Five straight losses, the 28th-ranked defense, an offense starting to hit the wall, and half the rotation sidelined for a while still to come. I’m torn between my desires to keep the toxic positivity bit rolling, and to not be totally disingenuous with my audience.
I love anyone who rocks with the podcast or the newsletter deeply, and am wildly appreciative of all the ways in which you support my work. But I’m sorry. I’m choosing the bit.
This week we turn our toxicity towards Gradey Dick and Ochai Agbaji, the pair of former Jayhawks making lemonade out of a challenging team context for anyone, let alone off-ball amplifier types like they both are.
That Dick (58.5% true shooting) and Agbaji (68.7%) are enjoying remarkable efficiency booms, while the advantage creators that are supposed to make their lives and looks easier are sidelined, is probably the story of the Raptors season. They’ve been tossed feet-first into the fire, and instead of melting, they’re stamping it right out.
Such an extreme early season crash course can only be good for both Dick and Agbaji in the long-run, one would think. For Dick, thrust into offensive savior duty for this team, he’s had no choice but to push back against the ever-increasing care with which opposing teams are scheming against him.
Asked by TSN’s Josh Lewenberg about Dick’s evolution into a frenetic, ground-covering, minutes-eater at practice Thursday, coach Darko Rajakovic commented on the sophomore’s ability to adapt on the fly.
“The way he plays, the way he’s working out, he’s constantly on the move,” said Rajakovic. “In a couple games teams were trying to top lock him in off ball screens, and he did not do a good job of finding options and how to play.”
“But especially this last game (in Milwaukee) he was able to get more on the move, and not just settle, not allow them to top lock... and that opened up a lot of his open shots.”
A big reason player development isn’t linear is that other teams don’t allow it to be. It’s onward and upward until advanced scouts dig up the dirt and the league gets wise to what you’re up to. This is the push and pull Dick’s facing now, and at warp speed due to circumstance.
For Agbaji, there seems to be more of a wait and see approach to his lights out shooting for the defenses scheming to stop the Raptors. Three of his four nightly attempts from deep are completely wide open, per NBA.com’s sometimes noisy shot tracking data; 0.9 are classified as merely open (closest defender 4-6 feet away). Teams are waiting to see if this unseasonably hot stretch is a full on shift in climate for Agbaji, which is fair enough considering his wider body of work. He probably won’t bury 48% of his triples forever, nor will he keep on hitting 64.5% of all his twos. If he does, he’s a couple summers from being a very rich man. There’s enough other good stuff going on with his game, from his team-best perimeter defense to his cerebral floor game, that a regression to somewhere mean-adjacent won’t eliminate his utility, either.
Healthy lead initiators should go a long way towards extending the good times for the Kansas Boys. Things only stand to get easier for Dick and Agbaji once the leverage and attention that, say, Scottie Barnes demands is back in the mix and forcing defenses to make uncomfortable compromises. His return to practice yesterday, adorned with a cool ass protective mask, suggests we’re on the road to a Barnes return at some point in the not-too-distant future.
When that happens, and more guys begin filtering back to boot, the degree of difficulty for Dick and Agbaji is sure to drop. Considering how impressive results the results have been with their feet put firmly to the coals, I’m not sure how you can’t feel positively about how that’ll look.
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Today on the podcast Katie Heindl joined me for another round of Toxic Positivity Friday where we chatted about the hopefulness of only being able to go up from the bottom of the standings, Dick & Agbaji, NBA Cup fever and more. Enjoy the show, and have a great weekend!
