Raptors Offseason 2022

[Bonus Jonas]

OG is probably the most important guy in our starting 5 outside of Pascal.

Obviously you expect Scottie to surpass him but off the eye test it seems like our defence falls apart without OG

[TrueTorontoFan]

Than for the bench, the addition of Thad Young should be included.

The MLE is important signing of a Combo SG/SF who can shoot the rock and play defense - suggest Nick Batum. $2/18 Million due to his age

Murray, OG, Barnes, Siakam & Capella $108 Million

The bench ($30 Million) - Brooks, Burks, Batum, Young and Precious and than 2nd Round pick, Banton , Svi, and two others

Batum is a bit old though I think perhaps looking younger like Brown from the nets.

[TrueTorontoFan]

Based on everythign they've publicly said, there is no way they are trading FVV or Achiuwa even over Pascal or OG. Trent or Bucher maybe for the right return, they're open to.

The "untradeable" core is those first four plus Scott. jmo

when did they ever said they would be willing to trade pascal?

[Bonus Jonas]

Personally don’t hate the small ball lineup.

We were injured all season and didn’t get a genuine chance to build on it the right way and gel. Scottie shouldn’t be chasing guards defensively, let him play the free safety 5 kind of like Giannis does defensively.

Its so rare you get matched up with a team whose usage comes so disproportionately from the 5 position and would require him to be guarding on ball at the 5 for most of the game and we happened to run into one of those teams in the playoffs. If we play Boston or Miami, I think that small ball lineup does perfectly fine defensively.

Biggest issue is the defensive rebounding, but I think a big part of that is that we leak out for transition buckets a lot. We shouldn’t do that (outside of OG running out and sealing since he’s so good at it) and have the other 4 guys gang rebound. I want to see Scottie and Pascal both at 8-9 rpg next season if we stick to the small 5.

[LJ2]

OG is probably the most important guy in our starting 5 outside of Pascal.

Obviously you expect Scottie to surpass him but off the eye test it seems like our defence falls apart without OG

That's a fair assessment based on how the team performed THIS season. I mean, he was one of 3 players that have more than one season with the Raptors. If he wasn't one of the most important guys this season you'd have reason to be concerned.

Not that it should hurt his stock, but our defence can't rely one one guy to anchor it, by design.

[Bonus Jonas]

Checked the numbers out.

Somewhat small sample size because we had so much player turnover this season with injuries in that, but still, it was our most used lineup.

The small ball 5 had a defensive rating of 106.8. That would rank 3rd in the NBA this season (in the playoffs we only saw that lineup in game 1 and it got absolutely shredded).

The defensive rebound % though was 69.2% which would rank dead last in the league. Getting that up to league average in the 72% range doesn’t seem that farfetched to me.

[Bonus Jonas]

That's a fair assessment based on how the team performed THIS season. I mean, he was one of 3 players that have more than one season with the Raptors. If he wasn't one of the most important guys this season you'd have reason to be concerned.

Not that it should hurt his stock, but our defence can't rely one one guy to anchor it, by design.

For sure he should be up there.

I was just posting that in retort to any notion of dropping OG from the starting 5. I think that’s a complete non starter (no pun intended)

[DanH]

Yes, that is the major factor working against Gary playing for the Raps long term.

Gary is the superior scorer, and capable of having huge games, but OG on defense is top shelf stuff. While OG > Gary should be pretty cut and dry do you factor in how many games he's missed over the last couple of years? And at what point can you say that maybe the value of Gary's scoring ability might over shadow OG's defence when you surround Gary with Fred, Scottie, Siakam and Precious? Any reasonable argument to be made there in your eyes?

There are reasonable arguments all over the place, but where I land on this one is that Gary's value goes down, not up, with the more good creators there are around him, as his offensive contributions that are harder to replace are the spark plug, 6th man type baskets he can get, while OG can hit the spot up shots you ideally want Gary getting most of his offence from in those lineups anyway.

And your defence is only as good as the weakest link, so if the other 4 are good defenders, I'd say the gap between OG and Gary grows, not shrinks, whereas on a team full of holes Gary's relative weakness there would be less impactful.

The injuries are a real concern, but if we get away from using OG as a C, that should be alleviated, similar to Fred once he takes on a lesser offensive load.

[DanH]

Scottie is the pointguard of the future he shouldn't be a shooting guard ... and especially if his shot improves but still has parts of the season where it is inconsistent you can overcome that by putting the ball in his hands.

For sure, I never suggested Scottie would be a SG, but the topic I was responding to was competition for Trent at the guard spots, and Scottie could be a PG and both OG and Fred are perfectly viable off ball shooting guards.

[Bonus Jonas]

There are reasonable arguments all over the place, but where I land on this one is that Gary's value goes down, not up, with the more good creators there are around him, as his offensive contributions that are harder to replace are the spark plug, 6th man type baskets he can get, while OG can hit the spot up shots you ideally want Gary getting most of his offence from in those lineups anyway.

And your defence is only as good as the weakest link, so if the other 4 are good defenders, I'd say the gap between OG and Gary grows, not shrinks, whereas on a team full of holes Gary's relative weakness there would be less impactful.

The injuries are a real concern, but if we get away from using OG as a C, that should be alleviated, similar to Fred once he takes on a lesser offensive load.

Personally feel like you need the shooting of all 3 of Fred/GTJ/OG until Scottie’s comes along.

If Precious’ shooting holds up like it was in the second half of the season it’s a different convo but until then I still think our best 5 has Precious on the bench

[Bonus Jonas]

Maybe that changes if the primary ball handler becomes Scottie but his low usage combined with his bad 3 point percentage (and overall lack of an off ball jumper for the most part) makes it tough

Either we stay small or we put the ball in Scottie’s hands WAY more

[DanH]

Checked the numbers out.

Somewhat small sample size because we had so much player turnover this season with injuries in that, but still, it was our most used lineup.

The small ball 5 had a defensive rating of 106.8. That would rank 3rd in the NBA this season (in the playoffs we only saw that lineup in game 1 and it got absolutely shredded).

The defensive rebound % though was 69.2% which would rank dead last in the league. Getting that up to league average in the 72% range doesn’t seem that farfetched to me.

My concern is smaller scale than the lineup being viable - in general the lineup did OK. But they were always a disaster to start games. Small ball by definition requires more on-the-string rotation and more in-the-game offensive execution, both of which are very hard to be at a high level at right out the gate. Teams usually start more conservative lineups and progress to those sorts of looks over time for exactly that reason, you can run some tried and true PnR with a big and ease into your offence, play defence a little more man to man rather than starting your insta-rotation defensive strategy right out the gate, and once your legs are under you, you can go smaller and really execute.

I think the small ball look is one we should be prepared to see a lot of. But they should absolutely be finding a different starting look.

[DanH]

Maybe that changes if the primary ball handler becomes Scottie but his low usage combined with his bad 3 point percentage (and overall lack of an off ball jumper for the most part) makes it tough

Either we stay small or we put the ball in Scottie’s hands WAY more

I know which one I vote for. Heck, the entire direction of the team should have them placing the ball in Scottie's hands a tonne.

[Bonus Jonas]

My concern is smaller scale than the lineup being viable - in general the lineup did OK. But they were always a disaster to start games. Small ball by definition requires more on-the-string rotation and more in-the-game offensive execution, both of which are very hard to be at a high level at right out the gate. Teams usually start more conservative lineups and progress to those sorts of looks over time for exactly that reason, you can run some tried and true PnR with a big and ease into your offence, play defence a little more man to man rather than starting your insta-rotation defensive strategy right out the gate, and once your legs are under you, you can go smaller and really execute.

I think the small ball look is one we should be prepared to see a lot of. But they should absolutely be finding a different starting look.

Hmm interesting. You could be right, especially around the nba you see a lot of teams starting “natural” centres that get hooked after 4 minutes (like we did Birch so often).

In that case I’d almost be inclined to have Scottie be the one coming off the bench so he could come in and have a higher USG rate but it’s a tough sell to tell your ROTY to come off the bench after he was so good as a starter as a rookie. It’s a tough dilemma to have for Nurse.

[Bonus Jonas]

I know which one I vote for. Heck, the entire direction of the team should have them placing the ball in Scottie's hands a tonne.

In theory I obviously agree with you. The future success of this team depends on Scottie and his growth as a ball handler and focal point of an offence.

But we also have an all nba guy, an all star and two legit guys outside of that on the roster and would have to go through the growing pains of Scottie learning to be a focal point. Our guys seem to want to win and win now, just hope they realize that if we truly want to compete for championships any time soon they’ll have to relinquish a bit of that control to Scottie at the cost of wins in the short term.