Gradey Dick is driving success

If I had told you that Gradey Dick wasn’t necessarily going to be a sniper from downtown, but rather an overall offensive weapon, would you have been surprised or skeptical? It’s not as if his physicality suggests that he’s going to be a dominant driver, or that his foot speed and vertical pop suggest it either. What Dick has, is a hunger for the rim and an irrational confidence that he can finish there, that fuels his repeated forays into the paint. Additionally, those forays into the paint are still the best in his draft class.

Currently, Dick is in the top-6 in points off of drives per game from sophomores, and when accounting for his foul frequency and accuracy from the free throw line, he is the most efficient scorer. In that group of players he’s 5th in assists per drive — his pass frequency is comparable to prime Kyrie Irving, which is hilarious and awesome — but he is also the least likely to turn the ball over, and by some margin.

Dick is shooting 43-percent on his spot up threes, which is pretty damn good, and still, it’s statistically much better when he drives the ball against the closeout. His true-shooting percentage when he drives closeouts is around 75-percent! The main reason for all of this, despite Dick shooting below league average from downtown? Shooting gravity isn’t always about percentages, and Dick is selling the NBA on a vision of him as a truly elite shooter that they have to run off the line at any cost. The usual cost? A long closeout that leaves the seas parted behind the defender – and Dick fancies himself as Moses sprinting into the emerging path.

We’ll revisit Dick’s irrational confidence, but first let’s touch on some of his finesse and savvy – much of which comes from his rather elite triple-threat package.

When it comes to the stutter-rip, Jimmy Butler has been the greatest player I’ve seen to this point and he’s fueled Finals runs with it. While Dick won’t ever be an all time stutter-ripper, he might be one of the better players in the league with it during his career, and especially when you consider how lethal his right-baseline pull-up is. It’s not just the stutter-rip either — because you always have to have something to play off of — but his rocker step is pretty fantastic as well.

We all watched Dick shift Derrick White (yes, that elite defender) four feet sideways with a jab before pushing the ball forward and settling into a middy pull – that White still recovered out to, because he’s phenomenal. Dick did the same thing to elite defender Kris Dunn off a simple screen + catch into space, only this time he didn’t stop short with a pull-up, but stepped through a dig for a finger roll at the rim. Shortly after that, Norman Powell tries to counter Dick with a short closeout, and he launches a three over the top.

The audacity of Dick is the easiest part of his game to highlight. Recently, he drove a closeout against Josh Giddey that got walled off, and Dick spun off of it into a shot where he hung in the air and changed hands to make a banked in push shot with his left over a rotating Nikola Vucevic. He slithered around a screen and pump-faked to outfox Jaden McDaniels and launched a skyscraping floater over Rudy Gobert. He throws himself repeatedly at the rim, at bodies, and asks his own to be more languid and flexible than everyone else’s as he bends and twists his way to improbable scoop shots. He’s extremely unique.

At some point NBA teams will send more help Dick’s way on drives. It’ll start with rudimentary rotations that are easy to pass around — which Dick can do, has shown he’s able to do since college, and in fact did extremely well in those drills with the Raptors in his draft workout — but as Dick launches up the scouting report, rotations will become more complex. Almost two months ago, Darko Rajakovic highlighted Dick’s passing as the most underrated aspect of his game, and at some point we’ll see if that manifests.

For now, Dick is third among sophomores in points per game at 18.5, trailing only Victor Wembanyama & Brandon Miller (only 3 players drafted above him have a higher TS%, as well). He has taken on a lot of shots, and arguably the most difficult ones (outside of RJ Barrett) in the vacuum of the Raptors offense. There’s still a lot that has to develop and improve with his own offense, but so far Dick has been the little 13th pick that could; jumping past those drafted ahead of him because of opportunity, and maintaining that lead because of performance – which is led, surprisingly, by his driving game.

Have a blessed day.

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