Canada’s next No. 1 NBA pick?

against the best high schoolers in the U.S.

It’s been a few frantic weeks for Barrett since Canada’s World Cup win, with a flurry of appearances and interviews. On a recent evening at their suburban Mississauga home, Barrett recounted how he’d done three interviews that day, worked out twice, and managed to squeeze in a hair cut. A crew from

magazine was setting up in his dining room for one last interview before he called it a night.

His decision to reclassify was just the latest major life choice for Barrett, whose parents — dad Rowan and mom Kesha — have made a point of letting him pave his own path.

Kesha, whose sister Dahlia Duhaney ran on Jamaica’s 4x100 relay team that won gold at the 1991 world championships, was a sprinter and jumper at St. John’s where she met Rowan. She laughed about how they’d tried to nudge R.J. toward various sports.

“We had a toy room were we put all the other balls from different sports, and we hid the basketball, and he would run around and search for the basketball,” Kesha said. “He always loved basketball.”

R.J. played soccer, ran the 100 metres, did high jump. He’s also fluent in French, as is his 13-year-old brother Nathan.

“It’s always going to be better when you choose it, when you love it,” said Rowan, who played for Canada’s basketball team at the Sydney Olympics. “Then you can actually get behind it and in the difficult days, you’ll know and remember ‘I chose this. This is what I wanted to do.’ ”

“My wife used to try to guilt me into training him, like ‘This would be a travesty if you didn’t train him. Look at him, he loves it.’ I said ‘Honey, it’s a long road, I’m not going to push him.’ ”

R.J. made the decision at around 12 to focus on basketball. He’d arrived home upset after a game, Rowan said.

“He was in tears, he was hugging his mother. I said ‘What’s wrong, man? We were just in the car, everything was fine. What’s going on?’ ” Rowan said. “He said ‘I’m not happy, I didn’t make any shots.’ I said ‘What do you want to do?’ He said ‘I want to get better.’ I said ‘Well, to do that, you’ve got to train.’ And he said ‘I want to do it now.’ He said ‘I don’t want to play soccer anymore, I don’t want to miss any more of my basketball tournaments.’

“I was always ready ... but he had to choose it, and once he chose it, off we went.”

Barrett, who follows in the footsteps of Wiggins, who also reclassified to play at Kansas a year early, hasn’t played since the World Cup, opting for two-a-day workouts and skill work in Vegas ahead of his final year at Montverde Academy in Montverde, Fla. The family also had a vacation planned before Barrett returns to school on Aug. 21.

Blue Jackets, Tortorella agree to extension

COLUMBUS, Ohio — John Tortorella of the Columbus Blue Jackets is getting a one-year contract extension following a season in which he was the NHL’s Coach of the Year.

General Manager Jarmo Kekalainen announced the move Monday. Financial terms were not released.

Tortorella was entering the last year of a five-year, $10 million deal he signed with Vancouver in 2013.

Since joining Columbus on Oct. 21, 2015, Tortorella has led the Blue Jackets to an 84-57-16 record and .586 winning percentage.

Columbus had a 50-24-8 record and 108 points last year, the NHL’s fourth-best record. This was a 32-point turnaround from 2015-16.