Canadian R.J. Barrett and the rest of Duke’s freshman class serve notice with a season-opening tour de force,
After defeating Kentucky team’s No. 4 ranking clearly looks to be low
The inevitable horror has arrived. The time has come. The birth date of Zion Williamson: July 6, 2000. And of Canadian R.J. Barrett: June 16, 2000. And then Tre Jones: Jan. 8, 2000. The world has reached that point when people born in the year 2000 can feed themselves, operate motor vehicles and speak full sentences without burbling.
They can also craft outlandish, fearsome feats of collaboration and beauty, such as that on display Tuesday night from Duke’s freshman class of Williamson, Barrett, Jones and Cam Reddish, with Reddish benefiting from the extra learning of having arrived on Sept. 1, 1999.
They can beat No. 2 Kentucky in a season opener by a score that kept looking false until it landed on an implausibly true 118-84, and figures to spend a good while as unforgettable.
They can look rich in a maturity they weren’t supposed to have yet. They can astound. They can surprise Mike Krzyzewski when it’s hard to surprise Krzyzewski, the septuagenarian coach in his 39th Duke season.
“No matter how talented they are, you don’t know what they’re gonna do, in this environment, against an outstanding team and a great program,” said Krzyzewski, who gabbed a few more words and then said, “They were magnificent tonight.” Soon after he added, “I shouldn’t say I’m surprised at how well these guys played, ’cause I see ’em (in practice). To play on this stage right away, against Kentucky, was a little bit surprising.”
Somehow, four scandalously young people who last year still roamed the hormonal hallways of high school in South Carolina (Williamson), Pennsylvania (Reddish), Minnesota (Jones) and Florida by way of Toronto (Barrett), wound up administering the most points against mighty Kentucky in 29 years, the biggest blasting of Ken- tucky in 10, the worst loss in the 26-season, three-university career of Kentucky coach John Calipari, and the third-worst loss ever by an Associated Press top-five team. With all of that, they went ahead and framed a new national season on its first night, establishing themselves as the mastodon whose No. 4 ranking looks too low by three, and constructing a reference point that will hover from here to March and from coast to coast.
That would figure to replace the off-season hovering of courtrooms and wiretaps and illicit payments, giving the sport a fresh topic it might not deserve as spectacle and marvel triumph yet again.
Certainly the foursome arrived to Duke with their gaudy Rivals recruiting rankings — Nos. 1, 3, 5 and 14 nationally — and their seasoning born of the nomadic basketball travels afforded teenage sensations. Yet they played with a cohesion that betrayed their ages and the calendar, which supposedly still reads November.
As they stop by Duke for a year of polish before ascending to the NBA, they’re supposed to spend November with the polish coming only in small and intermittent globs. Instead, they played with a maturity that might reflect these details: Reddish’s father played for VCU, Jones’s older brother played for Duke, Williamson’s stepfather played for Clemson and Barrett’s father played for the Canadian national team in that tough 68-63 quarterfinal loss to France at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
Knowledge of how to play seems to have gone imbued.
“The way they were talking on defence, moved the ball and the way they were attacking the rim,” all qualified as “very mature,” in the view of Kentucky graduate transfer Reid Travis.
They dazzled repeatedly but also achieved smoothness. Barrett got 33 points, Williamson got 28, Reddish got 22, and Jones, the point guard, managed the thing with scarce glitches. “Four turnovers?” Calipari said of the Blue Devils’ total.
“Either they’re the greatest ballhandling team in the history of basketball or we’re not creating enough havoc.”
Long since an Instagram sensation, Williamson got his loud reaction upon pre-game introduction and his loud reaction upon his big dunks, but those were the least of his skills.
A six-foot-seven, 285-pound frame moving as his does his can seem to be an optical illusion. On one drive, defenders fled because people tend to flee when seeing something that large move that rapidly.
On the next play, he rained in a soft, sweet three-point shot. On one roaring play with 14:38 left, he stole the ball under the basket Duke defended, then led a break and wound up threading a gorgeous pass to Barrett for the layup.
Krzyzewski: “That’s how he plays. He does that all the time.”
Krzyzewski said of Barrett, who had a game-high 33 points: “R.J. in that first half was terrific. I mean, he was a man.
“He’s really tight — not tight as far as emotionally — but really tight on his shot even though he’s a movement player. You get that combination, it’s dangerous.”