Raptors See a Healthy Otto Porter Jr. as an Answer to Shooting Woes From Last Season
When last season came to an end the Toronto Raptors made it clear they wanted to add more shooting. They’d been a team that finished the year 19th in made three-pointers, 27th in three-point percentage, and what felt like dead last in actual shooting talent.
“We have to figure out shooting on this roster in some kind of way,” said Raptors president and vice-chairman Masai Ujiri as he insisted wholesale changes were coming back in April.
Well, those changes never really came. Instead, Toronto’s highest volume shooter Fred VanVleet walked in free agency along with his three three-pointers made per game. In his place, entered Dennis Schröder, a career 33.7% low-volume three-point shooting.
The Raptors, however, aren’t entirely doom and gloom about their offseason quest for better shooting. They did add arguably college basketball’s best three-point shooter Gradey Dick, owner of a 40.3% three-point stroke as a freshman at Kansas last season. And, for better or for worse, the team is counting on a healthy season from Otto Porter Jr.
Counting on a rookie and an oft-injured veteran to fix the team’s shooting problems isn’t exactly a fool-proof plan, but it’s where the Raptors sit right now with training camp underway. There is good news, though. Porter who played in just eight games last season is back at full strength having recovered from an unusual toe injury.
“It feels good to be back,” said Porter who is fully cleared for training camp activities this season.
He went through Day 1 of training camp without any hiccups and, if Ujiri’s Media Day comments are any indication of what’s to come, the 30-year-old wing should see rotation minutes this season as a key shooter off the bench.
How exactly Porter is going to fit into the rotation is yet to be determined and head coach Darko Rajaković wasn’t tipping his hand during Tuesday’s media availability in Burnaby, B.C. What’s clear, though, is he prefers a deep rotation of four or five players getting more minutes than they did last season under Nick Nurse.
“I believe that (the) NBA season 82 games is a long season and we got to be smart. How much load we’re putting on the bodies of players for a long run,” Rajaković said on Media Day.
That’ll be particularly important for Porter because on one hand, he’s one of Toronto’s few reliable shooters with a career 39.7%, on the other hand, though, he’s appeared in just 169 games over the past five seasons, and keeping him healthy is always a tricky task.
