Toronto Raptors count on big contribution from Mississauga native in NBA playoffs 

Four games into his tenure with the Toronto Raptors in the early days of January 2024, Mississauga native RJ Barrett showed his new NBA club that on any given night he could be a dynamic scorer.

The 6-foot-6 guard/small forward, who’d been traded from the New York Knicks to Toronto two days before ringing in the new year, piled up a season-high 37 points in a 133-118 Raptors road win over Steph Curry and the Golden State Warriors in San Francisco.

The Raptors, who five seasons earlier had been crowned NBA champs, completed the 2023-24 campaign with a record of 25-57 to miss the playoffs by a long stretch.

Fast-forward a couple of years and the Raps, who managed a 30-52 mark for the 2024-25 campaign before turning the corner this past season to finish at 46-36, are about to find out if Barrett, now 25 and playing considerably more at forward than guard, can deliver his scoring touch along with other skills when it matters most — in the playoffs.

Mississauga native RJ Barrett, shown here during 2023 action with Team Canada. (Photo: Sandro Halank, via Wikimedia Commons)

Toronto travels to Cleveland to begin its best-of-seven opening-round NBA playoff series this Saturday against the Cavaliers. The Raptors enter the post-season as the No. 5 seed in the Eastern Conference while the Cavs, among the league’s hottest teams the past couple of months, are seeded fourth.

Came up big in final regular-season game

Barrett, a one-time student and star athlete at St. Marcellinus Secondary School in Mississauga, certainly delivered this past Sunday in the Raps’ regular-season finale. He poured in 26 points in a 136-101 win over the Brooklyn Nets to help his club clinch a playoff spot and avoid the play-in tournament.

Over the course of the season, Barrett averaged 19.3 points-per-game and added 5.3 rebounds per contest.

Come Saturday afternoon, game time 1 p.m., the Raptors will play a post-season match for the first time since 2021-22, when they fell to the Philadelphia 76ers in the first round.

Game 2 goes Monday, also in Cleveland, before the clubs meet in Toronto next Thursday and then again on April 26 for games three and four.

Barrett came to Toronto along with another talented player

Barrett and guard Immanuel Quickley arrived in Toronto via a Dec. 30, 2023 trade with the New York Knicks. Forwards OG Anunoby and Precious Achiuwa headed to the Big Apple from Toronto in return.

Quickley, 26, is the Raptors’ starting point guard and remains a core piece of the club — now and for the future — entering the playoffs.

Barrett, out of Duke University, was the third overall pick in the 2019 NBA Draft, selected by the Knicks. The former St. Marcellinus standout was also a member of the Team Canada squad that competed in 2023 at the FIBA World Cup in the Philippines, Japan and Indonesia.

Toronto enters the post-season as owners of the NBA’s fifth-rated defence, a mark earned this past regular season. The Cavs, meanwhile, boast the sixth-best offensive rating in the league.

The Raptors won all three regular-season meetings with Cleveland, but those victories came prior to the Cavs’ acquisition of perennial all-star guard James Harden.