If you’ve watched more than five minutes of SportsCenter in the last month, you probably know who R.J. Barrett is.
The 6-foot-7 Duke freshman and native of Mississauga, Ontario is part of Duke’s historic recruiting class that includes the top three players in the Class of 2018. Duke could become the first team since Florida in 2007 to have three players picked in the Top 10 of the NBA Draft.
But unless you’re a hardcore college basketball fan, you may not have heard of another Canadian freshman who is currently outscoring the prolific Barrett.
His name is Luguentz Dort.
The 6-4 Arizona State freshman and Montreal native is averaging 23.0 points, 7.8 rebounds and 2.3 assists, while Barrett is averaging 22.7 points, 6.1 rebounds and 3.6 assists.
Both Canadians are projected Top-20 picks in the NBA Draft, with Barrett at No. 2 behind teammate Zion Williamson and Dort at No. 19, per ESPN.com.
“I think this is a really good group,” said Joey McKitterick, a Montreal native who coached Dort with the Brookwood Elite AAU team. “The group of kids born in 1999 and 2000 from Canada is really, really strong, so it’s not surprising to me that that cohort of kids is all over mock drafts.”
The top two are Canadians and 3 of the 5 will be in tonight’s Indiana – Duke game pic.twitter.com/eLwrX9aRhf
— Adam Zagoria (@AdamZagoria) November 27, 2018
Another Canadian, 6-foot-5 Virginia tech sophomore guard Nickeil Alexander-Walker (18.5 ppg, 5.2 rpg, 4.2 apg) is projected as the No. 17 pick, while Gonzaga junior Brandon Clarke, born in Vancouver, is at No. 30.
Looking ahead to 2020, several other Canadians are also on mock drafts, with 6-foot-9 Vanderbilt freshman Simi Shittu at No. 25, 6-foot-8 and 6-6 South Carolina freshman A.J. Lawson at No. 43, per ESPN.com. Iggy Brazdeikis, a 6-7 freshman forward at Michigan, Oshae Brissett, a 6-foot-8 sophomore forward at Syracuse, and 6-foot-2 Iowa State sophomore guard Lindell Wigginton are also considered NBA prospects.
ESPN is reading my mind on the Canadian story. pic.twitter.com/ictkmnClrx
— Adam Zagoria (@AdamZagoria) November 29, 2018
This year, 11 Canadians were on NBA opening-night rosters, more than any other country. In the post-Steve Nash Era, that group included former No. 1 overall pick Andrew Wiggins of Minnesota, Denver star Jamal Murray and Clippers rookie guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. Both Murray and Gilgeous-Alexander played for John Calipari at Kentucky.
Last February, seven Canadians were invited to the Basketball Without Borders Global Camp during the NBA All-Star Game in New Orleans. Barrett was named MVP of the event, while Dort, Shittu, Brazdeikis, Arizona’s Emmanuel Akot, Florida’s Andrew Nembhard and Harvard’s Noah Kirkwood also attended.
Younger players like Addison Patterson of Bella Vista Prep (AZ) and Matthew Alexander-Moncrieffe of Orangeville Prep in Ontario are on the rise, too.
While Nash, Barrett’s Godfather, helped inspire younger Canadians like Wiggins, Wiggins is now inspiring a still younger generation led by Barrett, Dort and Alexander-Walker.
“It’s like a domino effect,” said Nelson Osse, who coached Dort with Brookwood Elite.
McKitterick says a guy like Barrett, whose father Rowan played at St. John’s and now runs Canada Basketball, will be better prepared to be the No. 1 or 2 pick after learning from the experiences of Wiggins and Anthony Bennett, the first Canadian No. 1 pick (2013) who is now in the NBA G League.
“I think R.J. will probably be better prepared if he goes 1 or 2, as opposed to when Bennett went 1, it was kind of uncharted territory for a Canadian to go 1,” he said. “And then Andrew went right after but there was no blueprint for success. But now R.J. has been able to look forward and beyond. There’s a path laid I guess.”
Dort, meantime, is exciting scouts with his play under coach Bobby Hurley. Scouts from the Knicks, Indiana, Oklahoma City and New Orleans have reached out to Dort’s high school and AAU coaches.
“He plays hard, scoring, not scoring, he plays hard both ends, offense and defense,” said Osse. “He goes after it, doesn’t take any breaks. He’s a winner.”
Hurley, who led Duke to back-to-back NCAA titles in the early 1990s, beat out Oregon and Baylor for Dort a year ago. He loves Dort’s work ethic and coachabilty.
“He’s a guy that just lives in the gym, puts the work in in addition to his physical talent,” Hurley said this week. “For freshmen, there’s usually some transition to the college game and just older players and the speed of the game: The transition was seamless for him.”
In the next few years, many in this wave of players figures to enter the NBA and grow the number of Canadians in the league.
That also bodes well for the Canadian National Team going forward. If they add a handful of NBA players each year for the next three or four years, they get up to 20 or so NBA guys on their National Team.
“It could be pretty soon,” McKitterick said
Led by Barrett, the Canadians won their first-ever gold medal in an Olympics or World Cup when they won the FIBU U19 World Championship last summer in Egypt, beating a Calipari-coached USA team in the semifinals.
“You’re seeing that we have players and we can win,” Barrett told me in 2017. “We can beat the U.S. Just a statement that we’re working really hard and we’re up and coming.
As for a future Olympic gold-medal bid, he added: “I mean, we still got a lot of work to do before that happens but for sure to play on an Olympic team would be great.”
