New York Knicks: RJ Barrett’s growing minutes dispute

There’s been a lot of discussions whether New York Knicks’ guard RJ Barrett should be playing a ton of minutes this early in his career.

After the New York Knicks 113-92 loss to Sacramento Sunday night, head coach David Fizdale was asked in his post-game press conference if he was concerned about the number of minutes rookie RJ Barrett has played so far this season.

"“He’s got the day off tomorrow,” Fizdale said. “We got to get off this load-management crap, Latrell Sprewell averaged 42 minutes for a season. This kid is 19 years old. Drop it already.”"

I tend to agree with Fizdale here. There’s absolutely no reason to manage Barrett’s minutes this early in his career. The rookie is just 19 years old and is getting his feet wet in the NBA. The only way he can truly get better is to play in the games. Practices and sim games can only help so much, but there’s no better way to improve than to play in a real-time game with actual defense.

So far, in seven games, Barrett is averaging around 37 minutes per game while scoring 18.3 points per game, which both lead the team.

At some point throughout his career, the Knicks should look to manage his minutes, but not right now. He still needs to learn the NBA game and you can’t do that from sitting on the bench.

We’ve seen examples from some of the best players in the game that there shouldn’t be any concerns for Barrett playing a ton of minutes this early in his career.

New York Daily News’ Stefan Bondy tweeted this on Monday:

If those guys were able to play a ton of minutes in the old school, hard-nosed NBA, then Barrett should be fine in a more fast-paced, softer NBA.

Although I don’t think there should be any concern for Barrett’s minutes, I do understand why so many people are worried about it. The biggest complaint I see is that Barrett might burn out early and hit his “rookie wall” much sooner than anticipated. Knicks fans have every right to be concerned because they saw it happen first hand with Kristaps Porzingis.

In Porzingis’ first couple of seasons with the Knicks, he would start off hot but then slowly fade away as the season progressed. Barrett and Porzingis are different body types and different types of players.

Instead of dwelling over the minutes situation, Knicks fans should be happy that it seems like the Knicks finally have their guy. They have a face of the franchise player that wants to be here in New York playing in the world’s most famous arena.