By any fair measure, Gradey Dick’s rookie season was a success.
It wasn’t a smooth ride and there were some notable low points — shooting 6-of-33 in his first two G-League starts, finishing minus-37 in a Raptors blowout loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves, or shooting 29 per cent from three during his first two months of professional basketball sort of prove the point.
But the forward out of Kansas didn’t fold, kept up an impressive volume of in-season development work and rewarded all concerned with an impressive second half of the season, as he averaged 11 points a game and shot 39 per cent from three while playing 25 minutes a game.
He didn’t make an all-rookie team and he still looked overwhelmed physically too often for anyone’s liking, but for a 19-year-old taken 13th in the draft, he passed the most basic test: he looked like he could be an NBA player.
His second season of Summer League is about building a path toward being a good one.
“I think Gradey, we’re really figuring out, is he that all-around player? Can he do some stuff defensively and offensively? Can it be on the ball? Can he do knockdown shooting?” said Toronto Summer League head coach Jama Mahlalela after Dick scored 18 points, grabbed 10 rebounds and counted six assists in the Raptors’ opening win on Saturday, a line marred only by his 6-of-17 shooting. “I thought we saw touches of everything [Saturday]. I think sometimes his choices of which shots he’s shooting, he’s got to continue to work on those. But he’s a shot-maker. He’s a big-game player, and I think it’s fun for him to get out there and be able to make some shots in Summer League.”
There is no question that by Summer League standards, Dick is a much more confident and determined player than he was a year ago at this time, when even the NBA’s summer school had him looking out of sorts at times.
Physically, Dick looks a little more solid than he did at the end of the regular season. He says he’s put on about 10 pounds and has 214 pounds draped on his six-foot-six frame, but part of that comes from being 20 years old as opposed to being 19 years old. Eat well, sleep well and good things happen.
“As a 20-year-old, I feel like, you know, I’m just getting bigger every single day,” he said.
He had Raptors assistant coach Ivo Simovic with him for nearly a month of individual workouts in his hometown of Wichita, on campus at the University of Kansas in Lawrence and back in Toronto. They’ll connect later this summer in Los Angeles.
Dick is not trying to turn himself into a point guard, managing multiple pick-and-rolls per game, but after playing exclusively off the ball — mostly as a spacer and cutter from the corners — the hope is that Dick can evolve into someone who can make plays with the ball and attack from all points of the floor.
“I mean, I think it’s just, you know, be aggressive, any chance I can get,” he said, “… just doing what the team needs [but], you know, when I see a lane, get downhill and try to finish around the rim and make plays.”
The work-in-progress nature of Dick’s game was evident Sunday night in the Raptors’ second Summer League start against the Denver Nuggets. Early, he was being covered by Julian Strawther, the long-armed wing who was part of the Nuggets’ rotation last year. When Dick put the ball on the floor against him, there wasn’t anywhere to go.
Dick missed some early threes off the front rim and when he followed one of them up for an offensive rebound, he missed the putback and rolled his right ankle a little bit but initially stayed in the game.
Dick’s effort level and willingness to battle for 50-50 balls can’t be questioned. The Raptors scored on a couple of plays he helped keep alive. It makes him useful when his shot isn’t falling — he was 0-of-5 from three in Toronto’s 84-81 over Denver, where the Raptors were led by Javon Freeman-Liberty, who finished with 16 points and five rebounds as the Raptors improved to 2-0.
Still, it’s not clear he’s ready to exploit defenders who would typically draw higher-profile assignments like Strawther is projected to for the Nuggets, but if Dick can evolve to the point where he can attack the other team’s weakest defenders, the Raptors might be on to something with their 2023 first-round pick.
Dick had a nice moment when he pump-faked Strawther’s close-out and knocked down a pull-up in the lane, but Strawther got on him at the end of the second quarter when he was able to block Dick’s shot at the buzzer.
In all, it was a rough night for Dick on Sunday. He finished with four points and four rebounds and shot 2-of-9 from the floor before leaving the game at halftime due to his ankle.
In general, Dick’s second season will be about him proving the all-around package of skills he has can translate at the NBA level, rather than only going as far as his spot-up shooting can take him. The shooting is a nice-to-have, but if it ends up being all that Dick can do at an NBA level, the ceiling for him as a meaningful contributor on a good team is limited.
Even when watching Dick last season, it was clear that he has excellent natural basketball instincts and a nose for the ball, but they were elements the Raptors didn’t emphasize or that Dick wasn’t always able to demonstrate. From the moment the ball went up Saturday, Dick was flying around, seemingly getting to every loose ball or rebound, and typically making smart plays when he corralled it. Four of his 10 rebounds were on the offensive end, and he grabbed three more offensive rebounds in his 13 minutes in Sunday’s game.
“There’s no real secret about it. … I mean, I guess [rebounding] it is a skill, but it doesn’t really take anything secret,” Dick said. “It’s just being active. Coach Jama and [Raptors head coach Darko Rajakovic] made a big emphasis about that before we got here to Las Vegas … we’re all gonna crash and stay active and we’re not going to be a team where, you know, we’re kind of taking plays off and so I feel like kind of buying into that helped me.”
There is never a question of whether Dick buys in or not. He earned the respect of the team’s veterans by being a willing listener to their insights and struck up a genuine bond with Garrett Temple, who will be back in Toronto for his 15th season at age 38.
The question is how much progress all the listening, training and effort will yield as Dick enters the second year of what a long career should be.