[mile]

Grange had a pretty good article at the end of last season, detailing the training plan Darko had for Dick starting last January when he was demoted to the 905

https://www.sportsnet.ca/nba/longfor...rookie-season/

At the January meeting in Rajakovic’s office, Dick learned that over the following few weeks, he would undertake what amounted to his own individual mid-season training camp. The Raptors were about to head out on the longest road trip of the season, but he would stay back, attached to Raptors 905. Rather than simply being sent back down, though, the just-turned-20-year-old was presented with a detailed plan covering everything from the nature and focus of his on-court workouts to his lifting schedule and parameters to what his warm-up and recovery routines would look like. The message was plain: your focus isn’t what the NBA team is doing, it’s on fine-tuning your game, body, and mind to be ready for the second half of the season.

With a little more than two hours before tipoff at any Raptors game, the place to find Dick is on the floor and in the company of Simovic. They make a slightly odd pair, the six-foot-seven star from the heartland of America and the Serbian assistant who turned to coaching full-time around the age Dick declared to Kansas.

Dick’s return from his mid-season reset and re-entry into the Raptors rotation was paved with hours of work with Simovic, learning or re-learning the essentials of footwork, hip angles, and timing. The goal was to make Dick someone Rajakovic could trust in an NBA game. Achieving it meant mastering the roughly 12-foot-by-two-foot strip of hardwood that makes up each corner, just outside the three-point line. Simovic gave Dick a set menu of shots to master, reads to make, and counters to nail down.

They started with the absolute basics. In their first session together, Simovic taught the lottery pick the importance of properly setting up for a shot when coming off a screen, working with him to get lower and make the first step longer to get more separation from his defender. From that humble start, they built a foundation in layers. After nine months together, they now have a shared shorthand, with one word in Simovic’s raspy baritone signalling whether the next move is curling around a screen when the defender is hugging him tightly, or hanging back; squaring up to shoot the three on the move if the defender goes under the screen, or shouldering the defender away from him to create room for the screener. The laundry list of shots stretches from simple catch-and-shoots to catch-and-shoots with pump fakes, shots taken after sliding into position in the corner and after faking and sliding the other way. There are curls leading to finishes at the basket with either hand, and curls that finish with step-back, mid-range jumpers over an imaginary centre who moves up to blunt the action. Dick has gotten great marks not only for his attention to detail, but also for the training load he’s been able to manage. The Raptors monitor the volume and intensity of their players’ training and play, and Dick routinely measures out at the high end, which suggests elite cardiovascular fitness. Colloquially, he’s got a good motor.