If this was 1942 and were in World War II, hed be a fighter pilot: Why RJ Barretts pa

Publish date: 2020-08-13

Rowan Barrett did not push his son into basketball; he wanted him to choose it. RJ Barrett grew up to be a basketball prodigy, a Duke star for a year, the face and future of the sport in Canada, but he did not grow up with stage parents. He took to the sport and prodded his father along.

When RJ Barrett was a child, Rowan was reticent to let him play. He did not want him to jump in just because his father had made a career of it — at St. John’s, for a few preseasons in the NBA, and then across Europe. He did not want RJ to burn out. He didn’t want his son to put any pressure on himself that wasn’t real. But Rowan could not ignore the calling. In Dijon, when the family lived in France, they nearly rigged their home to keep RJ, a toddler, away from basketball. The toy room they put together for him had everything, including a small hoop, but no ball. So RJ started dunking a soccer ball. When Rowan took out the soccer ball, RJ started dunking the football.

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Rowan saw the signs and heard them as well. When RJ was about eight, his mother, Kesha, kept pressing him to let their son play, trying to prove that his desire had nothing to do with the father. Rowan relented a little. They began working out — dribbling drills in the garage but also a place on the soccer and track teams.

In 2010, it became inevitable. The two returned from the Western Conference finals, having watched the Lakers and Suns, Kobe Bryant and Steve Nash, RJ’s godfather, and that fall, RJ asked his dad not to play soccer anymore. Again, Rowan hesitated. Soccer would be good for his basketball development, too. But RJ was insistent. Now, it was time.

Rowan Barrett asked the big question, the one that eludes presidential candidates, let alone pre-adolescents: Why do you want to do this? RJ Barrett wanted basketball stardom. He wanted to be an NBA All-Star, a champion, a Hall of Famer; all of it pouring out to Rowan’s surprise. In this way, he is not unique, life is littered with children dreaming; the naive aspirations of youth and ignorance that peter out over the years, never really taken to heart. The Barretts took these seriously.

“I just cautioned him if that’s what you want, this is what it means,” Barrett said. “It means early mornings in the gym. It means we’re going to miss some birthday parties because we’re on the road. Is that who you are? Is that what you want? Are you sure?”

This time, RJ did not relent, so Rowan could not delay any longer. He went and found a whiteboard and began writing down goals. Those monumental ones sat at the top, and they worked down from there, putting an ambition for each age. It was a vision board and life map.

Thursday night, RJ Barrett became a Knick, taken with the third overall pick in the 2019 draft, his father sitting next to him as the commissioner Adam Silver announced the selection. The white board, long wiped clean and sitting somewhere in the family’s Canada home, had this on there too. Age 19: one-and-done, and the beginning of his NBA career.

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“It’s emotional,” Rowan Barrett said. “It’s exhilarating. And I think it speaks to — if you have a son or daughter and they come to you and they say ‘I have a dream. I want to do this’ and they’re willing to work for it. What tonight showed me again is give them that opportunity, don’t shut down those dreams. Give them that opportunity to dream it and then live it. Today was a culmination of one of his biggest dreams.”

After years of surly receptions to Knicks first-round picks, Barrett received nothing but appreciation. Barclays Center erupted when Barrett was chosen, embracing him immediately. The crowd chanted his name and besieged him for photos. One fan, in a Charles Oakley jersey, ran up onto the set of the in-house feed to take a selfie with Barrett while he was still in his chair.

Spike Lee, the Knicks super fan, couldn’t bear to sit when Silver walked up to the podium with the Knicks on the clock. He threw his hands up in joy when Barrett’s name was announced, clapping and pointing to the New York emblem on his shirt, the avatar of Knicks fandom just as elated as every other one in the building.

We got the guy we need,” Lee proclaimed. Barrett was the pick he was hoping for.

“After I got over not getting Zion. That took a week. Look, you never know. People forget, Michael Jordan was the third pick so you don’t know what’s going to happen.”

Barrett had made it known before the draft that he wanted to be in New York. He did not work out for any other organization and expressed his affinity for the team. The Knicks were sold on him after his visit to the team’s facility June 10. During the trip, general manager Scott Perry said, Barrett won over the team.

He joins the Knicks as the franchise rebounds from a 17-win season. They may carry high hopes into free agency next month but they’re also in search of a bedrock of talent. Barrett represents their biggest bet yet. The Knicks resisted interest in trading out of the pick, enamored by his game and his competitiveness.

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Dwayne Washington, his former AAU coach with UPLAYCanada, raves about that too. Winning and improvement, Washington says, are all he cares about. Barrett left his family and Canada at 15 for Montverde Academy because he felt he had reached his ceiling there and needed better competition. When Duke lost in the NCAA tournament in March, Barrett spent two weeks as if he were in mourning, taking the loss that hard, he noted.

“This guy is a different person,” Washington said. “He’s not normal. If this was 1942 and we’re in World War II, he’d be a fighter pilot.”

A 6-7 wing, Barrett is an alpha scorer, averaging 22 points-per-game at Duke, and a consensus top-3 player in the draft. Barrett can be bull-headed in attacking the rim and explosive in transition. His measurables put him in elite company. He tested in the 95th-to-99th percentile of his body weight in both accelerating and decelerating  force at P3 Performance, the athletic performance company that has trained and tested over hundreds of NBA players. Those numbers earn comparisons to James Harden and Luka Doncic, though both players are bigger.

“This kid already has some pretty unique tools relative to NBA players,” said Adam Hewitt, P3’s director of operations.

Barrett has spent the spring working on his shiftiness and lateral movement. He tested at just above the 70th percentile in lateral acceleration and has worked with trainer Drew Hanlen on improving his handle and getting by defenders, instead of just overpowering them like he did as an amateur, something Hanlen says he has made improvements on.

The biggest question mark is his shot. Barrett hit just 30.8 percent of his college 3s. The Knicks believe that will get better too, banking that experience and Barrett’s work ethic will help him progress. He’s worked with Hanlen on that too.

“He has the form and the mechanics that we’re very confident with a lot of work and repetition with our development coaching staff that this is something that is very attainable for him,” Perry said.

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Barrett will join a team mostly just as young as he is. Kevin Knox is still 19, Mitchell Robinson and Dennis Smith Jr. are 21, Allonzo Trier is 23. They were the worst team in the NBA this past season. Starry help may be on the horizon or Barrett could be the driving force on another lottery-bound roster. He will have little trouble fitting in. Trier texted him only minutes after he was drafted, as the initiation began.

A fan base longing for a savior and sustained success has already turned its hopes to him. Barrett is willing to indulge them. He is built for it, he has said multiple times this week. Decades of losing and dysfunction have not scared him off.

“I’m glad that the city wants me here,” he said, “as much as I want to be here.”

(Mike Lawrie / Getty Images)

As Barrett catapulted from one responsibility to another Thursday night, his father gave him his space. Parents sometimes accompany their sons for each step on draft night, from press conference through the countless TV interviews. Rowan Barrett stayed out of his way.

Rowan Barrett never played in an NBA game. He went undrafted out of St. John’s, signed a few contracts with the Raptors and 76ers but never made the team. His professional life lay in Spain and France and Italy and Venezuela. He’s the general manager of Team Canada now but no longer the most famous name in his own family.

That much makes him happy. He’s amazed by it. The ambitions of the son have outgrown the father. Rowan Barrett lived around the corner from Ben Johnson, ran with him in the morning, sprinted until he was a teenager and discovered Michael Jordan and realized that his body looked more like Jordan’s than the ones he raced on the track. He fell hard for basketball but had a steep learning curve in a country, he says, he knew little of the sport at this high level.

RJ Barrett was born into it and consumed by it. When Rowan was just making an entry into the sport, RJ was leaving home in search of mastering it. That RJ Barrett is now in the NBA, a top pick, a New York Knick only amazes his father.

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“He had a whole lot more put into him than I had into me,” Rowan Barrett said. “As a parent that’s what you want. You want your next generation to take it further. I look at it as a badge of honor.”

The journey is what got Barrett here. Teams studied it, scrutinized his play and his personality and his background, before deciding whether he belonged as one of the few to be offered their sacrament.

The destination, though, might be even more important. The Barretts would’ve been happy with any NBA team, surely, for their son, but the Knicks always held a special place.

His grandfather, Noel Duhaney, was a big fan. When Rowan came to his Brooklyn home, courting Kesha, his future wife, while they were both at St. John’s, Noel paraded the team in the house. He, like Patrick Ewing, was Jamaican and talked nonstop about the team and their star. “It was always the Knicks, the Knicks, the Knicks,” Barrett remembers, “and Ewing, Ewing, Ewing.”

Even after the Knicks traded Ewing and Barrett was born, Duhaney remained a fan. The family would come visit his home in the summer and Duhaney told his grandson that he could be a part of the next generation one day. RJ Barrett never forgot. He welled up with tears Thursday night because of all that he had accomplished and all he had worked for. And because for his grandfather, now gone, those hopes became prophetic. For Barrett, family has always known the way.

“He would always say, ‘You can play here,'” Rowan Barrett said. “‘This could be your team.’”

(Top photo: Brad Penner / USA TODAY Sports)

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