

In his second year, he was second leading scorer on a top-four seed. In his third season, he spread his wings down the stretch and put up All-Star numbers over his final 22 games. In his fourth season, he was an effective offensive engine alongside Jalen Brunson for eight consecutive playoff games. And then in his fifth year, while Julius Randle was getting off to the worst start of his career, RJ got off to the best start of his. At that moment, the doubters had to be reconsidering their positions.

But life in the NBA comes at you fast. In early November, Barrett missed a few games with knee soreness and then three more games with migraines. His shooting took a dive over the next six weeks, and with it, his positive impact took a dive as well. It all led up to the day before New Year’s Eve, when the front office parted ways with the young man whose contract extension they trumpeted so proudly just a year earlier. They haven’t looked back since.

Their resounding success since swapping Barrett and Immanuel Quickley for OG Anunoby clouds the legacy for RJ far more than IQ. Anunoby was instantly a seamless fit alongside Brunson and Randle, and just had perhaps the greatest playoff run of a 0-time All-Star in NBA history. Quickley always had the advanced stats to back up his bonafides as a winning player in any environment. RJ, not so much.

Ultimately, I slotted him smack dab in the middle of this list to split the difference between the two sides of an argument that never really got resolved. On one hand, there have been 150 players in Knicks history to play over 2000 minutes in the era when we calculate Value Over Replacement Player, or VORP. Of those 150, RJ ranks 141st2.

On the other hand, he ranks 28th in regular season points, top-50 in rebounds and assists, 45th in postseason points, and was the second best playoff performer on a team that went to the second round.

Ultimately, the biggest tiebreaker for me, and the reason why I feel so bad that I let my battles with RJ supporters overshadow my ability to objectively analyze his game and impact, was this:

A 19-year-old RJ Barrett was brought into the most dysfunctional organization in sports and was asked to be its face from day one. He did so with dignity and class, not to mention 18 points, five boards and three assists a night, usually while winning.

If that’s not a top-50 all-time Knick, I don’t know what is.

His spot on the list also signifies another step up in weight class, with four names ahead of him who all have a specific claim to their spot in Knicks history: