Austin Reaves vs RJ Barrett vs Michael Porter Jr

[durantbird]

How would you rank them now and going forward?

[Rishkar]

I'm a big fan of MPJ right now and think he's the best of the bunch. I'd take Reaves moving forward

[Dr Positivity]

Barrett's is probably the weirdest to fit on a good team as an average shooter and defender, and is good at driving to the basket but not in a way where he's dribbling a lot and having the offense run through him. I'd rather just have MPJ's shooting but I could see Barrett breaking out as an all-star in the future, his attitude seems great and having a natural ability to score at the basket can be turned into something if the rest of the game improves.

Going forward I like MPJ's upside the least, I feel like we'd have seen it by now if he was going to be a different guy than this. While Reaves is also 25 I just like the skillset and the flashes that I wouldn't be surprised if he has breakout year next year.

[tsherkin]

Barrett is on a nice heater right now. It will settle. His performance in Toronto is sufficiently short-sample and so wildly out of the realm of sustainable that we need to wait a while to see what he actually looks like, because it sure isn't him shooting 62% beneath the arc. He's at 108 TS+ as a Raptor after never posting 99 in a season before. He's shooting a career-high in the RA, and 50% from 16-23 feet. He's also shooting career-highs from 3-10 and 10-16.

It's pretty clear that he is eventually going to normalize. He IS also enjoying a lot more passing support, so some net improvement is also to be expected, just not to this specific level. That makes it very challenging to evaluate him relative to other players right at the moment.