The Fantasy Basketball Encyclopedia

Player Dossier · Toronto Raptors

RJ Barrett

RJ Barrett is a reliable volume scorer for points leagues and punt-FT builds, but limited stocks and free-throw drag cap his balanced nine-category ceiling.

Cutoff/status: 2026-07-18; verified standard-contract starting wing, not part of the reported Leonard trade package. Official NBA profile, accessed 2026-07-18 · Toronto Raptors

Baseline and projection

Barrett averaged 19.3 points, 5.3 rebounds, 3.3 assists, 0.7 steals, 0.3 blocks, 1.7 threes and 1.7 turnovers in 30.3 MPG across 57 games, shooting .491 from the field and .717 at the line. He returned for the playoffs and remained a high-minute scorer. Basketball-Reference, accessed 2026-07-18 · Basketball-Reference playoff log, accessed 2026-07-18

GP MPG FG% FT% 3PM PTS REB AST STL BLK TO
67 31.0 .486 .725 1.7 18.5 5.2 3.2 0.7 0.3 1.8

Fantasy value

Barrett's minutes are safer than his shots. In the Leonard branch, he can still start at shooting guard and anchor bench units, but Leonard becomes the closer. In the Ingram branch, the 2025-26 usage structure largely repeats.

Career record

Pre-NBA: St. Marcellinus Secondary School (Mississauga) then Montverde Academy from 2015; reclassified to the 2018 class in July 2017 and finished as the consensus No. 1 recruit across all major services. One season at Duke, 2018-19: 38 games, 38 starts, 35.3 minutes, 22.4 points, 7.6 rebounds, 4.3 assists, 0.9 steals, 0.4 blocks on .454 FG, .308 3PT, .665 FT — high-volume slashing with no reliable jumper and a poor line, both of which followed him into the league. Draft: 2019, first round, third overall, New York Knicks; no draft-night trade. Traded to Toronto in December 2023 as part of the OG Anunoby deal.

Season Age Team GP MPG PTS REB AST STL BLK 3PM FG% FT% TO
2019-20 19 NYK 56 30.4 14.3 5.0 2.6 1.0 0.3 1.1 .402 .614 2.2
2020-21 20 NYK 72 34.9 17.6 5.8 3.0 0.7 0.3 1.7 .441 .746 1.9
2021-22 21 NYK 70 34.5 20.0 5.8 3.0 0.6 0.2 2.0 .408 .714 2.2
2022-23 22 NYK 73 33.9 19.6 5.0 2.8 0.4 0.2 1.7 .434 .740 2.2
2023-24 23 NYK 26 29.5 18.2 4.3 2.4 0.5 0.3 1.7 .423 .831 1.8
2023-24 23 TOR 32 33.5 21.8 6.4 4.1 0.6 0.4 1.5 .553 .629 2.5
2024-25 24 TOR 58 32.2 21.1 6.3 5.4 0.8 0.3 1.8 .468 .630 2.9
2025-26 25 TOR 57 30.3 19.3 5.3 3.3 0.7 0.3 1.7 .491 .717 1.7
Career 444 32.7 18.9 5.5 3.3 0.7 0.3 1.7 .447 .700 2.2

The 2023-24 season is shown split rather than combined: 26 games in New York before the December 2023 Anunoby trade, 32 in Toronto after. Combined that year he played 58 games at 20.2 points, 5.4 rebounds, 3.3 assists and 2.2 turnovers. The two halves are not the same player statistically — .423 from the field and .831 from the line in New York against .553 and .629 in Toronto — so averaging them obscures more than it explains.

Fantasy history: Season-end nine-category finishes are not verifiable from available sources for any year of his career, and none is asserted here. The commonly cited "120th in nine-cat" figure for 2025-26 is an ESPN preseason ranking, not a result. What the box scores do establish is a stable shape: seven straight seasons of 14-to-22 points on real volume with essentially no defensive counting stats (career 0.7 steals, 0.3 blocks) and a free-throw percentage that has been a net negative in five of seven years. That combination is why he is materially more valuable in points formats and punt-FT category builds than in balanced nine-cat, where two of nine categories are dead weight and a third is a liability.

Durability: 56, 72, 70, 73, 58, 58, 57 games. The first four years were durable; the last three are not. In 2019-20 he missed time with a sprained right ankle in a season the league cut short at 65-to-72 team games. 2024-25 was a preseason right AC joint sprain suffered in the opener against Washington, then in-season absences for a right knee injury, a left ankle sprain, and left shoulder stiffness. 2025-26 was dominated by a single event: a right knee sprain on November 23 after landing awkwardly on a dunk against Brooklyn, MRI-clear of structural damage, which still cost 15 games and required a platelet-rich plasma injection on December 8 that extended the absence. He returned for the playoffs. The pattern to price is not one catastrophic injury but a three-year run of roughly 57-58 games a year from accumulating soft-tissue and joint problems.

Trajectory: Barrett's career splits cleanly at the Toronto trade. The New York years were volume without efficiency — four seasons under .445 from the field on heavy usage, capped by a .408 mark while scoring 20.0 in 2021-22, which is the definition of empty scoring. Toronto changed the shot diet: .553, .468, .491 in his three Raptor stints, with the 2025-26 .491 the best full-season mark of his career. But the 2025-26 improvement was a trade, not a leap. Scoring rate fell slightly (about 23.6 points per 36 in 2024-25 to about 22.9), and playmaking collapsed from roughly 6.0 assists per 36 to 3.9 as Ingram absorbed the on-ball creation, with turnovers falling from 2.9 to 1.7 for the same reason. He became a more efficient, lower-usage finisher rather than a better player. At 26 he is at the flat top of the aging curve with no remaining developmental upside to underwrite, and the two things that would move his fantasy value — a real jump in free-throw percentage off a career .700, or any defensive counting production off a career 0.7 steals and 0.3 blocks — have shown no trend in seven seasons. The 2026-27 read is that his minutes are safer than his shots: a Leonard arrival or healthy Barnes and Quickley pushes him further down the usage order in an offense that already demoted him once.

Career sources: ESPN — RJ Barrett career stats · Wikipedia — RJ Barrett · StatMuse — RJ Barrett career stats by season · NBA.com — Barrett to miss more time after PRP injection · ESPN — Barrett to miss rest of preseason with AC joint sprain

Open questions