3 Toronto Raptors who deserve a larger role next year, 3 who have earned nothing

D.J. Carton deserves more playing time

The Toronto Raptors have an absolute logjam of players at the shooting guard position. They currently have seven players whose most natural position is at the 2, and that doesn’t include Davion Mitchell, who played a lot of shooting guard at Baylor and early in his NBA career. There are only so many minutes to go around.

That likely means D.J. Carton will be the odd man out to start the season, as he is far down the pecking order and only on a two-way contract. He’ll likely start for the Raptors 905 and get plenty of playing time to develop his shooting and playmaker. 

What Carton brings, however, is an energy on defense and attacking the boards that the Raptors may not have from another option on the wing. He is relentless while in the game, getting up into opposing players defensively and lunging into passing lanes to swipe passes out of the air. He attacks the boards and generates extra possessions, and his energy is infectious to the rest of the team. 

The shot has to come around for him to be an effective NBA player, but if he can improve in that area the rest of his game has a lot of juice. As the season progresses, and the Raptors move on from Bruce Brown and fully demote Ochai Agbaji, Carton should get some run to show what he can do in the big league.