Knicks Trade RJ Barrett, Ultimate Consolation Prize, Home to Toronto in Best Move Possible

Saturday's trade with the Toronto Raptors will start conversations about RJ Barrett's New York Knicks legacy.

De rentrer à la maison. De rentrer à la maison. Dites au monde qu'il rentre à la maison.

RJ Barrett didn't get the Carmelo Anthony treatment when he took the floor at Scotiabank Arena for the first time as a resident on Monday night. Not only would a serenade of the Skylar Grey portions of Diddy's "Coming Home" be far too direct of a reference to Carmelo Anthony's Manhattan arrival but Barrett's current and former employers have far too much bad blood between them.

The New York Knicks and Toronto Raptors reportedly put their differences aside on Saturday as Adrian Wojnarowski reported that Ontario native, along with Immanuel Quickley, to his home province in exchange for a three-man yield headlined by OG Anunoby. Thus ends Barrett's four-plus seasons in Manhattan one that ends as it began when he came to New York as the third overall pick in the 2019 NBA Draft.

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What Is Barrett's New York Legacy?

From the get-go, Barrett's entire NBA career could be summed up by the idea of a consolation prize, an appropriate simile considering the fact that Madison Square Garden hosted basketball's ultimate silver medal games (the collegiate National Invitational Tournament). 

Heck, the concept applied to him even before he put on a Knicks uniform for the first time: throughout a 17-win slog overseen by David Fizdale, observers assured themselves that the one-sided scoreboards would become tolerable upon securing the proper odds for Zion Williamson or Ja Morant's services. Destiny bounced New York to Barrett's doorstep instead after New Orleans and Memphis were offered a boost over them.

No one in their right mind would call Barrett a bust: his mere availability (297 games over five seasons) gives him a unique advantage over the careers of predecessors Williamson and Morant, ones respectively plagued by injuries and suspensions. He's also posted numbers and tenacity strong enough to justify a lasting NBA career (18.1 points, 5.3 rebounds). To date, Barrett is also the youngest player in Knicks history to average 20 points in a season ... and true to form, it was a silver lining coming in a dreadful follow-up to the team's surprising run to the No. 4 seed during the shortened 2020-21 campaign. 

Yet when listing the third-round picks in NBA history (Anthony, Bob Cousy, Pete Maravich, Dominique Wilkins, James Harden, Joel Embiid, and some dude named Michael Jordan), Barrett's name seems drastically out of place. 

For better or worse, Barrett best personified the state of the modern Knicks: decent enough to gain eyes and a solid fanbase but never fully worthy of vindicating his high-profile, high-capital arrival. There doesn't appear to be a franchise gamechanger among the 2019 bunch yet as Williamson, Morant, and Darius Garland (who would've gotten lost in the backcourt logjam as it was if the Jalen Brunson signing came to pass in the alternate universe where he became a Knick) are the only All-Stars. While some draft horror stories will sustain Knicks critics for generations (i.e. drafting Kevin Knox before Mikal Bridges and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander), Barrett's simply won't hold an audience.

But when a franchise goes five-plus decades with a Larry O'Brien Trophy hoist, it can't afford to finance redemption stories. Barrett may eventually find his star calling in the Association, but the Knicks, simply put, aren't in a patient place, especially with Barrett working on a nine-figure extension (one, again, a silver lining in the idea that it was announced mere hours before the Knicks were revealed to have lost the Donovan Mitchell sweepstakes). New York has to worry about paying its established franchise faces. It couldn't waste time developing a third, no matter how much of an indictment it is on the team's ability to build homegrown stars. 

Fortunately for Barrett, the Knicks were at least willing to provide a chance for a Hollywood (North) ending.

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Toronto Was the Perfect Place to Move Barrett

Call it a brief settlement, a recess, you name it, it was perhaps astonishing to see the Knicks and Raptors ask the lawyers to leave the room to negotiate a trade, one that's appearing to pay off major dividends in its infancy stages. 

The Knicks immediately benefitted from having Anunoby on site to stop the defensive bleeding in a Monday win over the Western Conference-leading Minnesota Timberwolves, Toronto likewise prevailed in its first post-trade effort but Barrett carries an interesting twist.

Whereas almost every party involved in the trade could be moving once the summer's free agency period hits, Barrett's future is more or less secure thanks to the aforementioned extension. Without jabbing the Knicks organization (as some in the have been known to do post-Tom Thibodeau experience), Barrett said he couldn't be happier before he and Quickley took to the floor in a 124-121 Toronto victory. 

“Who doesn't want to come home? Who doesn't want to come home and play in front of family and friends and try to get a team that I've always loved so much back to where they were in 2019?” Barrett rhetorically asked before tipoff, per Aaron Rose of All Raptors. “Immediately I was happy. I grew up a Raptors fan all my life. So to come here and put this jersey on, this is going be great.”

Aside from the homegrown feelings, where he apparently plans to channel his inner Kyle Lowry, what Barrett has and hasn't accomplished has brought him favors and patience among the Raptors fanbase.

Toronto is in the process of paying the championship toll a year of Kawhi Leonard brought upon them. It's a price well paid and well worth it, but that doesn't make the arduous journey ... which could feel like a tortoise's pace in the 82-game toil that is the NBA ... any easier. 

The Barrett transaction works two ways: his prescience helps the time go by faster for Toronto fans while he can take things slow.

Ontario's professional and amateur observers alike have every right to be patient with Barrett, one of the artists behind the finest piece put forth by True North hardwood creators beyond the Raptors' championship run. Thanks to Barrett and more, Canada's men's national basketball team will partake in the Summer Olympics thanks to a podium finish at last summer's FIBA World Cup. Barrett had the clinching triple in the third-place game, which claimed North American bragging rights over Brunson, Josh Hart, and the United States' team. 

The national history and relatively consequence-free atmosphere have perhaps bought Barrett all the time needed to truly figure out and prove that he's destined for stardom. Time will tell if he embraces it.