It hasn’t taken Ja’Kobe Walter long to ingratiate himself to these Toronto Raptors. When he started the season, it was late due to injury, and he looked jittery in his first minutes. He doesn’t anymore. Against the New York Knicks, he scored a career-high 19 points. He was poised. Poise counts.
It’s easy to see what Walter could become with seasoning. There’s cutting, of course. In that sense, he blends into Toronto’s Bitches Brew of motion, especially when it’s spearheaded by Jakob Poeltl. (Toronto has a plus-17 net rating with the two on the court, which is definitely helped by their small-ish just-over-100 minutes together, but doesn’t necessarily mean nothing.) Poeltl works well alongside movers and shakers, and that’s just what Walter is shaping into. He looked great alongside Kelly Olynyk against the Knicks, too.
“They’re great passers,” he said. “Probably the best [passing bigs] I’ve ever played with.”
But there’s a lot more to Walter than just opportunistic legs. He is the hooper’s hooper, as capable of getting himself into a balanced midrange look as anyone on the Raptors. He’s shooting a great percentage from the long midrange (on fewer than 10 attempts, so, at this point the film matters much more than the percentage). Most importantly, those looks are smooth. He’s surprisingly strong for his size, and he has great fluidity into his release, even while he’s absorbing contact. He doesn’t play as slim as his frame looks.
Against the Knicks, he drew free throws hurling himself into contact when driving from the corner. (He led the team in free throw attempts.) On one possession, he up-faked against Karl-Anthony Towns, then stepped through for the little floater. He has craft. Craft counts. He was far from overwhelmed, even against the jumbo wings of New York. At one point he took a handoff from Olynyk and rejected the screen to the empty side of the floor, racing past his man for the inside-hand layup.
He’s comfortable in that meaty middle of the floor, and his handle is tight enough that he doesn’t feel particularly bothered by even well-intentioned digs. Walter isn’t manipulating the court to the extent he’s getting two feet in the paint when he’s starting from a standstill, but he is using his dribble well. With the ball in his hands, he’s fast when he wants to be, and slow at other times. He has a nifty in-and-out dribble and a wicked crossover. There’s room to grow, but he’s starting from a good spot. In fact, if you compare him to other Raptors, he’s far, far from the bottom when it comes to creationary dribbling. (Actually, that’s a fun exercise, let’s do it; all three point guards (Immanuel Quickley, Davion Mitchell, and Jamal Shead) are ahead of him, as well as RJ Barrett and Scottie Barnes. Does anyone else do more with their dribble than Walter? Bruce Brown? DJ Carton?)
Those are real abilities. As a rookie on a team that’s relatively loaded with combo guards, we’re not going to see Walter get those chances more than a handful of times as a rookie. His 24 touches per game is right in between Jonathan Mogbo and Chris Boucher. But what does it become in three years, or in eight? When he’s bigger and more confident, with more of an innate understanding of where digs are coming from, where help is coming from, it’s easy to see his calm, patient pacing reaching all the way to the rim, where he’s great at muscling looks into the hoop. He got Tyrese Haliburton the other night against Indiana, and he powered a layup through the Knicks, too. The sample size is small enough that this is probably meaningless, but Walter has the highest field-goal percentage on the Raptors when shooting out of drives.
He lays down screens, really hitting guys when he’s running flex and pin-ins. That creates space, the same as his cutting does. And he’s had some creative passes, too. His first assist against New York came on a moonball alley-oop to Barrett on the break.
“I ain’t gonna lie,” he said after the game when I asked him about the pass, “it just slipped.”
He can call off his drive to find open hands when his head is down. And that ability to improvise on the move — and look smooth doing it — is extremely valuable. Not even veteran players always learn that skill.
Defensively, he is better than advertised. He was always toolsy, but those tools didn’t always translate to actual stops in college. They are in the NBA. He’s second on the team in contested shots per 36 minutes, behind only Poeltl. He’s in plays, doing stuff, staying in front of players and rounding drives. He has a terrific nose for the ball off the glass. He held up in the post the other night against Pascal Siakam, forcing a miss on a turnaround fadeaway rather than succumbing to the spin.
All of the above are extremely scalable abilities. Players who can dribble in crowds, reach the paint, and finish when there can jumpstart possessions, offences, even championships. The high end of that archetype is Giannis Antetokounmpo, and obviously that is completely out of the bounds even of Walter’s imagination. But guys like TJ McConnell, Tre Mann, Malik Monk — even guards can make a career out of hurtling themselves into the paint over and again. Those guys all have countless other skills that Walter doesn’t yet possess. But fledgling players like Walter, who show promise in so many areas but mastery in none, can grow in so many different directions. Like a well-made choose-your-own-adventure book. That’s one archetype he could one day inhabit.
Of course, everything depends on the jumper. If he can’t hit triples, the driving and the passing and the defence and the finishing doesn’t really add up to a quality NBA player, not at his size. The Raptors have a history of trusting someone they drafted to be a shooter becoming one, even if it doesn’t pan out immediately; look no further than Gradey Dick. But Dick shot 40 percent from deep in college, while Walter hit 34 percent. Dick was considered one of the best shooting prospects, if not the best, of his draft year, and Walter was a bit of gamble, comparatively. Still, the release looks exceptional, and he shot almost 80 percent from the free-throw line in college. I trust it will come around eventually. The current sample size of 40 attempted triples is more or less meaningless, when it comes to such a high-variance event as a distance jumper.
“We believe in his shot,” said Rajakovic. “I’m encouraging him to take all of those.”
Against the Knicks, Walter hit enough triples to make it count. He had one blocked from OG Anuonby (damn that man is a demon as an opponent) and airballed another because he rushed it. But he drilled two in transition from the corners in the first half, and he didn’t hesitate to keep firing when he missed a couple after that. In the fourth, he drilled a triple while jetting around a wide pin, taking contact on the jumper to boot. It was encouraging to think the start to the season is just a slump, and he hasn’t let it affect his approach.
Walter transported himself into the future for stretches against the Knicks. He led the team in scoring for much of the night, drove and cut well, and hit enough triples to glue the rest of the game together. He came into the contest averaging under six points a game and finished with 19. It was a glimpse of what he might become, what he might grow into. Or perhaps he’ll grow into something else entirely, a creator rather than off-ball scorer. Or a lockdown defender and low-usage wing. Part of the fun in watching rookies is guessing what flashes will stick and what will be discarded as they grow.
But for one night, the Raptors saw a well-established veteran in the form of Walter step into one of his possible future forms, hitting jumpers and playing comfortable basketball. Who knows what he’ll become next?
