Shoulder injury could sideline Barrett to start season

TORONTO – The injury bug is already in mid-season form.

The Raptors opened training camp in Montreal last week and, notably, there were a few key players watching from the sidelines, or missing altogether.

Veteran guard Bruce Brown was hobbling around after undergoing knee surgery late in the off-season, rookie first-rounder Ja’Kobe Walter had his shoulder in a sling, starting point guard Immanuel Quickley wore a brace on his sprained thumb, and all-star Scottie Barnes was away from the team for personal reasons.

All four players sat out of Sunday’s pre-season debut, a 125-98 win over Washington, but the biggest hit – literally and figuratively – came in the second quarter of that game.

After getting off to an excellent start – 17 points on 7-of-10 shooting, including 3-of-4 from three-point range, in 14 points – RJ Barrett tried to fight through a hard screen and collided with Wizards big man and former Raptor Jonas Valanciunas. He immediately went to the locker room and was quickly ruled out for the night.

On Monday, an MRI revealed a sprain to the AC joint in his right shoulder – the same injury that Walter sustained in an informal pre-camp workout, and one that will cost Barrett the final four exhibition contests, at minimum.

Treatment and timeline depend on the degree of tearing to the ligaments, according to Dr. Ali Rendely, a physical medicine and rehabilitation doctor at Toronto Rehab, but the average non-surgical recovery ranges from 2-6 weeks. Being that opening night – Oct. 23 against Cleveland – is a couple weeks away, a return in time to start the season would seem ambitious.

It's a tough blow for the 24-year-old, who is coming off a strong showing for Canada at the Olympics this summer and hoping to build on his impressive 32-game run with Toronto last season. Barrett averaged 21.8 points, 6.4 rebounds and 4.1 assists on 55 per cent shooting – all career-highs – after being acquired from New York in late December. After spending more than six weeks of his off-season training with the national team and competing in Paris, Barrett was confident that he would hit the ground running in his sixth NBA season. With his hot start to Sunday’s game, he seemed to be ahead of where most players are at this stage.

Now, he’ll have to play catch up whenever he does return, and the team will likely have to tread water without their starting small forward to open the campaign.

“He will be able to do a lot of other stuff, conditioning-wise, and to address his health everywhere else, with his knees and strength and all of that,” said head coach Darko Rajakovic, who called Barrett week-to-week. “So, once he comes back, he's gonna be in a great position to continue.”

Fortunately, it isn’t all bad news. While Quickley is still dealing with the thumb injury he sustained ahead of camp and has been limited to individual drills after practice, he’s continuing to ramp up his work and should be cleared for contact soon. He’s a longshot for Friday’s rematch with the Wizards in Washington, but the team expects him to get into at least one of its final four pre-season games and be ready for opening night. Barnes rejoined the club in Montreal late last week, and while they’ve eased him back, his availability isn’t in question moving forward.

Walter is 10 days ahead of Barrett in his recovery from the shoulder injury and, like Brown, has a follow-up appointment coming up in the next week or so.

Having so many regulars out of the lineup has tested Rajakovic early in his second year at the helm. It’s also created opportunities for guys that may not have expected to get them this early in the season.

Second-unit players have been forced into starting roles. Guys who weren’t even projected to be in the rotation are running with the reserves.

One of the reasons why the Raptors let Gary Trent Jr. walk in free agency was because of their supposed depth in the backcourt and on the wing. The idea was to open a starting spot, presumably for sophomore Gradey Dick, and free up minutes for some of the other young guards to play and develop.

If Barrett isn’t ready for opening night, that could open the door for 24-year-old Ochai Agbaji – who looked good in his pre-season debut – to start alongside the 20-year-old Dick. In the likely event that Walter is eased back, having missed his first NBA training camp, that could mean more time for fellow rookie Jamal Shead or two-way guard D.J. Carton, both standouts on Sunday.

With so much of the young core training together in Las Vegas, Spain and Toronto over the summer, the hope is that it won’t take long to build chemistry whenever the team gets back to full strength. The problem is their early-season schedule does them no favours. 11 of their first 12 opponents qualified for the post-season last year, and that stretch includes a brutal five-game West Coast road trip. For one of the league’s youngest teams, who are already undermanned, that leaves almost no room for error.

Alas, this is a rebuilding season. Wins and losses are a secondary priority. Development and evaluation come first, and that’s why Barrett’s absence – however long it lasts – really stings. Once Barnes’ max contract extension takes into effect next season, he, Quickley and Barrett will be the team’s highest-paid players. They’re the undisputed faces of the franchise’s new era, and as such, the front office is anxious to see what they look like together.

The Raptors outscored opponents by 36 points (2.9 points per 100 possessions) in 439 minutes over 22 games with those three on the court last season. Add starting centre Jakob Poeltl to that trio, and they outscored opponents by 65 points (10.8 points per 100 possessions) in 234 minutes over 14 games.

But with Barnes and Poeltl suffering season-ending hand injuries, and with the personal leaves of Barrett and Quickley, those four haven’t shared the court since Mar. 1. They only played four minutes with Dick, the new fifth starter.

“Obviously, in perfect world, we would like all the guys to always be healthy and always [be] available, but that’s just not reality,” Rajakovic said after his team’s first practice session back in Toronto on Monday. “We’ve got to deal with it. And I think for me, it's more like a game-by-game process, focusing on our constant improvement. Start [of] the season, for sure, we'll need a lot of time to get on the same page and get to know each other and to play to the standard. So, it's going to take some time for the whole team to get there.”