CAMP QUESTIONS: Rookie Gradey Dick will help the Raptors, but how soon?

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Published Sep 27, 2023  •  Last updated 6 hours ago  •  4 minute read

Gradey Dick of the Toronto Raptors poses for a portrait during the 2023 NBA rookie photo shoot at UNLV on July 14, 2023 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Photo by Jamie Squire /Getty Images

PART 4 in a 5-part series on the five key questions about the Raptors heading into training camp.

For a rookie, training camp is the unofficial first day of school.

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It may not be his first run with his new team. Being a rookie, he has probably been in the gym throughout September with a handful — or even most of — your his teammates, not to mention the Vegas Summer League and other events. But training camp has the full coaching staff and the full roster together for the first time.

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For Gradey Dick, the 13th overall pick by the Raptors in June’s draft, it’s one step closer to that NBA debut.

Dick will have plenty of eyes on him at training camp, not that he hasn’t already been under a microscope since the draft.

He was with a handful of his teammates in Los Angeles at the Rico Hines runs at UCLA.

Those two-hours-a-day mini-game sessions were instrumental in propelling Pascal Siakam to all-NBA status and early indications from this past summer say that Dick raised more than a few eyebrows.

Hines himself picked Dick out as one of the most interesting young participants, as did perennial NBA MVP contender Giannis Antetokounmpo.

And the praise didn’t stop there. The Trail Blazers apparently saw, and liked, enough of Dick that his name was appearing in potential Damian Lillard trade scenarios that came out of Portland prior to Wednesday’s three-team blockbuster that sent the the superstar point guard to the Milwaukee Bucks.

In any event, it seems that Dick has had no worse than a solid summer, which only puts more of a spotlight on him when camps finally open Monday.

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The hope would be that Dick is still in a Raptors uniform come Monday. He possesses the one skill this roster has been screaming for since the departures of Kawhi Leonard, Danny Green and Kyle Lowry.

Without those marksmen in the lineup, Toronto has been a bottom of the league team in terms of three-point shooting. In fact, the Raptors have been in a steady decline in that department since the 2019-20 season when they shot 37.4% as a team from three which ranked No. 5 in the NBA.

Toronto Raptors officially unveiled their top NBA draft pick for 2023 – Gradey Dick – on the practice courts at the OVO Centre. in Toronto, Ont. on Monday June 26, 2023. Photo by Jack Boland /Toronto Sun/Postmedia Network

The following year 2020-21 the three-point shooting dipped to 36.8% (14th). In 2021-22 it fell again to 34.9% (23rd) and last season was all the way down to 33.5%, which was the 28th-worst mark in the 30-team league.

Dick by himself isn’t going to fix that trend overnight, but he should certainly help.In his 36 games at Kansas last season as a freshman, Dick shot 40.3% from behind the arc.

To put that in perspective, Toronto’s best three-point shooter last year — or at least the most consistent — was O.G. Anunoby who was good on 38.7% of his attempts.After that came Gary Trent Jr., at 36.9% and then the newest member of the Houston Rockets, Fred VanVleet at 34.2%.

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So, yes, Dick’s skill set will be in high demand.

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The question that camp will answer is: How quickly can Dick become a part of the rotation?

As much as the team needs his shot, being good at one thing is rarely enough to keep a player on the floor. He has to be able to fit with the other elements out there, both offensively and defensively.

But in Dick’s case, the bigger factor is going to be how quickly he can get up to speed with the NBA game.

As solid as he was going from high school to his freshman year at Kansas, the jump to the pros is a much bigger one. The NBA game is not just faster and more physical, but the dimensions he’s been playing under have changed — specifically, the 23.9-foot three-point line in the NBA. The college dimensions are 22.175.

That’s just less than a two-foot difference at the top of the arc, less in the corners, but it’s still a substantial step up.

At 6-foot-8, Dick is not a small man, but his frame remains slight compared to the men he will be facing in the NBA.

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All of which is to say there will be some adapting to do. To Dick’s benefit, he has always been a quicker learner and his basketball IQ is considered high, so finding a comfort level, even in a different basketball game than the one he has been playing, should not take long.

The Raptors have historically not been afraid to thrust a young player into a big role right away if they think he can handle it. Pascal Siakam started the first 34 games of his rookie year when Jared Sullinger was injured in training camp.

He didn’t remain in the starting rotation and spent a good chunk of the second half of the season in the G-League but he held his own in those games early in the year and we’ve all seen what he has gone on to become.

No one is suggesting Dick should start right away, but it’s not out of the question that he can get meaningful minutes in his first year and help provide some of that missing three point shooting that has dogged this team the past four seasons.

A good training camp will go a long way to building that trust with the coaching staff and with management that can get him those meaningful minutes.

mganter@postmedia.com

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