I didn’t see this coming but Dick may be the real deal. He’s putting up real points beyond just a coincidence. He’s blowing it out fairly consistently. I didn’t think he had the skills but it’s been a pleasant surprise.
Yeah, and I love how the Raptors have been developing his skillset. Second half of last year there was just this focus on getting his corners footwork developed so he could get his shot off there whether he was dashing to the corner on a catch-and-shoot, or where he was spotting up and sidestepping a closeout... and then this year he seems to have already mastered that baseline right area with similar effectiveness, where he can score highly efficiently there whether he's getting past the closeout and doing a pullup, or when he's driving he can use that area as a counter.
Agbaji's game has taken a huge step as well. I don't expect his current 3pt shooting numbers to be sustainable, but his cutting and finishing has also taken a huge leap. On the offensive side of the ball, Raptors are really doing an impressive job with their player development.
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Let's go 2025 draft. Shaping up nicely so far. I mean Cooper Flagg would be awesome but Maluach would be a great fit.
Flagg would be such an insane fit with this group. After Flagg and Bailey, the next prospect I'm really intrigued by in terms of Raptors fit is Demin. I like Maluach's basic skillset and I'm curious to see if he can show more BBIQ and quick processing through the year, as those seem to be priorities for the Raptors right now.
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Flagg would be such an insane fit with this group. After Flagg and Bailey, the next prospect I'm really intrigued by in terms of Raptors fit is Demin. I like Maluach's basic skillset and I'm curious to see if he can show more BBIQ and quick processing through the year, as those seem to be priorities for the Raptors right now.
Maluach just seems like a Ujiri kinda pick. Guy taught himself to play BB and only started five years ago in Sudan. Raw as they come but a center with height and size. I think we will be waiting to like 2 years after he is drafted to see what his ceiling is.
Yeah, and I love how the Raptors have been developing his skillset. Second half of last year there was just this focus on getting his corners footwork developed so he could get his shot off there whether he was dashing to the corner on a catch-and-shoot, or where he was spotting up and sidestepping a closeout... and then this year he seems to have already mastered that baseline right area with similar effectiveness, where he can score highly efficiently there whether he's getting past the closeout and doing a pullup, or when he's driving he can use that area as a counter.
Agbaji's game has taken a huge step as well. I don't expect his current 3pt shooting numbers to be sustainable, but his cutting and finishing has also taken a huge leap. On the offensive side of the ball, Raptors are really doing an impressive job with their player development.
I do wonder what the Raps secret is though. I don't believe any of the sports allow players to train with teams trainers/coaches in the off-season. So what are they doing in such a short period to ready and get them to adjust that quickly? It's impressive that some of these guys over the years come out of nowhere.
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
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.
Quote:
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.
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I do wonder what the Raps secret is though. I don't believe any of the sports allow players to train with teams trainers/coaches in the off-season.
Teams are allowed to meet with players and train during the offseason, but teams cannot make any of these offseason activities mandatory for their players (except for summer-league for players in their first two years). That said, for rookie-contract guys who haven't established themselves as stars, you'd better treat these team 'suggestions and requests' as the law, even if they aren't mandatory.
The Raptors did hold a team get-together in Spain in the offseason, shortly after the Olympics, and had a very high participation turnout. Darko's offense is reliant on a high degree of player familiarity and allowing players to work out their actions and reactions for themselves as a group, and I expect this was probably the focus of that time.
As for Dick, in addition to that Spanish mini-camp the Raptors had, I know that he spent most of the offseason training with Agbaji, and early in the summer, the Raptors had Simovic and James Wade there with them prior to summer league. This plan came at the Raptors' suggestion, but it's a really good fit for the two, and they seem to have picked up at least some of one-another's strengths.
It's not uncommon for NBA players to also participate in summer runs, which are basically cross-team skill-development camps; again, there are no restrictions about team involvement... usually these are coordinated with the team, so that the team, the player, and the development camp are on the same page about what a player's priority is going to be. Former Raptors assistant Rico Hines has the most renowned of these, and Siakam is one of Hines' greatest development success stories... so in that case it was Siakam getting extra time with his in-season development coach, but in a different context. There are less famous, more skill-specific camps as well. A team might arrange for a center, for example, to spend a couple weeks with a basketball camp specifically for big men, where they might have the opportunity to learn from legendary players or specialist coaches outside of their team. Often, these camps have a mix of prospects and college level guys, g-leaguers, vets and even a couple stars. Sometimes, a team will even send an assistant to participate, so they can share their own expertise with other players and coaches, pick up skills from other developmental coaches, and make sure that they can help carry skills picked up in these summer camps into the regular season. Hakeem Olijuwan has a summer camp where he basically teaches his post footwork skills. Valanciunas went to that camp at one point, before the Raptors decided they needed to transform him into a heavyweight center.
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I remember watching that live at the time (liked Wallace and the Pistons) and probably still one of the craziest sporting events I can remember watching live.
I remember watching that live at the time (liked Wallace and the Pistons) and probably still one of the craziest sporting events I can remember watching live.
The aftermath was hilarious.
World Peace went on talk shows promoting his CD. I still remember them interviewing him about the fight, and in turn he pulled out the CD to show them with a big smile.
Rewatching that, one thing that blows me away is how quickly it happened and was resolved. For some reason in my memory I had it being like 10 or 15 minutes long. It's literally less time than some video reviews in today's league.
Not reliable, sounds like he doesn't take anything seriously getting called out by Maxie, says he can't play back-to-back anymore because he is soft AF, and he is getting paid what 200 million.
Part of me thinks Embiid is trying to force his way out by making himself a total locker room cancer. And yet, as bad as they've been, if they snuck into the play-in game and got the 8 seed they'd be the best 8 seed ever by some distance. And seeing how catastrophically bad the East is right now (might be the worst it's ever been which is saying something), 34-48 might be enough for the 10 seed.
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"Think I'm gonna be the scapegoat for the whole damn machine? Sheeee......."
The NBA has a huge problem with the sheer amount of injuries and players out of the line up right now. I'm surprised the media isn't running with the story. It feels like 1/3 of all starters are MIA right now. New Orleans was missing its entire starting five the other night. With all these players needing rest (or personal) days, it's no wonder the league viewership is down 28% this year. Why would anyone want to fork over thousands for floor seats to watch Embid, Maxey, and George sit on the bench?
Here's the thing I don't understand, is why all these star players need night's off. Go back a decade or even a few years and star players rarely missed games. Even LeBron has played every game this year. In my fantasy league half of my roster is out of action right now. It's beyond ridiculous, they were talking about "game management" becoming a thing in the NHL one day, Bettman probably should get in front of that now. The players run the NBA, don't let that happen in the NHL. Look at the Clippers and Sixers now, and the Nets a few years ago. They were all broken because of discontent and game management from their stars.
The NBA has a huge problem with the sheer amount of injuries and players out of the line up right now. I'm surprised the media isn't running with the story. It feels like 1/3 of all starters are MIA right now. New Orleans was missing its entire starting five the other night. With all these players needing rest (or personal) days, it's no wonder the league viewership is down 28% this year. Why would anyone want to fork over thousands for floor seats to watch Embid, Maxey, and George sit on the bench?
Here's the thing I don't understand, is why all these star players need night's off. Go back a decade or even a few years and star players rarely missed games. Even LeBron has played every game this year. In my fantasy league half of my roster is out of action right now. It's beyond ridiculous, they were talking about "game management" becoming a thing in the NHL one day, Bettman probably should get in front of that now. The players run the NBA, don't let that happen in the NHL. Look at the Clippers and Sixers now, and the Nets a few years ago. They were all broken because of discontent and game management from their stars.
I’m sure there’s some level of truth in resting guys, but I don’t think that’s playing into viewership as much as people say it. Most people tune in for a team and if they see so and so not playing I don’t think they tune away for that game.
I disagree with the babying though. That started with Kawhi, and gets worse every year. As professionals they should be ready to play at 90%. 60% is probably IR territory. But it’s also a matter of greed with the amount of games, plus practices, plus the desire to avoid injuries. I don’t know the answer but it’s a silly thing to baby. How they define babying is the question.
The NBA has a huge problem with the sheer amount of injuries and players out of the line up right now. I'm surprised the media isn't running with the story. It feels like 1/3 of all starters are MIA right now. New Orleans was missing its entire starting five the other night. With all these players needing rest (or personal) days, it's no wonder the league viewership is down 28% this year. Why would anyone want to fork over thousands for floor seats to watch Embid, Maxey, and George sit on the bench?
Here's the thing I don't understand, is why all these star players need night's off. Go back a decade or even a few years and star players rarely missed games. Even LeBron has played every game this year. In my fantasy league half of my roster is out of action right now. It's beyond ridiculous, they were talking about "game management" becoming a thing in the NHL one day, Bettman probably should get in front of that now. The players run the NBA, don't let that happen in the NHL. Look at the Clippers and Sixers now, and the Nets a few years ago. They were all broken because of discontent and game management from their stars.
I buy into the theory that the defensive schemes teams are running these days put way more strain on athletes than traditional defenses, because offenses have become increasingly movement oriented, and on defense players are doing way more high-intensity lateral movement with a lot of sudden stops and starts. This change didn't happen overnight or just in the last couple years, but it's been a growing trend going back to at least 2018 or so, and players who have been in the league for several years have racked up a lot of miles on that. The distance run in an NBA game is way up over the last decade, something like 1.5 miles per team per game. I've looked into tracking data on player speed and distance a lot lately (because there are some interesting trends for the Raptors there), and while overall player speed isn't up dramatically overall or on offense, it's way up on defense over that time frame.
This isn't everything, there's also some players feeling that they have more right to dictate their own recovery schedules, plus teams being more cautious than ever with their star player minutes. More parity means that more teams are thinking that it's more important that they finish the end of the regular season as healthy as possible, than finishing as high in the standings as possible. There's also been some sports medicine professionals who are heavily critical of the AAU circuit in the US, saying it's resulting in guys coming into the league barely held together. They play too many competitive games over the previous decade when their bodies are still developing, and the style of play is about being as explosive as possible because that's what gets you noticed, physical training is about maximizing those muscles that make you explosive, not the ones that keep your body stable.
Last edited by octothorp; 11-23-2024 at 05:41 PM.
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Was in Toronto for work over the weekend so went to the Raptors game and some of the high picks that were moved away from other teams looked pretty good IMO.
Of course you have Barrett but I liked Agbaji, and Davion Mitchell.
Then Ja'kobe Walter looked like a pretty good pick too from where they got him at 19th OV.
They need another superstar to pair with Scottie that hopefully they can draft high this year, but pieces like Barrett, Quickley, Agbaji, Mitchell, Walter, and Dick could hopefully be the start of pretty strong U-25 depth to add the stars to.
Last edited by SuperMatt18; 12-02-2024 at 04:17 PM.
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