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OT: The Official Toronto Raptors Thread

The day Dunks and Three's updates for the season is like NBA nerd christmas

- Scottie Barnes leads the universe in defensive value, 32nd in offensive value, 5th overall. That tracks imo.
- OG at 31st in the league with a +2.6 also tracks, just fucking pay the man.
- Vanilla Jake being a 0.0 offensively and 0.1 defensively overall also makes sense. He's the human personification of average.
- Pascal at 96th 12 games into the season is not what we need from him. Been better the last week or so though. We need Pascal to be a top 20 player offensively.
- Dennis has been a solid 1.0 so far, 66th in the league. Please let this be all season Dennis. History says unlikely, but he's done it before so we'll see
- aaaaand here's where the problems with this roster really start to show themselves. Boucher off to his annual dogshit start to the season, 211th with a -2.1.
-EPM not having any of Malachi's bullshit, -3.8 282nd in the league.
-OPJ -4.0 294th.
- Gary Trent is when betting on yourself goes horribly wrong. -4.4, 313th in the league
- Precious -5.1, 332nd
- McDaniels -6.6 & Dick -6.8 are 343rd & 344th out of 346 tracked players.


So yeah, I stand behind my assessment of this team. It's not our best player's fault that the entire rotation outside of the top 5 is a crime against humanity. Having a bench this bad is fucking malpractice. To punish myself further, I went through a few rotation names that I've wanted in free agency over the last few years.

Malik Monk: -0.2
Portis: -1.6
Olynyk: -1.9
McConnell: -1.6
Dinwiddie: +0.3
Graham: -1.2 (last year, injured to start this year)

and most of those have started the season worse than they've been the last few years since I advocated for signing them.

Our bench is pure malpractice at this point.
 
MindzEye said:
The day Dunks and Three's updates for the season is like NBA nerd christmas

- Scottie Barnes leads the universe in defensive value, 32nd in offensive value, 5th overall. That tracks imo.
- OG at 31st in the league with a +2.6 also tracks, just fucking pay the man.
- Vanilla Jake being a 0.0 offensively and 0.1 defensively overall also makes sense. He's the human personification of average.
- Pascal at 96th 12 games into the season is not what we need from him. Been better the last week or so though. We need Pascal to be a top 20 player offensively.
- Dennis has been a solid 1.0 so far, 66th in the league. Please let this be all season Dennis. History says unlikely, but he's done it before so we'll see
- aaaaand here's where the problems with this roster really start to show themselves. Boucher off to his annual dogshit start to the season, 211th with a -2.1.
-EPM not having any of Malachi's bullshit, -3.8 282nd in the league.
-OPJ -4.0 294th.
- Gary Trent is when betting on yourself goes horribly wrong. -4.4, 313th in the league
- Precious -5.1, 332nd
- McDaniels -6.6 & Dick -6.8 are 343rd & 344th out of 346 tracked players.


So yeah, I stand behind my assessment of this team. It's not our best player's fault that the entire rotation outside of the top 5 is a crime against humanity. Having a bench this bad is fucking malpractice. To punish myself further, I went through a few rotation names that I've wanted in free agency over the last few years.

Malik Monk: -0.2
Portis: -1.6
Olynyk: -1.9
McConnell: -1.6
Dinwiddie: +0.3
Graham: -1.2 (last year, injured to start this year)

and most of those have started the season worse than they've been the last few years since I advocated for signing them.

Our bench is pure malpractice at this point.
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Yeah it’s the supporting cast that needs to be improved big time. Not sure how you do that now. Tough to improve it during the season.
 
100% agree on pay the man for OG. You don’t get your hands on a guy like that very often so pay him. It will never be an immovable contract. Not with the way he defends
 
This Detroit team has a couple real good players. Not sure what it will take to blend it together and have it click
 
HabsFan1 said:
This Detroit team has a couple real good players. Not sure what it will take to blend it together and have it click
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I personally don't think it will. Their best players are their two most limited, Duren & Thompson. Cade is an inefficient chucker who can't defend, and Ivey's been pushed to the bench for a reason (though he'a playing okay there). Bagley appears to be figuring out how to be a functioning professional though, so that's good.

But overall I don't like the mix, and Cade is definitely not Batman and might not even be Robin. His numbers are pure empty calories on a bad team. This entire Pistons rebuild was predicated on him being a star and likely turns out to be yet another cautionary tale about tanking.
 
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MindzEye said:
I personally don't think it will. Their best players are their two most limited, Duren & Thompson. Cade is an efficient chucker who can't defend, and Ivey's been pushed to the bench for a reason (though he'a playing okay there). Bagley appears to be figuring out how to be a functioning professional though, so that's good.

But overall I don't like the mix, and Cade is definitely not Batman and might not even be Robin. His numbers are pure empty calories on a bad team. This entire Pistons rebuild was predicated on him being a star and likely turns out to be yet another cautionary tale about tanking.
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Thompson is someone I’d love on the raptors. I feel like he has the potential to be a stat sheet filler along with above average D. And what’s up with wiseman!!
 
HabsFan1 said:
Thompson is someone I’d love on the raptors. I feel like he has the potential to be a stat sheet filler along with above average D. And what’s up with wiseman!!
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I watched a few breakdown videos on Ausar this weekend and his movement is insane. His defensive IQ is strong as well, so I think he'll always be a good defender but my concern with him is that what will likely make him a great defender is pure unadulterated quick ass twitch athleticism. That's awesome while you have it, but it's never further than an injury away from being a memory. Ausar ticks a lot of the boxes to be a very good defender for a long time though and a potential DPOY at his peak. I'm not sure anything more than an okay offensive game is in there though.

As for Wiseman, all the tools with no toolbox it looks like. One of the things that I'm starting to come around on is looking at AST% (with context for position & role) as a rough analogue for BBIQ. Wiseman might just be dumb. Which is fine, plenty of NBA players carve out great specialist careers while being dumb. But you have to be a worker, and no one has ever accused Wiseman of being a worker.
 
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Checking the box score and something jumped out at me

Scottie: 25:14
Pascal: 28:40
OG: 26:52

Nick Nurse over here like

dana-white-thats-fucking-illegal.gif


while Tyrese Maxey plays 38:30 a game on the season and 36:30 in a 20+ point shit kicking of Brooklyn today.
 
MyNameIsJonas said:
lol Nurse wouldnt play our bench
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Darko knows that you have to. You can't scream to your boss that he's given you nothing to work with, DNP it for 3 games straight, play it for 20 shambolic minutes and DNP it again.

Give everyone roles that fit their skills, play like a fucking normal basketball coach and some of them might surprise you and not suck (this is not what's happened so far this year, but oh well, it's the process). When you reach mid season and you're 2 games under .500 despite having two guys giving all NBA level performances (Pascal...if you can hear me...please), your boss is going to try to at minimum save face now.

If I'm Masai, and I've given these players that I believed in to Nurse and NN just keeps misusing them (in my eyes), I need to see them fail after haven being given a real opportunity before I give up on them. I mean, I would look at my previous draft and FA work and wonder why that turned out multiple all stars and starters, but the kids I gave to NN struggled like hell. My fault or his?
 
MindzEye said:
Darko knows that you have to. You can't scream to your boss that he's given you nothing to work with, DNP it for 3 games straight, play it for 20 shambolic minutes and DNP it again.

Give everyone roles that fit their skills, play like a fucking normal basketball coach and some of them might surprise you and not suck (this is not what's happened so far this year, but oh well, it's the process). When you reach mid season and you're 2 games under .500 despite having two guys giving all NBA level performances (Pascal...if you can hear me...please), your boss is going to try to at minimum save face now.

If I'm Masai, and I've given these players that I believed in to Nurse and NN just keeps misusing them (in my eyes), I need to see them fail after haven being given a real opportunity before I give up on them. I mean, I would look at my previous draft and FA work and wonder why that turned out multiple all stars and starters, but the kids I gave to NN struggled like hell. My fault or his?
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IMO we either deal Pascal and OG at the deadline

Or

Masai gets the best player he can (Lavine?) for a collection of picks/swaps/contracts.
 
MyNameIsJonas said:
IMO we either deal Pascal and OG at the deadline

Or

Masai gets the best player he can (Lavine?) for a collection of picks/swaps/contracts.
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Yeah, Lavine is the swing and I don't see a Scottie Prime led Raptors being bad enough for the picks to matter unless if the rotation malpractice continues in a serious way. Scottie Prime and an average group is a 45-50 win team imo.
 
Pascals spin move is a crazy weapon that he needs to lean on way more. He gets himself into,trouble when he hesitates and posts up
 
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