Knicks' RJ Barrett aiming to improve three-point shooting
RJ Barrett, left, of the Knicks drives towards the basket against Pat Connaughton, right, of the Bucks at Madison Square Garden on Dec. 27, 2020. Credit: AP/Mike Strobe
When the game ended in Tampa Thursday night RJ Barrett returned to the court for about an hour of extra shooting. He then got shots up Friday before flying to Indiana and then was back for extra work after the morning shootaround.
While Barrett has gotten plenty of shots up in games, making them has been a different story. And one that he was determined to change as the Knicks returned to Indiana, the last place he made a three-point field goal in a game.
Barrett started the season by hitting his first nine shots in that season-opening game, including 3-for-3 from beyond the arc in the first half. But since then he entered Saturday’s game having gone 0-for-21 from three-point range, including an 0-for-8 performance in Thursday’s loss to the Raptors.
"I shot after the game. I spent some time shooting yesterday and today," Barrett said. "Just trying to get my groove back, to get back in it. I’m sure I’ll be good.
"I’m going to keep shooting them. I’m getting open shots. I’ve just got to knock them down."
The three straight made in the opening half of the first game might have been the anomaly for Barrett. He shot 2-for-16 from long range in the preseason and while he said that he spent much of the long offseason working on his shooting, the results haven’t shown yet.
Barrett shot 32% from three-point range as a rookie last season and he shot 30.8% from the shorter college three-point line in his one season at Duke. While his free-throw shooting has improved dramatically from 61.4 percent to 78.3 in the small sample size of this season, his long-range shooting has not taken a similar step forward.
"You don’t tweak anything," Barrett said. "You just try to get back to your regular routine, try to break it down and get to all your key points. You don’t really change anything too much.
"I thought we took really good shots. A lot of our shots were wide open with nobody around. They just didn’t fall that night."
He wasn’t alone as the Knicks shot 3-for-36 as a team Thursday from beyond the arc and he wasn’t even the worst culprit with Reggie Bullock missing all nine of his attempts. The Knicks starting five were a combined 0-for-23 -- the most misses without a make in NBA history by a starting unit.
Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau had said he wanted to watch the film from Thursday’s game before judging the performance. With two days behind him, he saw minor mistakes, but nothing to explain the numbers.
"Just the details. I thought we fought pretty good," Thibodeau said. "We had a seven-point lead in the third quarter and then we started to maybe short cut things. The passing was maybe not on target and that could hurt you. But a lot of the shots were wide open shots without anyone within five, six feet of us.
"So if they’re good shots, you take them. Makes and misses are part of the game. But you can’t short cut things and you certainly can’t short cut them on the defensive end. So we looked at all that. To win on the road, you have to play hard and smart. We didn’t do enough of that. We did a lot of good things for two and a half, three quarters. And we fell short in the fourth quarter."
Steve Popper covers the Knicks for Newsday. He has spent nearly three decades covering the Knicks and the NBA, along with just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.
