Gradey Dick Talks Rookie Season & Plans for Offseason Training with Raptors

Toronto Raptors rookie Gradey Dick overcame an early season sump to become one of the team's most consistent players over the second half of the year

Gradey Dick never wanted to show his frustration.

He tried to keep his head high and show unwavering confidence. He said his early season shooting slump wasn’t impacting his psyche. It was just basketball, the same game he’d always played, and this was just an extended slump.

But looking back at how the 20-year-old Toronto Raptors rookie began the season, it’s safe to say it stung.

“Honestly, that was probably the most I've dealt with and struggled with in one season,” Dick said when his rookie campaign came to an end.

Toronto brought Dick in to be a floor spacer for a team in desperate need of more shooting. Nobody expected him to be some crucial impact player, but his shooting was expected to be a Day 1 tool.

But it wasn’t.

Dick began the year shooting 24.4% from three-point range before being yanked from the rotation and sent down to the G League. Normally that’s where NBA players thrive against weaker competition, but not for Dick. In 11 games with the Raptors 905, Dick shot 28.2% from behind the arc.

In January, Toronto decided it had seen enough. It shut down Dick and put him in a strength and conditioning program, hoping some time away from the court would allow the 6-foot-6, 205-pound Dick to mature physically and regroup.

“I think it taught me a lot about myself,” Dick said. “I always go back to kind of the coolest thing my parents said was without struggle your story is not gonna be worth being told if you can’t fight through that and be resilient, then what makes it a good story?”

When Dick came back, everything changed.

Dick played in 40 of Toronto’s final 42 games and shot 39.5% from three-point range over the stretch. Most notably, he was 41-for-81 on corner three-pointers from Jan. 17 onward, the best in the league of anyone who attempted at least 80 corner threes over that stretch.

“I started getting comfortable out there like kind of mid-season a kind of 40 games stretch,” Dick said. “I think just being prepared for what I'm asked to do and I kind of took that preparation seriously and got comfortable out there. It was fun.”

A mix of improved stamina and better core strength allowed Dick to flourish late in the year. He went from squandering his rotation minutes in October, November, and December to becoming one of Toronto’s most consistent players over the second half of the year.

“At the beginning of the season, I said he looks 16 and then he looked like 16 and a half. Now he looks like 17,” Raptors coach Darko Rajaković said. “There is a natural thing that’s going to happen with just getting older. I think his body is going to fill in.”

The hope this summer is Dick can go from looking 17 to maybe 21 with a full offseason of NBA conditioning.

He’s going to continue getting up shots, but his plan is to work on his ball handling and defense this summer. While Dick clearly has a good understanding of what he has to do defensively, his slight frame made it far too easy for opposing players to attack him.

“I knew it (core strength) was important, but at the same time, at the start of the season I didn’t understand the importance of it,” Dick acknowledged. “I had the mindset to guard anyone, but I was getting pushed around a little bit. So I locked in with (Raptors assistant coach) Jonny (Lee) and kind of throughout the year found myself getting stronger and really just the knowledge of where to be at and kind of how to cut them off.”

Expectations coming into next season are going to be higher for Dick.

Shooting slumps are going to happen, but he’s going to be a key part of Toronto’s young core and he needs to be ready to take on a bigger role on both ends of the court. Offensively, that means moving out of the corners toward the top of the arc and creating more for himself and others. Defensively, it means getting bigger, with better footwork to make opposing teams think twice before picking on him.

“I thought that his progression, playing from corners, getting shots, the reads, cuts, driving from that area of the floor is something that he did a really good job of this year,” Rajaković said. “In the offseason, we’re going to look to expand his box, to put him in different situations that he can play out of and continue to grow in that aspect as well.”