MINNEAPOLIS – J.J. Barea careened. He lunged and skidded and came out of his dustup with the scorer's table with one very, very sprained foot.
It was Nov. 7, the fourth game of the Timberwolves' season, and they were up by 20 against the Magic. Up by 20, and Barea felt the need to fling himself after a loose ball that, in the big picture, didn't matter.
But that's Barea, all five feet and 10 very compact inches of him. He picked himself up, shook himself off, felt the pain, and called his own timeout. He turned to coach Rick Adelman, nodded, muttered something about his foot and was off to the locker room as his coach regrouped and changed the 20-second pause to a full timeout.
Complain about the timing, about the exit, about Barea's newfound propensity for bruise and sprain. But that's the point guard in a nutshell: fighting, clawing, hustling and confident. It's why Dallas found him and kept him, even a good part of why they won the 2011 NBA championship. It's why the Timberwolves, among other teams, wanted him, and now, when he's no longer the tiny, dimpled poster boy for the Mavericks' improbable success, it's why he manages to stick so hard in basketball's collective craw.
Barea was one of the two players first warned about flopping this year. Of course he was, on Minnesota's opening night, when he positively bounced off Jimmer Fredette as if he were a hefty center, not a diminutive guard, 195 pounds soaking wet. Barea's arms, it can seem, are trained to reflexively fly into the air upon any and all contact with opponents at the defensive end of the court. It's exasperating, maybe, but again, that's just Barea.
Such things, though, can overshadow what the point guard does on the court, in spite of his size and even because of it. Minus the theatrics and that unceremonious table crash, Barea has an attitude and outlook every team should want. He throws himself into the game and knows how to neutralize his biggest disadvantage. He's stuck in the league for seven seasons, after going undrafted out of Northeastern, and he's gotten a healthy dose of credit for a championship. And now, after a down year at perhaps the worst possible time, he's again playing close to the level he did as Dallas' improbable spark off the bench.
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It had been just two months since Barea had averaged 10.4 points in the final three rounds of the 2011 playoffs, after he'd earned himself a starting job for Dallas' final three games against Miami, the ones that clinched a title for the Mavericks. Just two months, and J.J. Barea's world was as close to in pieces as it could have been – at least, for a professional basketball player dating Miss Universe.
The lockout had begun, and Barea was back in Puerto Rico, admittedly not working out at the level he should have. But back in the United States, in a closed boardroom as labor talks raged, he had become if not a punch line, then at least a talking point.
Amid a discussion about stale contracts, one of the owners' sticking points in the negotiations, Barea's name came up as a counterpoint, a player gotten at a bargain, the kind of player owners would have rather forgotten in lieu of their scapegoats, men like Eddy Curry and his deadweight $60 million contract. After some back and forth, commissioner David Stern had had enough. "I'll see you J.J. Barea," he said, "and raise you Eddy Curry."
And that's what Barea was at that point, a player contributing far beyond the scope of his three-year, $5 million contract. He was a likeable bargain, the kind of uncanny success story – Puerto Rico to high school in Miami to Northeastern University to the NBA – that you can't help but cheer for. Add in a relationship with former Miss Universe Zuleyka Rivera, who announced she was pregnant with Barea's son, Sebastian, on the heels of the Mavericks' championship, and you've got yourself enough pluck for at least a low budget, feel-good sports movie.
But the lockout changed everything. It came at the worst possible time, with Barea lobbying for more money and more years in Dallas, with him ultimately failing at that and testing the open market, unable to sign until December. He didn't want to injure himself while he shopped for teams, he said, so he didn't work out enough, and when he showed up in Minnesota, he was for once appropriately compensated, maybe even overpaid, depending on whom you ask. (He's getting four years to the tune of $18 million.) But Barea was no one's returning hero, not like he would have been down at the other end of I-35. He had something to prove: that he was worth that contract, worth the accolades from the past spring, worth the hype.
And then he went on to have the most frustrating year of his career.
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It took Barea two games in Minnesota to strain his right hamstring, and that started the avalanche. Then more hamstring trouble, then more. Two months later, there was a sprained left ankle, then a thigh contusion not three weeks after that. All in all, Barea played 41 games last season, as many as teammate Ricky Rubio, missing 25 with his seemingly endless string of minor injuries.
"Last year was just a weird year for me," Barea said. "I came from a long championship year there in Dallas, and then I was a free agent. I didn't want to get hurt during the summer, so I didn't work out like I usually do. I just forgot about it."
He forgot to work out, but Minnesota fans can't seem to forget his inconsistency. It can't seem to forget that he missed that time, that he shot the worst he has since his rookie career. Thinking back on Barea last season, that's what stands out, not his career-best 14.9 PER or 11.3 points per game, not his ability to step up with Rubio out and, along with Luke Ridnour, provide at least a respectable replacement tandem. There was something about those injuries that suggested he should have come back sooner, something about his gnat-like on-court that suggested he might not be playing as he'd been told to. Plus, he wasn't Rubio, and that in and of itself will be a death sentence for every Timberwolves point guard for years.
In fact, Barea is something like the opposite of Rubio. It's not just that he likes to shoot; he's compact where the Spaniard is lanky, blustery where he's humble, fast-talking where he's thoughtful and pensive. And you know what, that's fine. That's just who J.J. Barea is, who he's always been, and now that he's finally coming into his own in Minnesota, he's slowly being accepted as such.
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J.J. Barea has always been a point guard. He's always been small, listed imaginatively at 6 feet some places, but his NBA combine measurements from 2006 confirm the real number: 5-10. He might have been average-sized at some point, he admits, but he won't ever go so far as to say he was once tall.
"I remember my first organized game was when I was like 5, and I was a point guard," Barea said. "I heard stories of guys who are centers when they're little and then they stop growing and they can't play no more."
So in that, Barea has been fortunate. He's never had to adapt his skill set or force himself into something unnatural. For him, point guard is natural. It's also the only position he could ever play, the only slot on the court that can be molded to his frame. He learned early on the value of playing physical, of getting into the paint and taking his hits. He found that a good handle was key, as was being able to get around defenders and weasel his way into the spots he needed.
But more than anything, he found he had to be fearless. He goes after bigger players, eating away at their patience like a 175-pound weevil, and he dares them to bop him. His entry into the paint is often like that of a pinball – bounce, bounce, bounce off opponents, between them – and his shots, like his flops, can be the essence of uncanny high drama.
"I think you have to be (physical)," Adelman said. "You see some of the smaller guards in our league, they've got to be aggressive. They usually have some strengths that they can definitely go to, and he has that. … I think you have to have that mentality if you're going to be successful at that size."
Even with the new flopping rules, Barea has maintained his style of play, although he admits that he's tried to curb his tendency to draw that very special brand of offensive foul that's now flagged for video review. He feels like such rules put players like him at a disadvantage, and it's hard to argue that they don't, but right now it's tough to focus on any of that -- not when Barea is playing like he is. His shooting accuracy is up (41.7 percent from the field, 46.8 true shooting percentage), as is his rebounding percentage (8.1, actually the best of his career). His turnovers are down, his offensive and defensive ratings (107 and 105) both better than they were a year ago, better even than they were at his peak in Dallas. This is J.J. Barea coming into his own yet again, playing like the guy the Timberwolves thought they were getting.
"He's the same J.J. I've been knowing, except a whole lot more confident," Josh Howard said, noting the one change in Barea since he last played with him in Dallas in 2010.
And suddenly, every time he windmills back for what could very well be a flop, it's not quite so annoying. Suddenly, when he ricochets into the paint, he scores, and it's not quite so irresponsible or pesky. Or maybe it's just pesky in a good way. This new J.J. Barea is laughing and joking, no longer (rightfully) calling out his teammates for not caring, like he did last season.
He's enjoying himself. You can tell. He has some ownership over the team, as one of just seven players who returned from last season, and when everything is working, it's just so much easier to be J.J. Barea.
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In the locker room after Barea left that Nov. 7 game, when he was diagnosed with a sprained left foot that would keep him out for two weeks, Adelman pulled him aside and told him he was pretty certain only Usain Bolt could have gotten to that ball. Telling the story two days later, Adelman laughed. Clever, no? He laughed because it was true and because Barea would never think so, because next time the ball rolls away like that, he'll be after it again, scampering into whatever bigger, solid block of a man or metal stands in his way.
That's just what he does, and it's working again, now, after a year when many wondered if Barea wasn't just a bit too fragile to keep barreling like he barrels. He's never going to be an All-Star, never going to be a team's foundation, never going to be a consistent starter, but Barea never claimed to be any of those things. He's a sparkplug and a fighter, and if that's what the Timberwolves want, they've got it.
So accuse him of flopping. Try to get in his way. Send him flying. Barea can't be sure he won't be fined or flung or fractured, but that's just the way it is, the way it's always been.
"No, I'm not ever going to change," he said. "Maybe be more careful, but I can't change."
Deal with it.
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