The Gradey Dick Thread Part 2

[Jcity08]

Can't wait for the future thread "What ever happened to Dick?" in like half a decade from now.

Answer: Thriving on the end of the Guangdong Southern Tigers bench.

[First Step]

Dick needs a fresh hair cut. That might solve his confidence issues.

[Vampirate]

You know what.

If Barnes can shoot 38% from 3 by season 3 so can Gradey.

[Los_29]

I think one of Masai's biggest mistakes was taking a cap numbers guy in Bobby and thinking he could mold him into a basketball guy. Bobby's been living off the Kawhi deal which he got lucky with because the Spurs assistant GM was his ex-roommate. We've been paying them back for that trade since.

lol, you don’t actually believe this, do you? We didn’t get lucky with the Kawhi deal. We were the only team willing to take that risk and we put the best offer on the table.

idk, our offer wasn't actually good. Demar (fringe allstar), Poeltl (decent center at best) and a FRP is not a good offer for a player of Kawhi's caliber. We were lucky in a few factors. Kawhi was an expiring, discontent and the Spurs refused to trade him to the lakers. Lakers would have had a much better offer than us if the Spurs were open to it.

Kawhi was an upcoming free agent with huge question marks about his health. Even if you don’t think it was a good offer, it was the best offer on the table. No team beat our offer which is why we got him.

Your classifications for the players we gave up is insane. Demar is a 6 time All-star. That’s not a fringe all-star. Poeltl was just 24 when he got dealt. He’s developed into a solid center.

[UnbelievablyRAW]

Bufkin 34/5 in his gleague debut lol. Let’s see him play in the nba but as always, being able to easily dominate the gleague is a sign you’re an nba player.

Gradey still needs to be a good g league player

[TorontoBarneys]

Bufkin 34/5 in his gleague debut lol. Let’s see him play in the nba but as always, being able to easily dominate the gleague is a sign you’re an nba player.

Gradey still needs to be a good g league player

His change of speed looked majestic. I've wanted Bufkin above all else in Hawk's young assets other than DJM and wanted him drafted over Dick. Oh well.

[nikster]

The problem I have with Gradey Dick is that he's playing so poorly, even the 905 doesn't want to play him. If you can't play in the G League, then you're not a good professional basketball player, period. Is he nervous? Does our development suck and we're just running on reputation? Only the organization knows. One thing I do know is that Gradey is 2 years away from being 2 years away.

It's pretty tragic that a guy we drafted primarily to come in and immediately help out at a weak area of ours ended up becoming such a long-term project (at best).

Dude can't even get off catch-and-shoot 3s, and makes them at a horrific clip. I don't know what to say.

Don't think front office was drafting a 19 year old with the expectation he's going to help immediately

[JShuttlesworth]

Dick needs a fresh hair cut. That might solve his confidence issues.

I was saying this during the game, he needs to get a real barber

[gbball]

Gradey can't create for himself and he's used to being featured. Guys like Bufkin and Keyonte will look better because they are good ball handlers.

I think ballhandling is the thing that will grow Gradey's game the most. He needs to do what Demar did in that regard and become a great dribbler after coming in with a suspect handle.

He also needs to extend his range and become a knockdown shooter. If he can do those two things, then he'll have been worth the pick.

[ArthurVandelay]

Strength, specifically core strength, is Dick’s biggest need.

He’s athletic but not strong.

Once he spends a summer getting stronger (not bulk) it’s going to make a huge difference to his game.

Third year Gradey will fit with Barnes quite nice imo.

[Tha Cynic]

Strength, specifically core strength, is Dick’s biggest need.

He’s athletic but not strong.

Once he spends a summer getting stronger (not bulk) it’s going to make a huge difference to his game.

Third year Gradey will fit with Barnes quite nice imo.

Him and Poeltl should be doing a ton of strength training. Both need it in a big way.

[Brinbe]

liked a bit of what he showed in his short time last night. that block was nice and a positive sign of what he can do. definitely doesn't benefit playing off the likes of precious though lol. ideally needs to be paired with Scottie or just anyone with the bball iq that's willing to pass him the ball when he's open in the corner.

just gotta keep feeding him playing time with the 905/raptors and hoping he shows some signs of improvement. at the very least getting his shot fixed will go a long way.

[C Court]

I've watched Grady twice live. He has good instincts and the basic talent is there. He just needs to get stronger and become comfortable with the pace of play. He's going to be fine with more experience and strength.

[Kevin Willis]

I would give Freeman-Liberty a couple more games to get back in shape and bring him up to take Malachi's minutes. If Freeman-Liberty has a setback I would bring up Nowell.

I might be tempted to bring up Nowell for Malachi's minutes and Freeman-Liberty for Gradey's minutes until Gradey corrects himself. Gradey has time, these guys are 24 and are showing they are ready to go.

[Duffman100]

I've watched Grady twice live. He has good instincts and the basic talent is there. He just needs to get stronger and become comfortable with the pace of play. He's going to be fine with more experience and strength.

Honestly, if he actually hits his shots I think everyone will ease up.

He's actually a surpisingly good passer, rebounder and moves well without the ball.

Horrible defender but we all knew that.

[djsunyc]

Bufkin 34/5 in his gleague debut lol. Let’s see him play in the nba but as always, being able to easily dominate the gleague is a sign you’re an nba player.

Gradey still needs to be a good g league player

like solid nba rotation player delano banton.

[Scase]

I've watched Grady twice live. He has good instincts and the basic talent is there. He just needs to get stronger and become comfortable with the pace of play. He's going to be fine with more experience and strength.

Honestly, if he actually hits his shots I think everyone will ease up.

He's actually a surpisingly good passer, rebounder and moves well without the ball.

Horrible defender but we all knew that.

This is it right here, if he was able to knock down his 3's at even a 33ish percent rate, people would be a lot more ok with everything. But he can't hit the broadside of a barn at this point.

[Rodrickle]

Team is broken from management to coaching to relationships between our best players. Starters have no chemistry, our top 3 most experienced bench players have the basketball IQ of a walnut. We have zero spacing and our best most versatile 3pt shooter is a 3rd year player who couldn't shoot over 30 percent from deep when he came into the league.

Gradey has been bad. People on here need to chill out on the scathing remarks though. Hard to ask a 19 year old system player to come in to a broken system and provide the only spacing on the team while playing with a team full of guys who want to get there own and Scottie Barnes, who for some reason Darko loved to sit on the bench for almost all of Gradey's shifts. Darko then proceeds to run nothing for him and tells him to go stand in the corner and get a rhythm whenever Dennis and Pascal decide there's no other choice but to throw it there.

It's easy to forget that most people on this board like watching box scores more than games and have never played competitive basketball in their lives, but threads like these bring it back to light. Reminiscent of the 50+ pages of Pat Mccaw hate when all he was there to do was not take shots away from the 7 guys on the team who had put up 15-20+ points seasons in there careers and just be a half-ass connector on one of the better teams ever in raptors history.

The "guys we missed out on are either more experienced college players placed on proven rosters or young guys shooting garbage percentages but have green lights. None of which are Kobe Bufkin who this board would have drafted if the pre draft pole was doing our drafting.

Hard to believe people gave up on a 19 year old 5-10 games in. Harder to believe it's the same people that hate the direction of the team and know how broken we are from top to bottom. Once this is Scottie Barnes team, we have turned a corner and we are giving Gradey at least the 25 minutes a night we are letting Gary flush down the toilet right now, we can watch for a season and a half and actually see what we have. Until then calling him a bust is asinine. If he can't produce under those circumstances, we botched a promising players development by placing him in a terrible environment and then tanking his belief in himself. Gradey has alot of work to do physically and mentally, but he definitely has the talent to not be a bust in the NBA, if you can't see that, it's time to go back to watching the leafs and jays.

While you're right about the team being in a bad state, but a good prospect should still be able to not be complete ass, especially in the G League . Gradey has been horrific. He has been getting completely open shots and he can't make them, which was his calling card. But even so, shooters sometimes need adjustment, but he can't do anything else. You can blame the team (Both Raptors and G league) all you want but we're not asking much of him. He's making his G League team worse when he's on the floor which is unreal. This post seems similar to the apologetic Bargnani posts back in the day where Bargnani was never to blame, but Mitchell, Bosh, Ford, the front office asking him to gain weight was the reason he sucked. (Maybe he just didn't want to get in shape). Not the fact that he had the worst defensive awareness in the league, had low BBIQ, and didn't give a sht.

Its too early to for sure call Gradey a bust. He can turn it around. But it really doesn't look like he has a high ceiling. I don't know if there's anyone that looked this bad in the G league that became an good NBA player. I hope he does become one, but I think the odds are against it. And Darko has been bad, but I don't think you can blame Gradey's play on him. He's probably been given more opportunity than most coaches would. And If he can't play with inferior players in the G league, why would be get plays run for him with the big club?

The gleague is irrelevant. Gradey already showed he can play against those guys in summer league. The gleague is a bunch of chuckers hoping to get called up, Gradey is a system guy, who we sent to an already 0-7 team once our coach gave up on him. Chris Boucher was a gleague MVP. Most rotation players in the NBA have never sniffed the gleague and most of the best gleaguers ever have never sniffed an NBA rotation.

Any decent NBA player would dominate the G league. Any system player thats decent in the NBA can dominate the G league. Like it or not Chris Boucher is a decent player with a great motor and had the best net rating on the team multiple times. Gradey will be lucky to be as impactful as him at this point. Gradey's also got plenty of touches of touches in the G league so who cares about him being a system player. I don't know if there's been a player that played that bad in the G league and became a good NBA player. The odds right now are stacked against him, but there's always a chance. If he played like he did and was drafted in the 2nd with a unguaranteed contract, he'd probably be cut by now.

I'm pulling for him to succeed but like I said your posts are full of excuses for his poor play from outside circumstances when his poor play is mostly on him.


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[UnbelievablyRAW]

Bufkin 34/5 in his gleague debut lol. Let’s see him play in the nba but as always, being able to easily dominate the gleague is a sign you’re an nba player.

Gradey still needs to be a good g league player

like solid nba rotation player delano banton.

go actually look at his numbers and splits lol. Idk if you can look at what he did and say he dominated the g league

[Rodrickle]

Bufkin 34/5 in his gleague debut lol. Let’s see him play in the nba but as always, being able to easily dominate the gleague is a sign you’re an nba player.

Gradey still needs to be a good g league player

like solid nba rotation player delano banton.

go actually look at his numbers and splits lol. Idk if you can look at what he did and say he dominated the g league

He didn't. He was good but not great. He regressed pretty bad in his 2nd year. Shot horribly from 3 in year 2 as well.

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