It may not be your first run with your new team. Being a rookie, you’ve probably been in the gym throughout September with a handful or even most of your new teammates, not to mention the Vegas Summer League and other runs, but training camp has the full coaching staff and the full roster together for really the first time.
For Gradey Dick, the 13th overall pick by the Raptors in June’s NBA draft, it’s one step closer to that NBA debut.
Dick will have plenty of eyes on him at training camp, not that he hasn’t already been under a microscope since the draft.
He was with a handful of his teammates in Los Angeles at the Rico Hines runs at UCLA. Those two-hours-a-day mini-game sessions have been instrumental in propelling Pascal Siakam to all-NBA status and the early indications from this past summer’s runs were Dick raised more than a few eyebrows.
Hines himself picked Dick out as one of the most interesting young guys, as did perennial league MVP candidate Giannis Antetokounmpo.
The praise didn’t stop there, though. The Trail Blazers apparently saw enough from Dick and liked enough that his name was appearing in the potential trade scenarios that have been coming out of Portland.
Unlike, say, the $7 million in salary a Thad Young would add to a deal to make the money work, the Trail Blazers were looking at the asset they would like to recoup in a potential Damian Lillard deal with Dick’s potential inclusion.
In any event, it seems that Dick has had a solid summer which only puts more of a spotlight on him when camps finally open Monday.
The hope would be that Dick is still in a Raptors uniform come Monday. He possesses the one skill this roster has been screaming for since the departures of Kawhi Leonard, Danny Green and Kyle Lowry.
Without those marksmen in the lineup, Toronto has been a bottom of the league team in terms of three-point shooting. In fact, the Raptors have been in a steady decline in that department since the 2019-20 season, when they shot 37.4% as a team from three which ranked No. 5 in the NBA.
The following year, 2020-21, the three-point shooting dipped to 36.8% (14th). In 2021-2022, it dipped again to 34.9% (23rd) and last season was all the way down to 33.5% which was the 28th-worst mark in the 30-team league.
Dick by himself isn’t going to fix that trend overnight, but he certainly should help.
In his 36 games at Kansas last season as a freshman, Dick shot 40.3% from behind the arc.
To put that in perspective, Toronto’s best three-point shooter last year — or at least most consistent — was O.G. Anunoby, who was good on 38.7% of his attempts. After that came Gary Trent Jr. at 36.9% and then the newest member of the Houston Rockets, Fred VanVleet, at 34.2%.
