Image courtesy AmirJohnson.comAbout to jump on a flight to Mexico so let’s zip through this before they start boarding this plane which has clearly seen better days.
Let’s start off with figuring out where Joey Dorsey might fit in. He’s an interesting piece, at 6’8″ and 268lbs, he can carve some great box-out space inside and he’s got the tenacity that every great rebounder needs to have. The question the Raptors need to ask themselves is how many lunch-pail guys does a team need on a roster. See, as great as Dorsey’s hustle is, other than the occasional pass, he’s a terrible offensive player and brings next to nothing other than his rebounding. He’s a woeful FT shooter (47% in the D-League) and you can expect teams to immediately foul him every time he gets an offensive rebound. The good news is that he knows his limitations and doesn’t force his game, unlike Reggie Evans, and he doesn’t make $5M dollars, unlike Reggie.
If the Raptors do decide to keep him, we’ll have four power forwards who bring very much the same: Evans, Alabi, Dorsey and Johnson. The differences between them aren’t great – Alabi has a rumoured jumper, Johnson is more refined due to last year’s experience, and Evans is just Dorsey seven years later. Point is that there’s a definite redundancy factor here which needs to be dealt with. Ideally, the Raptors would move Reggie Evans for a second-round pick but that’s going to be tough as we found out in the Charlotte fiasco. The likeliest way to move a contract like Evans is to find a team that’s looking for immediate cap relief, and take back a contract extending beyond the 2010-11 season. The only merit of a move like that is that the Raptors could acquire a player they could use right now and trade away a redundancy. The flip side is that you’re piling on more salary, and perhaps waiting it out with Evans for $5M of cap relief is better.
The Raptors have a $850K team-option for Sonny Weems next year which they’ll undoubtedly pick up. Weems has elevated his status on the club from trade throw-in to a key reserve, if not starter, he figures to play a big role next season and Bryan Colangelo has continually stated that Weems is part of the future in Toronto. Colangelo’s tendency to offer rather premature contract extensions (Bargnani, Belinelli, Humphries, Ford and possibly Alabi) could mean a deal for Weems as early as this summer. The idea of “locking up” a player at a good rate before he becomes good makes a lot of sense, but so far it hasn’t panned out with any of extensions handed out. For a player that’s improving and about to see an increase in minutes in a contract year, Weems could put up some healthy numbers which would garner interest from other teams. Will Colangelo jump the gun and secure Weems, thus shoring up the Raptors core of Weems-DeRozan-Johnson-Davis to multi-year contracts, or will he risk losing the Raptor most likely to improve next year (according to a recent RR poll) to free-agency next summer? If you’re the GM, what do you do?
Any debate last training camp about whether DeRozan should have started ahead of Antoine Wright isn’t going to surface come October, he’s got the starting two-guard job all to himself. For a guy highly touted because of his athleticism and high-flying ability, DeRozan failed to wow anyone last season. He opted to take the conservative approach and lurk in the background, pick his spots, and have a fundamental but unspectacular rookie season. For a player to be handed the starting spot and not make the rookie-sophomore game speaks to an opportunity wasted. It’s not a criticism of him because if you ask him he did what the coaches asked him to do, but somewhere in there he missed a chance to live up to the pre-draft hype.
Last year, poor ball-handling in the open court hampered his potential for points in transition offense, but as the season went along he gained some confidence handling the rock and improved slightly. To be an effective slasher you need three things: 1) ball-handling in traffic, 2) ability to finish, 3) drawing contact and getting to the FT line. DeRozan’s got #3 down quite well (third in rookie FTAs PER48, behind Tyreke Evans and James Harden), it’s the ball-handling and finishing that needs significant work. For a high-flyer, he gets stuffed at the rim too many times, that could be because he’s only had one year of NCAA ball and hasn’t yet adapted to how quickly NBA defenses can cover ground and contest shots. He needs to finish a higher percentage of his drives to the rim, because once he becomes a scoring threat using his drives, only then does he have a chance to improve his assist numbers which are very poor (12th on the team last year, PER48). The Raptors are counting on DeRozan to be very good player, if not an All-Star caliber one; it’s critical that he starts to plug these holes this season because the longer he doesn’t, the higher the chances he never will.
So far this summer he’s gained close to 15lbs and weighs in at 225lbs; his display in summer league has included a tuned up jumper where he’s using more legs and less arm, a quicker first-step, and an improvement in absorbing contact and finishing, instead of getting blocked. I hate to put too much stock into summer league performances, but his confidence also appears to be on the rise and the camaraderie Johnson, Weems and DeRozan has to be helping that. I can look past that joking-around, twittering and what-not, as long as the attitude on the court is professional and serious, and so far there’s nothing to indicate that once these guys step on the floor, it’s not all business.
You should check out Triano’s take on the summer league so far including comments on DeRozan, Davis, Alabi, and Dorsey. It’s a good interview where Triano’s praising DeRozan’s work ethic, is excited about Davis, and feels very lucky to have Solomon Alabi on the roster. He states that the Raptors were looking hard to acquire another pick to get at him, but he just fell right in their laps. He’s also full of praise for Joey Dorsey.
Dunk-off:
Vote here. I noticed that they used one of my favorite songs as the soundtrack to this. Towards the end of the video they say something which Raptors fans should listen to and be happy (once you ignore the double-negative):
We ain’t going nowhere.
We got a game against Sacramento at 6PM, I’ll see if I can live blog it but know that I’ll be knee-deep in sand and Piña Colada’s by then. Returning on Wednesday. Today is also a big day for RR writer, Sam Holako, who has finally succumbed to the pressure and is getting married to the woman who will dictate his posting schedule.
