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OT: The Official Toronto Raptors Thread

Just for fun, with the qualification for the 2020 olympics not that far in the future (Summer of 2019), here's what our team could/should look like

PG: Joseph/Ennis
SG: Murray/Stauskus
SF: Wiggins/Brooks
PF: Lyles/Powell
C: Olynuk/Thompson/Birch

With a few random G league kids filling out the bench, or better yet bring Rowan Barrett Jr into the fold and get him the experience (shit, he's probably good enough on merit by 2020 anyway). For anyone not familiar with Barrett, he's pretty much the best prospect on the planet right now, son of former Canadian National team member Rowan Barrett.

We're not beating the US with that lineup, but we're a definite threat for the silver.

The entire group is young though and that's a huge plus because of what's in the pipeline. RBJ is the best prospect we've produced since Wiggins and is considered to be a fair bit superior to Wiggins at the same stage in his development. Simi Shittu is a top 10 NCAA prospect as well. As for kids in the NCAA...it's ****ing loaded with impact Canadians who will be getting drafted over the next few years. Lindell Wiggington, SGA at Kentucky, Walker at VaTech, Brissett at Syracuse, Justin Jackson, all legit NBA prospects over the next few drafts.

Prediction, 2024 might be the first time since the busted ass 04 olympic team that the US has anyone to really take a run at them, and it could be the first time that they lose without playing down.
 
RBJ is a guy I’d love the raptors to be able to throw assets at whoever is picking first overall. But I know it won’t happen.
 
HabsFan1 said:
RBJ is a guy I’d love the raptors to be able to throw assets at whoever is picking first overall. But I know it won’t happen.
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Yeah, I'll say the same thing about him that I said before the Wiggins draft. Build a legitimately competitive team, manage it well and when these kids start to hit free agency, try to bring them home. In the case of Wiggins specifically, I think he's been poorly developed in Minnesota and I could see them looking to move on shortly. Wiggins apparently isn't thrilled playing behind Jimmy Butler either. On the surface Wiggins looks like an inefficient volume scorer but when you dig a layer deeper he has a few moves in his repertoire that have elite point per shot attempt rates and a few that are really inefficient. Getting him spot up corner 3's more often, and more left block mid range post ups would be deadly for his game. He's only taking 17% of his 3 point attempts from the corner (which for a small forward is really odd imo) and his ability to go to shoot over the right shoulder out of the post up is crazy. Get him on the left side of the court so he's turning towards the baseline (away from help) and his efficiency would go way up. Work with him to improve his passing out of the double team (same issue we had with Demar for years until the organization finally challenged him to improve) and he'd break out as a star wing player imo.

I really hope Thibs does the most Thibs thing ever and gets impatient with him and punts. At his contract level the return isn't going to be massive either.
 
We're tied with golden State btw. But they have had to head tiebreaker.

Home advantage in the finals would be sweet.
 
zeke said:
We're tied with golden State btw. But they have had to head tiebreaker.

Home advantage in the finals would be sweet.
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Steph on a wonky ankle, broken thumb Klay, and hobbled KD....I don't know if they're making the finals. That group may have just played too much basketball over the last few years and that shit is catching up to them.


There's a reason dynasties are really ****ing hard.
 
They remind me of that Pistons team that won it all about 10 years ago. No elite star (Arguable), but amazing depth. Best bench by far in the NBA. And luckily, the Warriors are very banged-up and Cavs look very beatable.
 
I was looking at that comp before, and it's not bad.....but that detroit team couldn't score like this team. They were an elite defensive team, but an average to below offensive team.

DET '04: 99.1ortg (18th) / 90.1pts/gm (24th) --- 92.5drtg (2nd) / 84.2opppts/gm (1st)
TOR '18: 111.3ortg (3rd) /112.3pts/gm (3rd) ---102.8drtg (4th) / 103.5opppts/gm (5th)

this team is real ****ing good.
 
MindzEye said:
Yeah, I'll say the same thing about him that I said before the Wiggins draft. Build a legitimately competitive team, manage it well and when these kids start to hit free agency, try to bring them home. In the case of Wiggins specifically, I think he's been poorly developed in Minnesota and I could see them looking to move on shortly. Wiggins apparently isn't thrilled playing behind Jimmy Butler either. On the surface Wiggins looks like an inefficient volume scorer but when you dig a layer deeper he has a few moves in his repertoire that have elite point per shot attempt rates and a few that are really inefficient. Getting him spot up corner 3's more often, and more left block mid range post ups would be deadly for his game. He's only taking 17% of his 3 point attempts from the corner (which for a small forward is really odd imo) and his ability to go to shoot over the right shoulder out of the post up is crazy. Get him on the left side of the court so he's turning towards the baseline (away from help) and his efficiency would go way up. Work with him to improve his passing out of the double team (same issue we had with Demar for years until the organization finally challenged him to improve) and he'd break out as a star wing player imo.

I really hope Thibs does the most Thibs thing ever and gets impatient with him and punts. At his contract level the return isn't going to be massive either.
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Agree with pretty much everything there. I’d rather have RBJ, I just think he is going to be that upper talent level.
 
I love Val, but his inability to defend the pick and roll kills us against a team like the Thunder. I expect a lot of Poeltl/Bebe in the 2nd half.
 
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