GT: Summer League Game # 3 - TOR vs DEN - Tonight 8pm TSN

[MoneyBall]

Ja'Kobe is already good enough to be a starter. Way better than Gradey

I love the enthusiasm but this is Summer League.

Gradey was pretty awful in summer league

I remember him playing very well in the NBA early in the season, which is far more impressive.

[causal_fan]

Would a team be willing to give up a SRP for Lawson?

[Spida888]

Lawson has looked good. His contract isn't guaranteed until Jan 10, 2026 according to Spotrac. So we should keep him at least for a few months to see how he looks against real competition.

Maybe if a RJ trade gets us under the tax later on, or we trade for a star and accept the tax, we can keep Lawson provided he continues to look decent.

[XTC]

Regarding JKW

To me just by going off the eye test he was the most impressive player on the roster. Hes clearly added muscle, and strength. Last season he would get outmuscled if he tried to stick to his guy on defense, on offense you could stop him from getting to his spots with a forearm.

I'm not sure if its the haircut, but he looks big out there. His two way potential is super intriguing. He legit looks like he has potential to be an elite 3+D guard who can create his own shot. I hate doing comparisions, but those who are old enough, he reminds me of a modern version of Eddie Jones. Super excited to see how he does this upcoming season.

[ATLTimekeeper]

This team can't shoot or dribble, but they can defend and pass a little. Walter's hustle is really his special skill. You combine that with an average 3PT shot and he can make most rotations. He had some great boards in this one.

[Harcore Fenton Mun]

Walter's basically the best player on this SL team. He should be like this.

[Psubs]

Would a team be willing to give up a SRP for Lawson?

Just trade RJ Barrett instead. Keep Lawson on the cheap.

[ConSarnit]

I don't like evaluating players based on their summer league performances when they already have gleague and NBA experience. Lawson is 25 years old, he should be dominating summer league. He's older and he has more experience than most guys he's playing against.

He got a decent amount of NBA playing time last year and he only put up shooting splits of 42/32/68. He looks like he can be a great gleaguer, maybe a depth nba player, but I wouldn't jump through hoops to keep him.

I am not a person to react to a few summer league games but Lawson is showing me something. Sometimes players put it all together a little later stages of their career. He needs a look.

He’s really just been on a heater from the 3pt line over 3 games, which is an incredibly small sample size. Other than that I don’t see any big improvements. The competition level in the summer league is terrible. Denver played 8 undrafted guys last night.

I do not believe you can derive anything from a guy like Lawson playing in summer league. As someone mentioned he is the perfect AAAA level player. G-league on-ball volume scorer who likely can’t translate his game to the next level because he doesn’t have the supplemental skills to move to an off-ball role.

I’ll go as far to say there has never been a single player of his ilk (3rd year or beyond experience) G-league volume scoring guard who has ever made the leap to NBA role player. He’s another Dowtin or JFL. They can never translate or adjust their game to the NBA. Maybe he’s an anomaly but I have my doubts.

[Masai4PM]

There's no way to prove this, but I am pretty sure no team wants RJ Barrett and his contract for 2 more years, without us taking back an equally bad contract/player or having to throw in picks/young players as incentive.

We can probably trade him next off-season as an expiring, and Darko will need to find a way to make it work in the meantime, hopefully Jakobe or Dick can make it an easy decision to bench RJ.

[PoundTown]

Regarding JKW

To me just by going off the eye test he was the most impressive player on the roster. Hes clearly added muscle, and strength. Last season he would get outmuscled if he tried to stick to his guy on defense, on offense you could stop him from getting to his spots with a forearm.

I'm not sure if its the haircut, but he looks big out there. His two way potential is super intriguing. He legit looks like he has potential to be an elite 3+D guard who can create his own shot. I hate doing comparisions, but those who are old enough, he reminds me of a modern version of Eddie Jones. Super excited to see how he does this upcoming season.

My comparison is Kerry Kittles. Might end up being a more aggressive offensive player than kerry and possibly a better shooter; kerry was good but not elite there and just more willing to let them hoist on high volume as is everyone compared to 25 years ago.

[WuTang_CMB]

Regarding JKW

To me just by going off the eye test he was the most impressive player on the roster. Hes clearly added muscle, and strength. Last season he would get outmuscled if he tried to stick to his guy on defense, on offense you could stop him from getting to his spots with a forearm.

I'm not sure if its the haircut, but he looks big out there. His two way potential is super intriguing. He legit looks like he has potential to be an elite 3+D guard who can create his own shot. I hate doing comparisions, but those who are old enough, he reminds me of a modern version of Eddie Jones. Super excited to see how he does this upcoming season.

My comparison is Kerry Kittles. Might end up being a more aggressive offensive player than kerry and possibly a better shooter; kerry was good but not elite there and just more willing to let them hoist on high volume as is everyone compared to 25 years ago.

good comp

[mihaic]

What's the issue with paying tax this year?
Don't we just need to be below next year to avoid the repeater? Tax line moving up, Ochai and a first to fit within the tax. Seems doable.

It’s not so much paying the tax but missing out on share of luxury tax split with rest of non paying teams

The tax distribution is usually around $10-12m. So it is somewhere around a $15-20m difference with tax and distribution

I hope Rogers loses a **** ton of money this year.

Why? It's Canadians who will pay fir that loss.

They will increase ticket prices, Internet, etc. Bell and Telus will follow them too because they can increase their profit.

If your Internet or cell is from others they will get the price increased as well, as they lease Rogers or Bell or Telus infrastructure depending where you live in Canada.

[dhackett1565]

Is there anything to suggest that Lawson can't play a 3+D role? That's a more concrete role than Battle's 3 + no D. I can more easily see useful NBA minutes coming from Lawson than from Battle. Leaving aside that in our system we want our shooters to be able to do other stuff offensively anyway.

But we should just keep both. No benefit to cutting Battle (maybe he's a trade salary dump later in the season if they never use him?).

Lawson is shooting 32% from 3 in his NBA career. He’s slightly better at 34% in the G-league. His 3pt shooting isn’t consistent enough. It’s his make or break skill. You can’t be a rotation guard if you can’t space the floor or create for others (which Lawson can’t really do either). Lawson has to be able to provide supplementary skills (mostly spacing) to carve out a real role because he’s not going to get enough on-ball reps. I really don’t think we can take anything away from his summer league performance. If you’re a good G-league player (as Lawson is) you should be killing it in the summer league (which is a worse league than the G-league). I just don’t know if his game translates to the NBA unless he can shoot. G-league volume scorer doesn’t usually translate well.

Came to say this but you nailed it.

Lawson isn't a real 3 point threat and calling Battle "no D" is kind of exaggerating IMO. He isn't top tier but he also doesn't get targeted.

FWIW - I like Lawson, but he might be a cut just because of our depth.

Battle has been getting targeted in Summer League, he'll be even more so in the bigs if we start to win games and get properly scouted for. He dies on every screen and is quite capable of letting guys blow past him.

Lawson may well get cut because of our depth. But if I had to pick between Battle or Lawson as a guy you could plug into a lineup because another piece is hurt, I'd go Lawson every time. Battle needs very specific contexts to be able to shield his defensive shortcomings.

[mihaic]

I don't like evaluating players based on their summer league performances when they already have gleague and NBA experience. Lawson is 25 years old, he should be dominating summer league. He's older and he has more experience than most guys he's playing against.

He got a decent amount of NBA playing time last year and he only put up shooting splits of 42/32/68. He looks like he can be a great gleaguer, maybe a depth nba player, but I wouldn't jump through hoops to keep him.

I am not a person to react to a few summer league games but Lawson is showing me something. Sometimes players put it all together a little later stages of their career. He needs a look.

He’s really just been on a heater from the 3pt line over 3 games, which is an incredibly small sample size. Other than that I don’t see any big improvements. The competition level in the summer league is terrible. Denver played 8 undrafted guys last night.

I do not believe you can derive anything from a guy like Lawson playing in summer league. As someone mentioned he is the perfect AAAA level player. G-league on-ball volume scorer who likely can’t translate his game to the next level because he doesn’t have the supplemental skills to move to an off-ball role.

I’ll go as far to say there has never been a single player of his ilk (3rd year or beyond experience) G-league volume scoring guard who has ever made the leap to NBA role player. He’s another Dowtin or JFL. They can never translate or adjust their game to the NBA. Maybe he’s an anomaly but I have my doubts.

I agree the probability is very low, but since we have him why not try him early in the season.

[XTC]

Regarding JKW

To me just by going off the eye test he was the most impressive player on the roster. Hes clearly added muscle, and strength. Last season he would get outmuscled if he tried to stick to his guy on defense, on offense you could stop him from getting to his spots with a forearm.

I'm not sure if its the haircut, but he looks big out there. His two way potential is super intriguing. He legit looks like he has potential to be an elite 3+D guard who can create his own shot. I hate doing comparisions, but those who are old enough, he reminds me of a modern version of Eddie Jones. Super excited to see how he does this upcoming season.

My comparison is Kerry Kittles. Might end up being a more aggressive offensive player than kerry and possibly a better shooter; kerry was good but not elite there and just more willing to let them hoist on high volume as is everyone compared to 25 years ago.

Kerry Kittles, what a throwback. JKW is a throwback player 100%

Its part of the reason why I love watching him play. I think his potential is really high, super excited for this upcoming season.

[tms]

Great highlights. Love the spirited defense and commitment to team. The new guard has a strong constitution and will be fun to watch.

[Psubs]

There's no way to prove this, but I am pretty sure no team wants RJ Barrett and his contract for 2 more years, without us taking back an equally bad contract/player or having to throw in picks/young players as incentive.

We can probably trade him next off-season as an expiring, and Darko will need to find a way to make it work in the meantime, hopefully Jakobe or Dick can make it an easy decision to bench RJ.

But but he was the Raptors leading scorer last season.

[Thaddy]

We needed to get rid of RJ yesterday. It's going to be harder during the season. His numbers will go down due to Ingram being the top option.

[Dalek]

There's no way to prove this, but I am pretty sure no team wants RJ Barrett and his contract for 2 more years, without us taking back an equally bad contract/player or having to throw in picks/young players as incentive.

We can probably trade him next off-season as an expiring, and Darko will need to find a way to make it work in the meantime, hopefully Jakobe or Dick can make it an easy decision to bench RJ.

But but he was the Raptors leading scorer last season.

RJ is good player who we probably want to retain because he isn't that old and his growth has been impressive. He can slot in as a SF which is good and he has rim scoring ability which we lack in other guards. I like Walter and Dick but they are still too weak to play with contact and get to the rim as much as RJ.

At this stage we wait for a good offer, otherwise we wait until free agency in a couple years and sign him to a smaller deal. If he likes Toronto so much and we see a fit, maybe we restructure his current deal and extend the contract out. He can do a small pay cut to sign long term here. Then he can have a value contract like Malik Monk.

[XTC]

We needed to get rid of RJ yesterday. It's going to be harder during the season. His numbers will go down due to Ingram being the top option.

If Ingram is as advertised everyone's numbers go down, not just RJ's.

For all his faults RJ is still young and improving. This upcoming season is going go say alot who RJ is. If he averages 20/6/4, while improving his free throws (80%), and hitting three's at a respectable rate (36%), that's a guy who can be a top 3 option on a contender.

Id rather hold onto him, his value to us is more than what it is across the league. Best case hes a respectable scorer, young, Canadian, and someone who wants to be here. Worst case we let him expire if hes not someone who can fit a winning culture. Im not willing to trade a guy like him away and let him explode somewhere else.