New York Knicks 2023-24 Player Preview: RJ Barrett Seeks Level Beyond Consolation

Set to embark on a four-year, nine-figure contract extension, RJ Barrett's New York Knicks narrative to date has been one of general decency yet longing.

Autumn in New York ... from a basketball perspective, it's finally inviting.

The New York Knicks return to action on Wednesday night against the Boston Celtics (7 p.m. ET, ESPN) in a game that will officially open one of the more anticipated seasons in recent metropolitan memory. New York is coming off its most successful NBA season in a decade, winning 47 games and a playoff series for the first time since 2013.

With tip-off looming, All Knicks will analyze and preview what's to come for the major contributors on the blue-and-orange roster. Part I centers on the team's current homegrown franchise face RJ Barrett ...

Barrett enters his fifth season with the New York Knicks with plenty to prove / Eric Hartline-USA TODAY Sports

Player Profile 

Name: RJ Barrett
Position: Guard/Forward
Height/Weight: 6-6, 214 lbs.
College: Duke
Experience: 5th season

The Story So Far

Being a consolation prize has defined Barrett's NBA career to date, but he's slowly peeling away at that layer. 

Losing out on the oft-missing Zion Williamson and Ja Morant at the 2019 draft lottery doesn't seem like such a tragedy with his reliable prescience (playing at least 70 games in each of the last three seasons). When New York's 2021-22 season descended into the basketball underworld, Barret set team history as the youngest player to average 20 points in a Knicks uniform. 

The Knicks kept him around in the wake of last summer's Donovan Mitchell rumors. His ensuing regular season left something to be desired but he stepped up in the postseason while Julius Randle recovered from an early spring ankle injury ... and now there's even a chance Mitchell might be able to come over anyway.

This 2023-24 season will be Barrett's first on a four-year, $120 million extension. Things ended on a sour postseason note (1-of-10 in the Game 6 capper in Miami), but Barrett was the headliner of the closing triumphs over the Cleveland Cavaliers, averaging 22 points on over 55 percent shooting in the final three victories. 

The offseason was anything but downtime for Barrett, who played a major role in Team Canada's historic run at the FIBA Basketball World Cup in Asia: en route to clinching both a bronze medal and the True North's first Olympic bid in over two decades, Barrett averaged 16.8 points and 5.0 rebounds in eight games, capping things off with 23 and seven respectively in the third-place game victory over Jalen Brunson, Josh Hart, and the Americans.

They Said It

“Like with any young player, the challenge is consistency. So the more you have your routine in place, I think that helps. The thing I love about RJ, RJ never gets too high, never gets too low. He’s the same guy every day, and that’s good. Just focus on getting better and helping the team. Everyone has to prioritize helping the team.”-Knicks head coach Tom Thibodeau (h/t Steve Popper, Newsday)

“I think I learned the game a little bit more. It’s crazy physical. Refs don’t care. It’s a lot different over there. But it was fun. I really kind of just did the same thing, my same thing, played the same game. I feel like I’m a guy, whether it’s the league or it’s FIBA, I kind of do the same stuff.”-Barrett on how the World Cup experience helped him (h/t Stefan Bondy, New York Post)

2023-24 Forecast 

Consistency will be the name of Barrett's 2023-24 output. Perhaps no one's expecting him to be a star, at least not this time around, and with at least another year of Randle and Jalen Brunson in tow. But he must at least regain the sense of scoring stability that defined his sophomore season and improve his defense that even the eternally joyful Walt "Clyde" Frazier called out during one of his calls last season.

Barrett has yet to play at a progressive level where his mere prescience justifies skipping out on Mitchell, nor will it cause any metropolitan die-hards to curse the Williamson/Morant ping-pong balls. Current projections at Basketball Reference put him on pace for a career similar to that of Mookie Blaylock and Bryn Forbes. If Barrett was a late-first round find or even stationed anywhere else but Manhattan, that might've worked. Alas, he's in New York: if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. But if you don't, it'll follow you for the rest of your career. 

One way for Barrett to stand out would, ironically, come with the second unit. Removing Barrett from the starting five would, obviously, be an extreme. But if he could carry on his uncanny interior efforts (5.4 rebounds a game over the past two years) he could be a solid spell option for Randle, a role that currently stands as a void with Obi Toppin gone and little, if any, effort made to replace his size.