RJ Barrett grew up a Raptors fan. At his introductory news conference, he not only name-checked franchise icon DeMar DeRozan, but Spanish point guard Jose Calderon, and the 2012 trade for Kyle Lowry. In a later interview, he casually referenced Sonny Weems, who started 28 games for a Raptors team that went 22-60 in 2010-11. His father, Rowan Barrett, now the GM of Canada’s senior men’s national team, used to bring RJ to games, introducing him to players and familiarizing him with the league he’d been focussed on making since he put it at the top of the vision board he had framed as 12-year-old. “It was a blessing,” Barrett says of being traded home. But still a question nagged at him, one to do with timing rather than process or destination. It’s rare for big moves to go down in December, more than two months before the February trade deadline. “That’s what surprised me the most,” he says almost a year later. “I’m the first trade of the year. Like, why are we getting traded right now?”