The Toronto Raptors are not a balanced team.
Of the 18 players under contract for next season, the Raptors have no wingers. They have two power forwards, Scottie Barnes and rookie Jonathan Mogbo, six bigs and a trio of point guards.
That leaves seven players who are natural shooting guards, including top-20 players from each of the last three seasons. How will the coaching staff determine who deserves to play and in what combinations?
Part of the challenge is simply ranking each player against the others. Who has the best combination of talent, production, and skill? Let’s go through all seven players and see who deserves playing time and who is playing so poorly that they should be tossed out of the rotation entirely.
Ochai Agbaji was a lottery pick out of Kansas just two years ago, but his career has failed to take off and he’s in real danger of having his fourth-year option declined by the Raptors.
After taking a huge leap in shooting accuracy as a senior, Agbaji fell back to earth once he entered the NBA, shooting just 35.5 percent from the field as a rookie in Utah and a bone-chilling 29.4 percent from three-point range last season, including just 21.7 percent when he arrived in Toronto. He’s a below-average defender, an inaccurate shooter (his free-throw percentage was just 66.1 percent last year, too) and doesn’t offer much in the way of shot creation.
There’s still hope for Agbaji to resume his career, but he doesn’t deserve a single minute of playing time right now unless he shows a real step forward in training camp, the preseason and with the 905 in the G League.
