Sit back and imagine OG Anunoby and all of his defensive talents. He’s one of the best defensive players in the league, and with the New York media bump he might actually get some significant hardware for his efforts. It’s a lot to think about, and if you’re playing across from him, a lot to contend with. Not only was RJ Barrett facing Anunoby as his primary defender, but a version of Anunoby that was equipped with the ultimate scout on Barrett, gifted to him by his former team and his former coaching staff. All that, and Barrett still found a way to drive the Raptors offense forward.
If you can recall Tyrese Haliburton’s 5-18 shooting performance against the Raptors, you should be able to remember how high Davion Mitchell pressed him, and how he consistently weaked him in screen coverage. Weaking, basically, is to deny the player any access to their strong hand, and to force them towards their weak one. Pretty simple. Pretty effective. Considering Barrett’s reputation to only be able to go one way (although, I believe that is overstated) one would think weaking would be an uber-effective strategy. So far this season, Barrett is still shooting better on his drives going right, for what it’s worth (1.031 ppp going right, .955 ppp going left, per synergy).
Truth be told, on Barrett’s last shot attempt of the game, Anunoby weaked him and Barrett snaked downhill before bumping into Karl-Anthony Towns and getting blocked by a trailing Anunoby. Yet, on the whole, Barrett persevered against this defense to the tune of 30 points and 4 assists on 54-percent shooting from the floor and a 3/7 performance from downtown. Keeping things simple was important as well, as 10 of Barrett’s points came directly from transition basketball – pushing hard himself and making insane underhand lefty finishes, or catching skyscraping lobs from Ja’Kobe Walter. It was good.
Part of scoring on Anunoby is outskirting him as often as possible, and Barrett’s first bucket was a quick flash out sideline for a corner pocket triple. In fact, Barrett’s hot start to the game was largely due to his 3-point stroke, and he’s actually been shooting nearly 38-percent on catch and shoot threes this season. He’s been abhorrent pulling up from three this year (19-percent) which is tanking his percentages, but as far as spacing out, or punishing people for stopping short on closeouts? Pretty damn good.
It requires resilience to get past Anunoby in 1-on-1 coverage. The Raptors run one of their pet plays 77 shallow, only the decoy version that turns the shallow cut into a flare screen. This serves to put Barrett into space and forces Anunoby to play catch up. Directly off the catch, Barrett pushes left into Poeltl who knew this was coming and is already planting a screen on Anunoby. By initiating in this way, the Raptors allow Barrett to avoid being weaked, and they force Anunoby to climb over the screen. Barrett downhill vs. Towns? That’s a bucket.
Off ball, Barrett loops around Poeltl as a hub as Anunoby trails, gets clipped on the screen, and Barrett flows downhill for a lob finish.
Barrett tries to dribble up court out of a handoff and Anunoby hunts his dribble and shades him heavily to the right — his hulking frame almost blots out half the court — Barrett resets the ball out to Jakob Poeltl, and turns to set a screen for Walter (who was fantastic last night), but the play breaks down and the ball finds Barrett again as he faces Anunoby. This time, at least, he has a triple threat to work with. Anunoby is recovering off a dig on Poeltl and he recovers out to Barrett’s left, so he goes right, all the way right, until he gets back left for the reverse layup.
“I think he did well (against the weaking defense). We were able to set appropriate screens and still allow him to go downhill.” Darko Rajakovic told Raptors Republic’s very own Louis Zatzman. “A lot of times he came back to his preferable side. I think that he had a couple of really good playmaking decisions there in those. I don’t see that he’s getting affected by that by any means.”
With the game tied at 101-101 with three and a half minutes to go, we’re in a familiar spot: the right wing, Poeltl stepping up for a screen and Anunoby forcing Barrett left. A clever screen flip from Poeltl (Anunoby climbed a little too high and allowed it) gave Barrett the edge, and he burst downhill, broke out an in-n-out dribble to shift Towns; and as Barrett and Poeltl converged on the paint, so too, did the Knicks. Anunoby scrambled back in from behind and Josh Hart vacated the weak-side corner, because Anunoby didn’t scramble back to Poeltl, he joined Towns in doubling Barrett. Barrett played it cool, keeping his pivot and identifying the corner man, Davion Mitchell, who canned a triple. Big play.
So, while every play wasn’t a success, and this wasn’t Barrett’s best game of the season, it was one of his most resilient. Scottie Barnes went down with injury, and quite frankly, Barnes didn’t draw the Anunoby assignment from the start either. Barrett was up against it for the full duration of the contest, and still found a way to drive the offense forward continuously. In a season where the Raptors seem to be marred with heaps of bad luck, you have to look for the silver linings. While Walter’s career high was a big one last night, this was a close second.
Have a blessed day.
