RJ Barrett clearly frustrated after overtime benching: ‘I have nothing to say’
RJ Barrett, typically eager and engaging with the media, lost his desire to talk after getting benched for the final 12 minutes of Tuesday’s loss to the Lakers, including the entirety of overtime.
“I have nothing to say,” the 22-year-old said as he walked out of the locker room.
Minutes earlier, Barrett told teammate Cam Reddish to reaffirm out loud that it wasn’t a good idea for him to speak. The insinuation from Barrett was that he’d say something regrettable, or controversial.
So it’s safe to assume Barrett was upset about his surprising benching during a marquee game on national television. A year prior, he played 50 minutes with 36 points in an overtime loss to the Lakers. On Tuesday? Twenty-seven minutes with 13 points.
The Knicks have a version of a Big-3, and Barrett is a member — although increasingly cast as the third wheel, the Chris Bosh. In recent games, coach Tom Thibodeau gave more crunch-time opportunities to Immanuel Quickley, with Barrett nearly always being subbed back in before the final buzzer.
Not on Tuesday.
Barrett was removed for good with about seven minutes remaining in the fourth quarter and the Knicks trailing by 5. Thanks to Jalen Brunson, the Knicks forced overtime but were overwhelmed down the stretch by LeBron James.
Brunson and Quickley were great. Julius Randle was not. Tom Thibodeau also used defensive specialist Quentin Grimes over Barrett.
“We were just looking for a group to get going,” the coach said when asked about Barrett staying on the bench. “So the group that was out there was what we went with.”
That’s not much of an explanation from Thibodoeau, who left unsaid that Barrett struggled while missing 8 of his 13 shot attempts. The benching would’ve been ignored, or at least turned into a distant sidebar, had the Knicks won at MSG.
Instead, Randle blew their best opportunity by dribbling into a double-team and failing to get a potential game-winning shot off at the end of regulation. The Knicks lost in OT, 129-123, falling two games out of a guaranteed playoff spot.
“I was trying to attack the basket. But [LeBron and Anthony Davis] collapsed,” Randle said. “And I didn’t have much time to get anything off.”
It’s easy to cast off Barrett’s benching as a one-off anomaly, and that’s where it’ll trend if he’s playing in crunch time Thursday against the Heat. But the Lakers game was also the first time Thibodeau benched one of his top-3 players for an extended period in overtime. Barrett’s net rating, meanwhile, fell to the worst among the seven Knicks players with at least 600 minutes played.
The bigger picture is the Knicks gave Barrett a $107 million extension that doesn’t start until next season. His deal carries a poison pill provision that makes it difficult to trade Barrett until July, but the Knicks have been rumored to covet another 6-7 wing for this month’s trade deadline — OG Anunoby — who would require multiple first-round picks to pry out of Toronto.
The benching, and Barrett’s clear frustration in the aftermath, was somewhat eye-opening Tuesday, even if he didn’t want to talk about it.
