Starting Gradey Dick immediately is best path for Toronto Raptors future

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Early summer days are a time for tinkering and toying with ideas for the lineup in the NBA. 

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It’s Summer League time, when just about anything goes. 

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So, in that vein, we are going to step outside our normally conservative approach and suggest something a little radical. 

The Raptors should go all-in with their youth and their size and open the season with a starting five that has 6-foot-8 Scottie Barnes at the point, 6-foot-8 Gradey Dick in the backcourt beside him, and a frontcourt of 6-foot-7 O.G. Anunoby, 6-foot-8 Pascal Siakam and 7-foot-1 centre Jakob Poeltl. 

Obviously, this leaves Gary Trent Jr. back on the bench, but we believe an extension and a starring sixth-man role there along with starter-type minutes will be enough to soften the blow of not actually starting.

It’s pretty clear that Masai Ujiri and the front office have not given up on Vision 6-9. 

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Yes, they brought in Poeltl, but they have not steered away from stock-piling rangy 6-foot-9 players, as the Jalen McDaniels signing proves. 

And, more than that, when Ujiri has been asked about the end of the experiment, he has doubled down on it suggesting every new approach or tactic has always been viewed as a failure until it works. In other words, he’s not quite done with this. 

But getting back to our fictional starting lineup, that is one monster of a five-some to deal with in terms of size. 

Defensively, they would miss the active hands and quick feet of Trent Jr., no question, but this is more about building something for the future than it is in the moment. 

Dick would almost definitely struggle on the defensive side of the ball to begin, but that’s normal for most first-year players. He already has proven to be a quick study and certainly sounds like a consummate team player in every interview he has conducted, so it’s not like he won’t put in the effort.

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Barnes at the point may have some issues of his own stopping the ball against some of the quicker — and almost assuredly smaller — point guards in the league. But he’ll have plenty of help in this almost-completely switchable lineup. I mean, it’s not like we haven’t seen Anunoby put point guards in his own version of defensive hell. 

But the real point of this admittedly far-fetched lineup is to finally commit, once and for all, to a path back to serious contention.

Barnes and Dick are the future of this basketball team. Both are above-average passers who have the potential to be a two-man nightmare for teams, but they need time to develop the kind of chemistry that will make the decisions second nature and make that duo all the more deadly.

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Dick is the kind of outside shooter of which this team was in desperate need, but already in the few glimpses from summer league, we are seeing a guy who is capable of much more than that. 

It would not be the first time the Raptors took a guy straight out of the draft and dropped him into the starting lineup. 

Pascal Siakam was that guy back in 2016, when he started 38 games as a rookie. Yes, the Raptors were somewhat forced into that when Jared Sullinger’s injury upset their plans, but Siakam made it work.

He wasn’t flawless. He made more than his fair share of mistakes, but he also contributed, and his growth was sped up exponentially because he got that opportunity. 

Dick is a smart, driven and competitive kid who can make this type of jump. 

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Again, it won’t be without hiccups, but this is not about immediate results. It’s about becoming a team that can once again be considered a threat. 

The other thing this lineup possesses that fits with the current regime is that it sets up nicely for the kind of ball-movement offence new head coach Darko Rajakovic has been speaking about since he was hired.

The beginning of the end for last year’s team was when that selfishness crept into the lineup and guys were more concerned about getting their own numbers than making sure what they did helped the team win. 

A team that plays selfish quickly becomes a team with inner turmoil and, while that didn’t become apparent outside those locker room walls until much later in the year, the stories coming out now suggest that it happened rather early. 

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Sharing the basketball is going to be a big part of this team’s rejuvenation if that is to come this year. They’ve already lost an important component to that in Fred VanVleet, but it’s not impossible to overcome if the entire team goes into his thing with the proper mindset.

The way we see it, this team is going to start the year with one of three scenarios for that starting lineup. 

It’s a starting five of Barnes, Trent Jr., Anunoby, Siakam and Poeltl, or newcomer Dennis Schroder, Barnes, Anunoby, Siakam and Poeltl, or the scenario laid out above, with Barnes and Dick starting in the backcourt and Anunoby, Siakam and Poeltl filling out the frontcourt.

Any of the three can work, but the point here is you may as well get your lottery pick in the middle of things right away as you try to work your way back into contention. 

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