There is no law, metaphorical or otherwise, requiring that this title exists. In that way, it’s kind of like the captain of a baseball team. Sometimes teams have one, sometimes they don’t: The Yankees have gone years at a time without, most recently the gap between Derek Jeter and Aaron Judge; the Mets somehow manage to survive without one at the present time.
It just happens when it happens.
And for the past few years, the New York sporting world has gone blissfully spinning without anointing someone the following dubious designation:
Most Polarizing Athlete.
Sometimes, these things present themselves easily. In truth, if we were actually handing out the award, we would call it The A-Rod. For there has never been a single more polarizing sports figure in this town, any sport, any era, than Alex Rodriguez. Across 12 years as a Yankee, he was both loved and loathed in equal measure, respected and reviled with equal vigor — and, in truth, even seven years after he took his last swing, that remains the case.
We’ve had others. For a time, Eli Manning was like that, but a couple of Super Bowls forced him to hand his A-Rod back to the committee. Roger Clemens was certainly like that. Recently, the athlete that clutched his A-Rod with both hands for almost his entire stay in New York was Carmelo Anthony.
Anthony was a curious case for a sports columnist. If you ripped him, your email inbox would fill with Melo supporters, so many you really might second-guess your own words. Except that, if you praised him, you’d hear from twice as many respondents, the anti-Melo brigade who would clear their throats if ever you chose to give No. 7 too much credit.
It was amazing. It was like clockwork.
RJ Barrett isn’t quite at that level. Not yet. He has only been in the league for four seasons. He’s still only 22 years old. But I can assure you this: You almost certainly have an opinion about Barrett, about his career, about his ceiling, about his future, about whether the Knicks should make him a long-term piece of their aspirational puzzle.
And you are poised to strike.
Are the next few paragraphs going to be pro-RJ? His youth, his energy, his ceiling, his upside, his work ethic, his self-confidence, his fearlessness.
Are they going to be anti-RJ? His shot selection, his shot execution, his occasional sloppiness with the ball, his inability to stop shooting when he’s clearly off his irrational self-confidence.
“All I know,” said Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau (who, by the way, also spends a lot of days and nights within arm’s reach of an A-Rod), “is that he’s the kind of player who’s easy to root for. He works hard. He cares. And he wants to win very, very badly.”
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Friday night, Barrett enjoyed his finest hour as a Knick. When the rest of the Knicks treated the basket with disdain, Barrett had 10 first-quarter points that kept them in the game. He wound up with 19 points, eight rebounds and three assists, shot 8-for-12 from the field (3-for-6 from 3).
With Julius Randle off his game, with Jalen Brunson scuffling in the first half, with Quentin Grimes lost for the second half with a shoulder contusion, Barrett was exactly what the Knicks needed him to be, at a time when they most needed that. For the pro-RJ crowd, it was an evening of justification. For Barrett himself, too.
“As a basketball player,” Barrett said after the game, “you grow up thinking about moments like these. It was electric in there and we’re happy about coming back Sunday.”
That, of course, is one issue that even the most ardent members of the pro-RJ faction concede: Even in prosperous times, Barrett’s big challenge is maintaining a consistency of performance. As good as he can be, there are games that make you divert your eyes. In past years, the Knicks could brush that off as growing pains, learning curves.
But Barrett is a core Knick now, every bit as essential to the team’s success as Randle and Brunson and Josh Hart and the Mitch Robinson-Isaiah Hartenstein tandem at center. Specific to this series, Barrett’s willingness to take the ball to the basket is vital, both as a means of opening up the offense as well as pestering the Cavaliers’ bigs, Jarrett Allen and Evan Mobley.
“He doesn’t get rattled,” Thibodeau said. “I thought he was real aggressive tonight. We got to get him in the open floor and when we do that he’s going to make shots. When he gets going downhill he’s tough to guard.”
He’s also hard to build a case against. For now, The A-Rod stays locked in a vault. That could certainly change by Monday morning.