The Toronto Raptors have some difficult work ahead of them as they figure out the rotation for next season. While some players are guaranteed sigificant roles, most of the roster falls into this crowded mix of players who will expect rotation minutes.
How should the Raptors sort things out? They need to find the right balance between competing in the present and developing their players for the future. Let's look at some players who have earned a larger role moving forward, and a few whose play has earned them absolutely nothing.
Gradey Dick deserves a larger role
Four of the five starting spots are taken for the Toronto Raptors, and with all four players under contract for multiple seasons it doesn’t appear that anything is likely to change anytime soon, until and unless Jakob Poeltl or even RJ Barrett is traded.
That leaves one spot up for grabs, and Gradey Dick is an intriguing candidate to earn his way into the starting lineup. The sophomore wing will be just 20 years old on opening night and yet showed down the stretch of last season, in the midst of the Raptors’ best players all being out of the lineup, that he has something more to give as he grows into his place in the league.
Even as the players passing him the ball declined in ability, the rookie grew as the season went on and hit over 40 percent on catch-and-shoot 3-pointers. Then Gradey Dick was handed the ball at Las Vegas Summer League in July and was dominant in his first game, putting up 18 points, 10 rebounds, six assists and two steals; the passing was the most exciting development for him. He was injured early in the second game so the full breadth of his growth is not yet known.
The Raptors could decide to start the veteran Bruce Brown Jr. at the 2 between Immanuel Quickley and RJ Barrett, giving them a more steady hand and proven defender. There’s an argument to be made that Brown would be better showcased for a trade in addition to presumably being a more experienced option.
The upside play, and the best ramp for long-term success, is to start Gradey Dick. He is the best shooter of the available options to start, and perhaps on the entire roster. He is also developing as an on-ball player, giving the Raptors another player who can attack closeouts and make plays to further attack defenses. The difference between he and Brown is that Dick has incredible off-ball gravity that Brown simply doesn’t have.
His play last season and his age both should compel Toronto to give him the starting spot and increase his role from the jump next season.
Bruce Brown has earned nothing
If Gradey Dick is the upside play to start at shooting guard and bestow the lion’s share of the minutes, Bruce Brown is the “safe” option that may not be all that safe after all.
On the surface, Brown is an understandable option to plug into the starting lineup. He was a Top-6 player on the Denver Nuggets two seasons ago when they won the championship, playing a key role and showing his ability as a defender, playmaker and cutter. That earned him a lucrative contract that will pay him $23 million this season.
The problem with that plan is twofold. One, Brown was a disaster in Toronto last season. Despite playing 26 minutes per game he averaged just 9.6 points per game to go with 3.8 rebounds and 2.7 assists. Defensively he couldn’t stop the flow of opponents breaking down the Raptors’ perimeter defense, and shooting an ice-cold 31.7 percent from deep didn’t help his impact on offense.
The other problem is that even at his best, Brown doesn’t make sense with the starting group. The Raptors have assembled a trio of talented players who all thrive with the ball in their hands; Brown is best deployed as a secondary playmaker. Toronto also has a non-shooter at center and a limited one in Scottie Barnes at the 4; they desperately need shooting from whoever starts at the 2. Brown’s 31.7 percent last season, or even his career 33.7 percent, are not going to cut it.
Brown’s role needs to be reduced in favor of younger players, and he should already have been moved to another team that can better use his services. Nothing he has done since arriving in Toronto has earned him playing time.
Ochai Agbaji deserves nothing
If Bruce Brown is looking for a pick-me-up, he should look no further than his fellow import at shooting guard, former Kansas wing Ochai Agbaji. After arriving at the trade deadline, Agbaji shot just 39.1 percent from the field, and a positively frigid 21.7 percent from deep. On hot summer days Agbaji’s roommates have him practice shooting in his home to bring the temperature down.
It’s not simply a small sample size, however. Agbaji was a poor shooter in college until a breakout senior season, when he shot the lights out and was the best player on a team that won the National Championship. That one year turned out to be the exception, as he shot a middling 35.5 percent from deep as a rookie and 33.1 percent in his half-season in Utah before landing in Toronto. He hasn’t developed in any other areas of his game either, and in Las Vegas Summer League he was likely the worst third-year player there.
The theory of Agbaji is that he can defend with strength, rebound well for his position, create shots inside and knock down shots outside. Something of a “3-and-D wing-plus” who would fit onto any roster. Unfortunately, he has been a truly terrible NBA player outside of a good month or two as a rookie, and his time with the Raptors last season was a disaster.
If the Raptors didn’t have other options at the position, they could justify giving him some playing time to see if he can figure it out. Yet with Gradey Dick and Ja’Kobe Walter both showing much more promise and needing playing time at the 2, and the veteran Bruce Brown deserving some sort of role, Toronto has no reason to give Agbaji a regular rotation role. Until and unless he shows something - in preseason, in practice, in garbage time appearances - the Raptors need to pivot in other directions.
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.
Chris Boucher hasn't earned a role
If in 2019 after winning the championship a Raptors fan was asked who would be the last player from that team left standing in Toronto, they may have guessed a dozen times before picking Chris Boucher. Yet that’s the reality, as the lanky 3-and-D big man remains while Pascal Siakam, OG Anunoby, Fred VanVleet and everyone else has moved on.
That doesn’t mean he needs to factor into the Raptors’ rotation this season, although a lack of depth at center may press him into service. Surprisingly already 31 years old because he entered the league so late, Boucher has been in physical decline over the past few seasons and doesn’t have the same defensive ability as he did a few years ago when he was at his shot-blocking peak.
Add to that the reality that while Boucher is a willing shooter, his accuracy has only been sharp one year of his career, when he shot 38.3 percent from deep in 2020-21. Otherwise, Boucher has been a mediocre shooter from 3-point range; better than most big men, but not enough to truly change a defensive scheme.
Now coming off of an injury, Boucher is likely to have even less to offer if on the court. The Raptors would be better served giving time to their rookie centers or to signing someone to fill the backup center role with more ability than Boucher; at this point in his career, he doesn’t help enough in the present to justify blocking developmental minutes for their young bigs.
RJ Barrett deserves a larger role
On the surface, it may seem nonsensical to suggest that RJ Barrett deserves more playing time. He is entrenched in the starting lineup and averaged 33.5 minutes per game last season upon arriving in Toronto. What more could he possibly need?
This is more of a statement that RJ Barrett deserves to hold onto his place as a high-minute contributor and to keep the high-usage role he filled with the Raptors. In New York he looked like something of a disappointing draft pick, a good player who never took the step up into being great. Then he came to Toronto and had the best stretch of his career, playing confidently and knocking down shots with consistency.
Barrett followed that up with some extremely strong play for Team Canada in the run-up to the Paris Olympics, then was arguably their best player in the Olympics themselves and was the fourth-leading scorer in the entire competition. He may just have gone on a hot streak, and he will come back down to earth this year, playing more to his career levels of performance.
He may also have taken the next step up in his career, and that chance needs to be explored. It would have been reasonable to fully shift the ball into the hands of Immanuel Quickley and Scottie Barnes and reduced Barrett’s role, even sacrificing some of his minutes to young wings like Gradey Dick and Ja’Kobe Walter. Barrett’s strong play the past 9 months have earned him a place in this team’s core, at least to start the year.
The Raptors have a lot of rotation questions to be worked out, and everyone who wants minutes will not get them. They need to prioritize time for the right players, and acknowledge some members of the roster have not earned guaranteed minutes. It’s a difficult task for head coach Darko Rajakovic, but it’s not an impossible one.