RJ Barrett Returns to Raptors Following His Younger Brother's Death

RJ Barrett practiced with the Toronto Raptors on Friday for the first time since the passing of his younger brother Nathan

RJ Barrett never looked down.

You’d never have known what he was going through. There was no hint that quite possibly the best stretch of basketball in his young career was colliding with a nightmare.

Just look at his last game in Denver: The 23-year-old forward dropped 26 points on 10-for-20 shooting with nine assists and seven rebounds. He helped the Toronto Raptors go toe-to-toe with a Nuggets team considered among the best in the league.

But then came the call he had feared.

His phone rang early on the morning of March 12, and he was told to come home. His younger brother Nathan had been sick for weeks and the situation wasn’t improving.

“Even while I was playing, I knew it was kind of happening,” Barrett said Friday after his first full practice with the team.

Barrett got home in time to say goodbye before Nathan, 19, died later that day.

“He was my best friend. I’m always missing him,” Barrett said. “I still text him. I still call them sometimes, but yeah, just a tough time.”

Nathan was the classic younger brother. He was athletic, but never quite on RJ’s level.

“I would beat him at everything,” Barrett said with a smile. “He was always stubborn, really aggressive all the time. He was smaller than me, so he kinda had to be that way.”

It never worked though.

“Oh, he would be mad. He would foul me. He would be saying I’m cheating and all that stuff,” said Barrett who claimed an undefeated record against his younger brother on the basketball court.

But while RJ got the gift of basketball and supreme athletic ability, Nathan had gifts RJ couldn’t possibly dream of.

“He was the best. He was the best, man,” Barrett said. “I got basketball, but he got everything else. I can’t draw, I can’t do anything else… but he had everything else. Whatever he wanted to do, whatever he put his mind to, he could do. Literally, the last thing he was doing, he was in pilot school. So, whatever he put his mind to, he was able to achieve.”

Basketball has been Barrett’s sanctuary for the past couple of months.

It’s where he can lock in on getting better and for a moment free himself from everything else that’s going on in his life.

“This actually brings me peace,” he said. “It helps me every day to be here and also just be on a schedule and just be around the guys. Hanging out with your teammates, it’s funny. They’re funny.”

The Raptors have tried to build that support system around Barrett and the team this year. It’s why Darko Rajaković was brought in as more of a player-friendly coach and someone who could foster a different environment around team this year.

Take, for example, the way practices have ended this season. The Raptors come together as a group and put their hands in and say “family.” It may be corny nonsense to some, but this season, considering what’s gone on in the organization, it’s felt like something more.

“A lot of times it can be taken lightly, you know, and I [do] not take it lightly,” Rajaković said. “We are one family we represent the Toronto Raptors and for me, it means so much.”

For Barrett, that support is why he wants to get back. He wants to be around his teammates again, doing what he does, at the level he was at before he stepped away.

“I’ve had some people in my life pass, but I think this one hit a little harder for me. Yeah, this one is definitely a little different so it’s a lot tougher,” he said. “I just think that I’ve gotta push forward every day, gotta be able to try to figure it out. Because, also, if I know my brother he would want me to be here, to be playing, to try to continue to make the Barrett legacy grow.”