The cases for Dennis Schroder and Gary Trent Jr. to start for Raptors

Amit Mann and Imman Adan look at the cases for Gary Trent Jr. and Dennis Schroder to start for the Raptors next season. Listen to the full episode on the 'Raptors Over Everything' podcast feed or watch on YouTube.

Video Transcript

AMIT MANN: What are the positives of both?

IMMAN ADAN: I will go with both. Yeah, number one positive with Gary Trent, Jr. is continuity, right? Like, I think that that's an important part of this. But then the most obvious one is going to be shooting.

He is still a better shooter than Dennis Schroder. So I think continuity and I think shooting are going to be the two biggest ones. Also, like, I was looking at Gary Trent, Jr.'s numbers when he was with Pascal and when he's not playing alongside Pascal-- pretty stark.

AMIT MANN: Yeah.

IMMAN ADAN: It's a pretty stark difference. But no, to me, it's just like you're going to need the shooting with the starting lineup. I think having Gary Trent, Jr. makes the most sense. I think having Dennis Schroder come off the bench, because you're, again, going to need a point guard on your bench.

You're going to need someone who can run offense with your bench. And also, like, you get a change of pace with the bench as well, right? Like, that's always a great addition when teams have that sort of change of pace when you have a bench player. And Gary Trent, Jr. doesn't really provide that because he's not going to be the lead guard.

You know, he's not going to bring the ball up and do any of that stuff. He's a great complementary player with the starters, I think, as the fifth starter there. But with the bench, you have someone who can, we mentioned it, get downhill. You need paint touches. You need rim pressure.

You need someone to be able to do that. And so to get a guard who-- great rim pressure, can attack the basket-- that changes the entire speed of the game. That gives you a different look than when you're playing bully ball and watching OG postup or whatever it is, go and you change the pace entirely with a Dennis Schroder, I think, is a great look for the Raptors.

I'm actually, like-- you mentioned it the Raptors have, like, 13 playable guys-- I'm, like, more excited about the bench. And I'm like, oh the starters-- even though I love all of the names on the starters, I love all of them, I'm just like, you need a traditional guard.

You need pull-up shooting. And that's something that they don't have. But hey, maybe they can do it by committee. Maybe Gary Trent, Jr. looks a little bit more like two seasons ago as opposed to last season. There's just different ways to do it.

But I think the shooting capabilities of Gary Trent, Jr. makes it so that he makes more sense with the starters. I also like his fit alongside those guys a lot better. We saw him screen for Pascal last year as well. I guess we saw Dennis Schroder screen for LeBron too last year.

AMIT MANN: He did pretty well too.

IMMAN ADAN: There is some of that-- yeah, there is some of that you're going to get because you need that, right? Like, you need to replace Fred VanVleet in a lot of ways, and one of those is going to be screening. That's something that, like, Scottie's got to be able to do-- tough.

It's just tough to have someone who doesn't shoot. Like, Pascal, Scottie, one of you guys need to be able to really shoot the ball. But yeah, we're going to see a lot of inverted pick and rolls.

And we saw the Raptors do that with Gary Trent, Jr. last year. And so I can see them continue to do that there. But, like, I don't know-- shooting, shooting, shooting, shooting is what this comes down to. And I think continuity is also important. So I'm rolling with Gary there.

AMIT MANN: Yeah. I see both sides of it. With Gary, though, everything you mentioned, absolutely. There's a movement shooting ability to him, which you can-- which also just helps create decoys, get teams in rotation.

It's never a bad thing to have someone like that. We're not really used to it. But it is a good thing. Hopefully we see some of that from Gradey Dick going forward. And Gary as well-- I mean, his defense, just having some screen navigation with a bit more size is never a bad thing. And you trust his three point shooting.

So the Raptors, I would imagine, want to get in transition. You have someone who can just fill lanes, right, who can stretch out the defense. And that's definitely needed, right? You can't always have everyone clogging the paint. It would be nice to have someone not doing that.

But the Dennis Schroder thing, like, I keep on going back to this, and people have given me some flack for it, and I understand, right? You're thinking that he should be the backup point guard. That's what he has been in previous seasons, yada yada yada. But when he has spoken, Dennis Schroder, he has mentioned-- during his media availability he has said himself-- he had mistakenly said that a chance to be a starting point guard with Darko, and someone corrected him-- it was Avek, actually.

He said, like, you're going to be the starting point guard? He said, no, I mean, whatever my role is, yada yada yada. But then when he was talking to Akil Augustine, he had said that-- Darko said his role would be similar to the one he has with the German national team-- from a leisure perspective and also on court perspective.

You put those together and I'm like, huh, he came here, he knows Darko, he knows how he wants to play. And then you think of on court product. And maybe they don't want to give Scottie Barnes the full reins as a point guard, right? And as you mentioned, it's useful to tap into the other parts of Scottie's game.

Like, I want to see him posting up. I want to see him running DHOs as a screener. And I want to see him getting downhill. And maybe you can tap into more of that if he isn't always on ball and you're kind of going back and forth a little bit.

Having a secondary point guard is useful, right? And he's 6'3, Dennis Schroder. That's not-- he's not 6 foot, right? So he can play some twos. And especially with the size the Raptors have, there could be something there that could help them have a bit more balance with their roster overall.

And we know that they don't have really many shooting guards-- really just one kind of, Gary Trent, Jr., and I guess OG Anunoby if we're talking the situation. Maybe it could be OG sometimes, it could be Dennis Schroder too.

And his three point shooting, yeah, I mean, I'd mentioned that he shot the same percentage as Fred last season from a catch and shoot perspective. Granted, Fred was at 4.1 attempts per game, Dennis was at 2.8. So there is a difference.

I don't know. Playing with Darko, OKC, his time there, he shot the corner three really well. Perhaps there's something--

IMMAN ADAN: Who's the backup point guard?

AMIT MANN: Well, I mean, yeah, I mean, you got Malachi Flynn, you got Jeff Dowtin, Jr. And you got Scottie Barnes.

IMMAN ADAN: That's true. That's true. You can just sort of stagger them so that-- which is theoretically what I wanted to see the Raptors do last year. Just the problem was Scottie running the show, I think, works better with the starters. I

Was looking through the numbers. I mean, Cleaning the Glass, I was on there-- there were 129 possessions with what the assumed starting lineup would be. And the numbers there are pretty bad, so I feel like that's what is going to be talked a lot about.

And that would be Scottie Barnes at the one, Gary Trent, Jr., OG Anunoby, Pascal Siakam, and Jakob Poeltl. The numbers there were really bad. It was only 129 possessions. But then, you swap out Jakob Poeltl for Christian Koloko, and those numbers were beautiful. And it was 140 possessions.

AMIT MANN: Why?

IMMAN ADAN: Which would also say small sample size. Let's all throw it out the window-- going through the numbers and really digging in because I'm like, you know, Jakob Poeltl is not a worse player than Christian Koloko. There's no reason for this to fall off the cliff. It was just three point shooting variance, which is what happens when you have entirely small sample sizes like this. Like, what is that-- 129 possessions, five quarters of basketball that we're basing this off of?

It was entirely just three point shooting variance. And so I'm not super down on the idea of what the starting lineup could look like with Jakob Poeltl in there, just because--

AMIT MANN: He's good.

IMMAN ADAN: But I hear what you're saying with Schroder as well. But it's just so funny to look through the numbers because I was like, oh, that starting lineup is bad. Maybe Schroder should start. And then I, like, saw that with Koloko, it was actually a brilliant lineup. And I'm like, OK, yeah, 129 to 140 possessions, not enough.

AMIT MANN: And Dennis is going to get to the free-throw line too. That'll be useful. But then--

IMMAN ADAN: And that's another drawback in terms of, like-- that we didn't mention with the starting point guard. You need a guy who can get to the free throw line.

AMIT MANN: Yeah.