RAPTORS NOTES: Odd early schedule, Gradey Dick best shooter in draft

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Injuries in Toronto and New Orleans have given Gradey Dick and Jordan Hawkins a lot more early opportunities to showcase theirs skills than was expected. Dick has been one of the NBA’s most improved players, wowing on a nightly basis for the Raptors, but don’t sleep on Hawkins either. Interestingly, Dick was widely billed as the best shooter in last year’s draft, but Hawkins was usually considered his chief competition in that regard.

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Dick has been far better overall than Hawkins, showing improved defence and more of an ability to create for others, but their shooting numbers entering Wednesday have been nearly identical.

Dick was averaging 21.6 points on 47.3% shooting from the field, 38.3% on three-pointers and 92.9% on free throws. Hawkins was at 42.7%, 37.5% and 92%.

Hawkins was selected one pick after Dick, but is two years older.

As intriguing as Dick has been early on, another 20-year-old, Washington’s Bilal Coulibaly, the seventh pick in 2023, has made just as big a leap. The “other” French guy in that draft has averaged 17.7 points, 5.8 rebounds, shot 55.2% from the field, including 44% from three and flashed some impressive defence.

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ODD SCHEDULE

It’s an extremely odd quirk of this year’s NBA schedule. After Wednesday night’s game in Sacramento, the Raptors will be done with DeMar DeRozan and the Kings until sometime in 2025-26. That’s also true of last Monday’s opponent, the Denver Nuggets, who Toronto hosted a week earlier. The Raptors visit LeBron James, early MVP front-runner Anthony Davis and the Los Angeles Lakers on Sunday, also wrapping up that season series and on Nov. 21 the Minnesota Timberwolves will be in Canada to meet the Raptors for the second time already. If you’re counting, that’s four strong Western Conference opponents the Raptors won’t be seeing up close again for quite some time. That won’t be true of any other opponent until the end of January (New Orleans) and early in February (Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and the Oklahoma City Thunder).

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Toronto’s actually played some of its best basketball so far against the Nuggets, Lakers, and Kings (the Wolves game wasn’t great), beating Sacramento in overtime, losing to Nikola Jokic and co. By two points each time and to the Lakers by six.

Wednesday’s game was Toronto’s sixth in 10 days, a brutal stretch, especially considering all of the rotation players out of the lineup. They’ll get two days off before taking on the Clippers and Lakers back-to-back and then the Bucks to end the trip, making it three games in four days, before a couple of days off ahead of yet another three games in four day stretch.

According to HoopsHype, Toronto has 78.4 million U.S. worth of contracts out of its lineup, or 47.62% of its payroll. No team is missing a higher percentage of its total salary and only two teams, Milwaukee and New Orleans are missing higher total salaries than Toronto’s.

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AROUND THE RIM

Former Raptors second-round pick Christian Koloko finally was cleared to return to action on Wednesday. Koloko last played in April of 2023 and was shut down ever since due to blood clot issues. But the NBA’s return to play panel gave him the go-ahead and Lakers head coach JJ Redick said he’d be in the rotation right away. Toronto waived Koloko when his playing future was uncertain last year to help facilitate the Pascal Siakam trade with the Indiana Pacers … Toronto entered Wednesday holding opponent’s to the fourth-fewest number of three-point attempts per game, but were allowing the most free throw attempts.

@WolstatSun

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