Everything 2017 Off-Season

[The Great One]

This. Will Cain nailed it.

[KeonClark]

Powell needs to start because all I ever remember from his is excelling as role playing starter but struggling as a 6th man spark plug

[Shaolin Fantastic]

Powell needs to start because all I ever remember from his is excelling as role playing starter but struggling as a 6th man spark plug

Yep. I don't think he works as the 6th man scorer in that Lou Will mold, it's too much responsibility for him offensively. I think he's better playing off DeMar and Kyle and using their gravity or whatever you want to call it to create space for himself. The good thing about Powell is that he's not JUST going to spot up. If he sees a guy out of his stance he's going to attack that off the dribble, which makes him more than just the typical 3+D guy when starting.

My ONLY issue is I'm not sure how he's going to do against the bigger 3s, but then to me, Miles is barely an average defender so I'd rather just have Powell in to see if his compete level can get him through those matchups. Tony Allen and Marcus Smart are able to do it, so maybe he can as well.

[DanH]

Sounds like the rotation will be something like

Kyle/DD/Miles/Ibaka/JV

Wright/Powell/Siakam/Poeltl (Bebe loses ground because of his calf)

That's a solid group. Kyle runs with bench mob first, then bring back DD with Miles. Maybe Powell closes out the half.

Never in the history of this iteration of the Raptors has Casey pulled DD first to run a Lowry bench unit before the break. It's always been DD to close the 1st and 3rd, and Lowry to open the 2nd and 4th. I cannot imagine Casey changing that.

So if you want Miles playing with the DD bench unit, he can't start, unless he can go 12 minutes straight (you know Casey won't do an early sub of Powell then sub back) in two quarters, and he definitely can't do that, he's only averaged over 24 minutes total once in the past 6 seasons.

The answer is so simple, I don't see why we would contort ourselves into pretzels with the rotation just to be able to start Miles.

[Shaolin Fantastic]

Siakam really needs to add at least a corner 3 or Delon/DD are gonna have very little room to work with in that DD+Bench unit even if Miles is in it.

[DanH]

Siakam really needs to add at least a corner 3 or Delon/DD are gonna have very little room to work with in that DD+Bench unit even if Miles is in it.

Yeah, we need some decent shooting from one of Wright or Siakam. Ideally both, but at least one.

Still, there's struggling with Miles, and there's literally never scoring once without him. That said, it's another reason I'd have Poeltl playing C in that lineup - they will need to create some offence off of quick rotating and switching defence causing turnovers, and generally smother the opposing bench's offence, to make up for the lack of spacing they'll have to deal with in the half court.

[Shaolin Fantastic]

Yeah, we need some decent shooting from one of Wright or Siakam. Ideally both, but at least one.

Still, there's struggling with Miles, and there's literally never scoring once without him. That said, it's another reason I'd have Poeltl playing C in that lineup - they will need to create some offence off of quick rotating and switching defence causing turnovers, and generally smother the opposing bench's offence, to make up for the lack of spacing they'll have to deal with in the half court.

That's a fair point for Poeltl off the bench. If that unit is elite defensively they might be able to get by with whatever offense they can muster (like the DeMar+Bench (w/Biz) lineup from 2 years ago). I don't see it being as good as that lineup was on that end. I still think JV's shooting from 17-23 could help somewhat with spacing, but let's not get into that discussion again lol

[ogi]

Never in the history of this iteration of the Raptors has Casey pulled DD first to run a Lowry bench unit before the break. It's always been DD to close the 1st and 3rd, and Lowry to open the 2nd and 4th. I cannot imagine Casey changing that.

So if you want Miles playing with the DD bench unit, he can't start, unless he can go 12 minutes straight (you know Casey won't do an early sub of Powell then sub back) in two quarters, and he definitely can't do that, he's only averaged over 24 minutes total once in the past 6 seasons.

The answer is so simple, I don't see why we would contort ourselves into pretzels with the rotation just to be able to start Miles.

Only reason I see is to try and keep powell's value low and coax him into signing an extension. Other than that cj starting makes zero sense.

[Mess]

This. Will Cain nailed it.

To me, when someone starts their segment by saying "I'm just here to tell the truth" it's kind of hard to take them seriously after that. SAS and Will are on the show more for performance art/acting more than actual analyzing. But I guess it is entertainment and they're getting paid well for it.

[Mess]

Only reason I see is to try and keep powell's value low and coax him into signing an extension. Other than that cj starting makes zero sense.

Makes sense but I'm sure there's at least 1 team out there that has their eyes on Norm and won't fall for it. And I'm sure Masai knows that already.

[TrueTorontoFan]

Only reason I see is to try and keep powell's value low and coax him into signing an extension. Other than that cj starting makes zero sense.

I dont think it would matter if he is given starters minutes anyways.... That said I dont think a ton of teams have cap space this up and coming year....

[Scraptor]

Never in the history of this iteration of the Raptors has Casey pulled DD first to run a Lowry bench unit before the break. It's always been DD to close the 1st and 3rd, and Lowry to open the 2nd and 4th. I cannot imagine Casey changing that.

So if you want Miles playing with the DD bench unit, he can't start, unless he can go 12 minutes straight (you know Casey won't do an early sub of Powell then sub back) in two quarters, and he definitely can't do that, he's only averaged over 24 minutes total once in the past 6 seasons.

The answer is so simple, I don't see why we would contort ourselves into pretzels with the rotation just to be able to start Miles.

You would save yourself a lot of anguish if you came to terms with the fact that what we want to happen and what Casey wants are completely different things. He just sees the game of basketball differently, and values things differently as a result.

I don't want Miles to start. I want Powell to start. But Casey loves vets.

If it doesn't follow his historical sub patterns then I imagine Powell will just sub for Miles and we'll go small. Ibaka moves to the five and we hope that his three point shooting stretches the floor enough in lieu of Miles.

It's not as dramatic as you're making it sound. It's just Caseyball.

[DanH]

You would save yourself a lot of anguish if you came to terms with the fact that what we want to happen and what Casey wants are completely different things. He just sees the game of basketball differently, and values things differently as a result.

I don't want Miles to start. I want Powell to start. But Casey loves vets.

If it doesn't follow his historical sub patterns then I imagine Powell will just sub for Miles and we'll go small. Ibaka moves to the five and we hope that his three point shooting stretches the floor enough in lieu of Miles.

It's not as dramatic as you're making it sound. It's just Caseyball.

I don't think it is as simple as starting vets. If so, Patterson would have started over Siakam.

[SkywalkerAC]

Siakam pretty clearly demonstrated he has 3-point range with the 905 and in summer league.

[Shaolin Fantastic]

I don't think it is as simple as starting vets. If so, Patterson would have started over Siakam.

This. I think the role cards theory holds better than the vets one. Hence 2Pat keeping his 6th man PF card despite Siakam being nowhere near as good.

I just hope Powell gets whichever one DC had.