Raptors Talk Gradey Dick's Development & Impressive Results
Crisis averted.
Gradey Dick isn’t a bust.
The sample size that the 20-year-old rookie can hang at the NBA level only continues to grow as he’s now turned in over a month of really impactful play for the Toronto Raptors.
It’s been a rollercoaster of a season for Dick who was essentially unplayable early this year. After beginning the season as a rotation player, the No. 13 pick fell out of the rotation in Toronto and was so disappointing in the G League that the Raptors decided to shut him down for two weeks.
Since then, though, he’s come back a totally different player.
He’s shooting 46.8% from three-point range over his last 16 games, averaging nearly 10 points in just over 20 minutes per game. For the season, he’s now shooting 51% on corner three-pointers and even inside the arc, Dick is showing he has the kind of off-ball skills to create problems for opposing defenses too.
Take Monday’s 18-point showing from Dick, for example.
He opened the night with a backdoor cut behind Jarace Walker when the Pacers rookie was too eager to help out of the corner. He filled to the right corner perfectly in transition for a catch-and-shoot three. In the third, he snuck around an off-ball screen from Scottie Barnes and drove past an overaggressive closeout from Ben Sheppard.
“If you’re outside shooting and you knock down a couple, they’re going to step up and that gives you more room to kind of utilize that and kind of play how the defense is playing you,” Dick told reporters of his off-ball movement. “If they step out too much then that might be a chance for you to go backdoor.”
In the fourth, Dick came alive, lifting out of the corner to fill a gap above the break where Barnes found him for a catch-and-shoot three early in the frame. He took advantage of Bennedict Mathurin’s trailing him around a screen to score an alley-oop on another find from Barnes. Ochai Agbaji found Dick above the break with a kick-out pass from the baseline for another three before Toronto’s rookie sniper finished the night with another transition three in the corner.
“His confidence is not coming from nothing else than extreme hard work,” Raptors coach Darko Rajaković told reporters post-game. “This is just the beginning for him. He’s going to have good games, he’s going to have bad games, but he needs to continue being in those situations to learn and get better and to get reps.”
For all the talk about Dick being more than just a shooter, his reputation for being a shooter should help both his game and the Raptors’ offense as a whole. If opposing teams are too aggressive on closeouts or unwilling to help off Dick, afraid he’ll make them pay, it should only open up more opportunities for him and Toronto moving forward.
