Everything Yuta Watanabe

[Yuri Gagarin]

ã‚°ãƒãƒ¼ãƒ– Gurobu (the glove) 😜

[c-troop]

Yuta's defense is borderline elite. He doesn't need anymore 'nasty' there.

It's his shaky offense that needs work. First of all, he needs to bury those wide open 3's consistently, at a bare minimum, just to stay in the league. Next, he needs to get stronger and more polished with his finishing at or near the rim. He will carve out 5-10 more years in the league if he can do that.

His footwork is very good tho. I'd like to see him get more steals and blocks.

Elite tho? Chill. His DWS is 0.8 and DBPM is 0.4, which are both lower than Bembry. Neither of them is 'elite' (Kawhi/Giannis) as far as I'm concerned.

Now, 40% shooting from 3, is hardly inconsistent IMO. His True Shooting is identical to Giannis (0.572). Much less production tho.
You are probably right about him needing to get stronger and becoming more polished with his finishing at or near the rim.
I'd like to see him get more assists as well.

He's solid, all I said was I'd like to see him get a little nasty on defense. But maybe he needs to get a little big and nasty on offense also.

[GOLDBLUM]

His shot will be there.
He can finish at the rim when he can get there. What he really, really needs is to tighten up his handle. Makes me nervous every time he’s dribbling. Like Stanley level nervous.

[DanH]

His footwork is very good tho. I'd like to see him get more steals and blocks.

Elite tho? Chill. His DWS is 0.8 and DBPM is 0.4, which are both lower than Bembry. Neither of them is 'elite' (Kawhi/Giannis) as far as I'm concerned.

Now, 40% shooting from 3, is hardly inconsistent IMO. His True Shooting is identical to Giannis (0.572). Much less production tho.
You are probably right about him needing to get stronger and becoming more polished with his finishing at or near the rim.
I'd like to see him get more assists as well.

He's solid, all I said was I'd like to see him get a little nasty on defense. But maybe he needs to get a little big and nasty on offense also.

DWS and DBPM are maybe the two most useless defensive stats out there.

That said, the more advanced impact numbers rate him mostly as an average to above average defender. But his playing sample was small and full of context so there's a lot of noise anyway. I do like his defence, the fundamentals are very good, but he likely lacks the physical ability to be truly elite.

[c-troop]

DWS and DBPM are maybe the two most useless defensive stats out there.

That said, the more advanced impact numbers rate him mostly as an average to above average defender. But his playing sample was small and full of context so there's a lot of noise anyway. I do like his defence, the fundamentals are very good, but he likely lacks the physical ability to be truly elite.

I didn't have access to the impact numbers and although DWS and DBPM are highly dependent on team stats, I would think that when comparing two players on the same team (Yuta/Bembry) it would mitigate some of the uselessness.

Hahaha, again all I said was I wanna see Yuta get more nasty. If that's steals, physicality, blocks, however, he does it i'll be happy.
He will be a more solid 3 and D role player that way.

[SkywalkerAC]

https://twitter.com/pakhattak/status...17187083911173

(wait, HTF do you embed tweets on here?)

EDIT -

[Truth Teller]

Defense is very hard to be judged using advanced metrics. Not saying its impossible, but Klay is a good defender but gets murdered compare to the rest of the GSW when using metrics.

[Yuri Gagarin]

Most here have watched every minute of yuta in a raptor uniform. Hes a good defender. He moves his feet and stays in front as good as anyone on the team. Good reach when the offensive player finally shoots. His shot is fine just needs reps. Stats are for people who dont watch

[Hotshot]

Most here have watched every minute of yuta in a raptor uniform. Hes a good defender. He moves his feet and stays in front as good as anyone on the team. Good reach when the offensive player finally shoots. His shot is fine just needs reps. Stats are for people who dont watch

Yuta just needs to be much more aggressive which he did in the final months of the season. This is why he got an invite over Paul Watson Jr, cause when the Raptors want you to be more aggressive they really mean it.

[SkywalkerAC]

Some Yuta and Bonga here. Haven't watched the whole thing but Watanabe dunks at 6:57

[Hotshot]

Some Yuta and Bonga here. Haven't watched the whole thing but Watanabe dunks at 6:57

Thanks for posting.

Yuta looking bigger and more aggressive out there, his 3 pointer looks good. Still gets pushed around in the paint area and will probably be featuring being posterized by a few players this season (better avoid guarding Anthony Edwards again lol).

Bonga was out there shooting 3's and he looks like he is improved on that aspect of his game. However everything else looks the same from what we know of him and I don't see the Raptors giving him a contract for a player who will be on such a low usage that his 3 pointer will not make much of a difference. Probably Dekker wins the spot based on his 3 pointer and his more polished game.

Evan Mobley looks very smooth out there. If he fills out his frame and increase his intensity out there in the next couple of years, he will be special.

[SkywalkerAC]

It's nuts how good this guy is to be (all out) a borderline rotation guy for us that we barely talk about. Crazy length. Crazy but fundamentals-based hustle. Crazy skillset at that size.

I'd call a breakout year but we've got so much depth he's going to have to work his tail off (which he will) to get 18 mpg.

[KeonClark]

Assuming "right now" means with the current injuries...because otherwise, I don't see it

Fred
Trent
OG
Pascal
Khem

Dragic
Flynn
Barnes
Boucher
Achiuwa

Yuta
Svi

[S.R.]

Yeah, I guess a couple caveats would be you get injuries and stuff all year and a couple guys further down the depth chart can get consistent run. You can play a lot of the season with 1-3 players from your top 7 or 8 out of the lineup at any given time. Can easily end up with regular minutes available for those guys a little further down. E.g. let's skip the COVID year and go to 19-20, the Raptors had 10 guys appear in 50+% of games and average double digits in mpg. 8 guys had double digits in games started. Things happen.

Then we'll see what happens with Dragic, how much Khem is used if there isn't a bigger C to match him up against, if Precious is really ready for a big jump in minutes, then you have Boucher who has a head start on guys like Precious and Yuta but theoretically a couple guys could challenge him for minutes.

[SkywalkerAC]

Assuming "right now" means with the current injuries...because otherwise, I don't see it

Fred
Trent
OG
Pascal
Khem

Dragic
Flynn
Barnes
Boucher
Achiuwa

Yuta
Svi

He could easily be there instead of Flynn or Achiuwa on the second unit, depending on matchups. The 9-man rotation could more often than not be something like:

Fred
Trent
OG
Pascal
Khem

Dragic
Barnes
Yuta
Boucher