RJ Barrett had such a good first quarter in this one that I’m of the opinion that he should’ve been allowed to chuck whatever shots he wanted for the whole rest of the game (and the whole rest of the season, screw it, why not????). He was beasting. He was feasting. He was throwing no-look dimes to Taj Gibson. Experience has taught me to never get excited for potential big performances in progress, but I had my story where he visits the Hall Of The Thirty Point Scorers for the first time all ready to go.
Out of frustration I have deleted that story. It’s worthless now. Barrett is never going to score 30 until he gets off the Knicks and on to a team that knows what to do with their young talent.
In the end, he wasn’t allowed to chuck any shot he wanted after his hot start, or even very many shots at all. He had a stretch from 9 minutes left in the third quarter to 7 seconds left in the game where he didn’t score a single point. His clutch bucket right at the end to (kind of) put the game away (sorta) made up for that scoring drought a little bit, but it’s a drought that never should’ve happened.
I’m just going to assume that either a.) his teammates ignored him like they always do because they’re jealous of his natural scoring ability or b.) he was disrespected by the coaching staff by being made to sit on the bench despite being on fire. Or both. Probably both. But, knowing my luck, he was probably injured or something and I’m displaying my total ignorance of what happened in the game by over-speculating on something that had a clear cause.