Our lack of a 3/big-wing defender is a serious problem.

[Nilanka]

The question isn't whether a good wing defender would push us over the top, imo.

It's whether one would keep us from falling farther back from the pack. The pack being 2nd-tier teams in the east or 3rd-tier teams in the NBA overall.

Seems like a low bar, no? I would think a combination of Miles and Powell are capable of holding down the fort with minimum slippage compared to previous renditions of the roster.

This. People seem to think it's a guarantee we'll be better than Washington, Boston, Milwaukee in the playoffs or regular season. It's not.

Wasn't really guaranteed we were better than Washington or Boston last year either, to be honest.

Bottom line for me, yes, the SF position is a concern (as are many other concerns about this team), but not sure I would call it a "serious problem". Unless we're willing to admit that it's always been a "serious problem".

[92TillInfinity]

Don't make me post links showing NBA players doing all 3 of those things. We don't need these kinds of posts here.

The link to Eddie Griffin's Wikipedia will do.

[Mess]

NFL player isn't the gold standard for "being a pro and working hard". it's more like smoking weed, abusing women, and not standing during anthems

Don't make me post links showing NBA players doing all 3 of those things. We don't need these kinds of posts here.

[Fully]

This. People seem to think it's a guarantee we'll be better than Washington, Boston, Milwaukee in the playoffs or regular season. It's not.

I don't think many people are saying that we're "guaranteed" to be better than those teams, the same way that the premise for your original post - that posters were flat out ignoring our potential defensive issues on the wing - seemed to be off base a little bit as well. I think most supporters around here realize the roster has holes in it (which team doesn't aside from G State?) but you can still generally be optimistic about the upcoming season or confident that we'll be amongst the Conference's best yet again. You can do both.

No disrespect, but the overwhelming majority of your posts on here seem to be negative, sometimes overtly. Just because folks don't fall into the same posting habits and occasionally throw in a positive or hey, even an optimistic blurb about the Raptors doesn't necessarily mean they're living in a fantasy land or delusional about the franchise.. It just means that they don't want to hammer on the drawbacks of the team over and over and over again.

[Alex91]

Yeah I don't see why there is the notion that the kid will be bad. Maybe people are worried but I dont understand why. Every single analyst loves the pick. Thinks he should have been picked higher... Things we may even have the biggest steal of the draft.

People were even talking about us trading our pick to try to move down to 15 or earlier to draft him but he fell to us. His brother is an NFL player so he knows how to be a pro and work hard. His shot

NFL player isn't the gold standard for "being a pro and working hard". it's more like smoking weed, abusing women, and not standing during anthems

[TrueTorontoFan]

The minute stat is a weak argument. Consider the fact that he will play more minutes in close games that are likely to go either way vs playing far less minutes in blowout situations. 10-6 with him and 8-9 without is a big deal in college basketball where you only get 34 games during the season.

Not all hirings and firings in basketball are as simple as "good coach/bad coach"; that's pretty hard to determine from a fan's perspective. Crean has had a bunch of successful seasons throughout his coaching history so let's not pretend he's some run-of-the-mill coach. Indiana just felt it was time to move on, not that the 2016-17 season was some disaster.

Anyway, this is a guy that coached Dwyane Wade in Marquette for 2 seasons. If he says he sees a lot of talent in OG, I believe him.

Yeah I don't see why there is the notion that the kid will be bad. Maybe people are worried but I dont understand why. Every single analyst loves the pick. Thinks he should have been picked higher... Things we may even have the biggest steal of the draft.

People were even talking about us trading our pick to try to move down to 15 or earlier to draft him but he fell to us. His brother is an NFL player so he knows how to be a pro and work hard. His shot

[tDotted]

He was 5th on the team in MPG and not getting consistent starts is not a good thing. Anyway, the winning pct is pointless to look at. 10-7 with, 8-9 without -- all we can say really is that the Hoosiers were bad last year. I mean if you really want to dig into wins and losses, Hoosiers were 6-2 when OG played 25 minutes or less. Tiny sample sized stats like that don't mean a whole lot.

Nice of Tom Crean to say nice things on draft night. He was fired this season because of how bad the Hoosiers were.

The minute stat is a weak argument. Consider the fact that he will play more minutes in close games that are likely to go either way vs playing far less minutes in blowout situations. 10-6 with him and 8-9 without is a big deal in college basketball where you only get 34 games during the season.

Not all hirings and firings in basketball are as simple as "good coach/bad coach"; that's pretty hard to determine from a fan's perspective. Crean has had a bunch of successful seasons throughout his coaching history so let's not pretend he's some run-of-the-mill coach. Indiana just felt it was time to move on, not that the 2016-17 season was some disaster.

Anyway, this is a guy that coached Dwyane Wade in Marquette for 2 seasons. If he says he sees a lot of talent in OG, I believe him.

[DogeLover1234]

OG Anunoby will be a defensive stopper from day 1.

Powell will pow.

CJ will be better than the corpse of Carroll who logged almost 30 minutes a night.

Stop the paranoia.

Exactly, this is honestly less of an issue than last year. Also the only two people in the east that Raps have no potential of guarding at the 3 are LeBron and Giannis. Guess what, nobody else in the east has a single player to answer those guys.

[Shaolin Fantastic]

The question isn't whether a good wing defender would push us over the top, imo.

It's whether one would keep us from falling farther back from the pack. The pack being 2nd-tier teams in the east or 3rd-tier teams in the NBA overall.

This. People seem to think it's a guarantee we'll be better than Washington, Boston, Milwaukee in the playoffs or regular season. It's not.

[Scraptor]

We've had James Johnson, Terrence Ross, DeMarre Carroll, PJ Tucker, Landry Fields, Rudy Gay, Patrick Patterson, etc. (all considered to be plus wing defenders), and what difference did any of them make?

Does a capable wing defender who's available, and under a reasonable contract, that's a noticeable improvement over the above guys, even exist? Is Kawhi, LeBron, Durant, Harden, Giannis, etc. stopped by anyone?

I mean, who are we really vying for?

The question isn't whether a good wing defender would push us over the top, imo.

It's whether one would keep us from falling farther back from the pack. The pack being 2nd-tier teams in the east or 3rd-tier teams in the NBA overall.

[ebrian]

RE: OG in Indiana

He was 4th on the team in MPG despite not getting consistent starts and the team's winning pct% fell off from .625% with him playing all the way down to .444% after he got injured. He was a huge piece for that team and his former coach spoke extremely high of him on draft night.

He was 5th on the team in MPG and not getting consistent starts is not a good thing. Anyway, the winning pct is pointless to look at. 10-7 with, 8-9 without -- all we can say really is that the Hoosiers were bad last year. I mean if you really want to dig into wins and losses, Hoosiers were 6-2 when OG played 25 minutes or less. Tiny sample sized stats like that don't mean a whole lot.

Nice of Tom Crean to say nice things on draft night. He was fired this season because of how bad the Hoosiers were.

[LJ2]

We've had James Johnson, Terrence Ross, DeMarre Carroll, PJ Tucker, Landry Fields, Rudy Gay, Patrick Patterson, etc. (all considered to be plus wing defenders), and what difference did any of them make?

Does a capable wing defender who's available, and under a reasonable contract, that's a noticeable improvement over the above guys, even exist? Is Kawhi, LeBron, Durant, Harden, Giannis, etc. stopped by anyone?

I mean, who are we really vying for?

Someone in the mould of prime Shawn Marion would be nice.

[tDotted]

Norman Powell had significantly more experience under his belt than OG Anunoby though, to be fair. I think OG's development could be similar to Delon Wright, who by his own right came out of college with twice as much experience as OG did. Or perhaps similar to that of Powell, if Powell had left college 2 years earlier. I think those last two seasons really made what Powell is today.

OG wasn't even a starter in Indiana (who were terrible last year), and secondly missed a lot of his sophomore season before declaring for the draft. The fact that he even declared is actually a little bit alarming for me and kind of says a lot about his future/career projection in my opinion...

Whereas Powell finished college. So there's that. I will say though that once healthy, OG has a great opportunity -- a lot more than Delon did in his first 2 years. We're pretty weak at the position and if he can get healthy and impress in practice, OG could be the next Siakam and log significant minutes early on.

As for the Raptors' fortunes I agree that OG has very little to do with anything and shouldn't be expecting much -- I was only taking issue with the 'NBA-ready' talk.

RE: OG in Indiana

He was 4th on the team in MPG despite not getting consistent starts and the team's winning pct% fell off from .625% with him playing all the way down to .444% after he got injured. He was a huge piece for that team and his former coach spoke extremely high of him on draft night.

[TrueTorontoFan]

Yeah and we took OG 21 picks lower than MKG.

I just think he solves our wing defender problem. I am not over projecting. If he develops a shot... even better.

[Mess]

Yeah and we took OG 21 picks lower than MKG.