Julius Randle & RJ Barrett < Julius Randle/RJ Barrett
Since they first met up in 2019-20, one thing has been an unfortunate constant with RJ Barrett and Julius Randle: their fit is potentially dubious, and the numbers back it up. Could the day come when the Knicks need to choose between one or the other?
Julius Randle and RJ Barrett rank first and second per game for the Knicks in minutes, shots taken, shots made, 2-pointers made and attempted, free throws made and attempted, defensive rebounds, and points scored. They did last year, too. This season they’re also second and third in 3-point attempts. JR and RJ are the wheel that keeps the Knicks moving. Randle turns 27 Monday; Barrett will be 21 when this season ends. They’re young, versatile, and both on team-friendly contracts. What do we take from all that? That the Knicks need to move one, possibly sooner than later.
This is more a thought exercise than a conviction, though it’s an exercise I’ve been mulling over since Barrett’s rookie season, Randle’s first in New York. The team has changed quite a bit from top to bottom since 2019-20, so let’s look first at the duo in as much isolation as we can — 2-man lineup data — and then expand to larger groupings. The issue isn’t so much anything glaringly problematic with either player; it’s a question of whether they add up to less than the sum of their parts.
In 2019-20, Randle and Barrett played more minutes together than any other Knick duo. In over 1400 minutes together, their net rating was -7.0. You could point out that 16 of the top 17 Knick pairings that year in terms of minutes played had negative ratings. Yet in all that stank, only four of those 16 minuses were worse than JR/RJ. That year, Randle was New York’s highest-paid player and Barrett was their highest draft pick since Patrick Ewing. You expect growing pains from players in new roles and new places. But -7 over 1400 minutes is not encouraging. The top four three-man lineups featuring those two had negative ratings. Ditto the top three four-man combos and two most frequent five-man lineups.
Let’s move to last season. The Knicks were vastly improved, so it stands to reason the JR/RJ pairing was. Again those two were the most common two-man pairing, this time in over 2100 minutes together, and this time they had a +2.3 rating. They were also the most-used three-man combo, combining with Reggie Bullock to finish +2.8. If you look at them in four-man combos that don’t include Elfrid Payton, their top-eight were all positive; with five-man lineups, the top-seven featuring JR and RJ sans Elf were also in the black. That doesn’t really tell us anything new, though; Payton was an obvious minus last year, really the one blemish on that whole campaign. What about this season? With Payton gone and Tom Thibodeau and Leon Rose having had time to steep the organization in the ways of their culture, how are Randle and Barrett looking 20 games into this season?
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