Raptors' Markquis Nowell shines in loss to Bulls at Summer League

Amit Mann discusses how Markquis Nowell and Gradey Dick performed in their Summer League debut with the Raptors. Full game recap is on the 'Raptors Over Everything' podcast feed.

Video Transcript

AMIT MANN: Welcome, welcome, welcome to the Raptors Over Everything podcast. My name's Amit Mann. Rate, review, and subscribe on your podcast platforms. And on YouTube, like and subscribe there as well.

We are out here, if you didn't know. I'm out here in Vegas for NBA Summer League. I've done a few interviews already, one with Gradey Dick, one with Markquis Nowell, and I was there for game one of Summer League for the Raptors. They fall 83 to 74 to the Bulls.

And I was fortunate enough to be pretty much sidelined for the game. That's where the media seats were, and I was sitting there, and I thought someone at some point was going to tell me, just tap me on the shoulder, saying, sir, get out of here. This is not where you belong. But that was the seat. I've never watched a game from that vantage point. It is so cool. It's a great experience.

You learn so much more about the game. You hear so much more. And you see how much faster it is as opposed to what we see on television. These guys have like very little time to make their decisions. And this is Summer League, not even the NBA where you have even less time.

But it was really cool to see it from there, and I'll just give you a few tidbits from what I found from that experience. But let's just kind of go through the list of players that stood out today. We'll start right at the top with-- who else-- Markquis Nowell. He was terrific. 29 minutes, 17 points, four rebounds, five assists, three steals, and four 3's. And the question we had around him as he goes through this journey that he's on right now is, is everything going to translate from what we saw in college to the NBA, or to Summer League, in this case? And you know what? It kind of did.

He was probing the defense. He was getting paint touches galore. He was suffocating on defense-- hounding, actually, constantly. Whenever he was on ball, he was just getting so into the space of the person he was guarding. And I asked him about this when I talked to him a few days ago, and he said that was his MO.

That's what he wants to do. He loves defense. He loves playing it. He just knows that if he does allow too much airspace for the person that he is guarding, then obviously his height starts to show. But if he's tight to the body, if he's moving his feet, he can be very disruptive, and he loves it. He actually said he wants to tear guys' eyes out on defense when he's playing.

I loved it. And we saw a lot of that today.

Offensively, I mean the pick and roll that he had with Moses Brown was pretty potent. And you really can see how a person like him can be-- can thrive in a system like Darko's where there's a lot of high ball screens. And he has space now off that ball screen, or he's maybe going downhill against a big, or maybe he's probing the defense, as I mentioned. His handle is so tight, and he just has that ability to use his vision passing abilities and start finding his teammates. And he had a wraparound pass to Moses Brown that was really nice. He had this cross court pass to Ron Harper Jr for three that really stuck out.

Because you don't really know if he's able to do that, right? We know he can do it in college, but can he make that kind of play at this level? And he was doing it. So that was really great to see for him. And just how cerebral he is in the pick and roll. That really does stand out. And his size, in some ways, is obviously to his disadvantage. But he knows how to use it to his advantage as well, like the small windows that he's able to get through and the shifting of gears, it really does keep defenders and teams on their heels.

Now, again, does that translate to the NBA? I don't know. But right now in Summer League, it was really good stuff. And also his leadership really stuck out too. I mean, again, from the vantage point I had, you could see cases where he's talking to players and he's telling Joe Wieskamp to go back door, he ends up getting a few free throws. There was another case where I heard him yell "motion" and then he made a pass to Moses Brown at the top of the key.

Markquis setting a down screen for Gradey, and then after that there was another screen set for Gradey from DJ Hogg. And all of a sudden, Gradey gets a nice move and 3, and that was the second of the game. We'll get to Gradey in a second, but it's like, little things like that that he's constantly just being that leader on the court. And that was one of his best characteristics in college is that he was an on court leader. I'm still curious what it looks like when he's not on ball, or is he always going to be on ball. Can he still be as effective as an off ball player in some matchups?

Now we're kind of just like speculating and kind of just thinking of things of how he could be challenged because everyone's expecting him not to be able to make it. But that is something that could come up for him. Does he need to be on ball in the pick and roll? He's excellent at it, to his credit. But how does it work when he's not on the ball? And just his-- his effort, his energy was really infectious. I mean, there were points where the crowd was just cheering for him because of that hustle play that he made.

On two on ones, he's somehow coming up with a steal. There was another play where he timed really nicely on a dig on the ball, and now he's out there for a breakaway layup that ends up being an and-one where he used the rim as a defender, and he made a play, and it was an and-one. And it was awesome, and post-game he was mentioning that some of the Raptors players-- there was a few there-- there's OG, there was Scottie, Yak was there, Malachi Flynn was there, Chris Boucher was there. And they were giving him pointers on the sideline. And I could see them cheering, like they really wanted to see him succeed and they loved his effort and energy.

So a great game from Markquis. I just want to keep on seeing it.

And some of the challenges he had-- I mean, we saw a bit of it today, but we also saw his counter to it. There were cases where the Bulls were blitzing on a pick and roll, and he was trying to pass over the defense and it got deflected. But then again, there was another case where they blitzed and he made a nice wraparound pass to Moses Brown. And then another case where Dalen Terry was up on him.

He again deflected a pass, and the ball goes to the other side of the court, and Markquis corrals it. And he has like a very small window-- it's so tight to get through-- and Delon Terry-- that's a big guard, a good defender-- and he gets by him and he draws a foul. So those are like his counters to what he's going to be dealing with as he continues to go on this journey of his.

But let's keep on seeing. Let's see if he has these counters to go with them.

Let's move on to Gradey Dick, who didn't have the best shooting game. So 30 minutes, 10 points, four rebounds, two assists, three steals, two of nine from 3. He made his first 3 late in the second quarter. It was a corner 3. He had a lot of makeable shots, and he missed them. Now before the game, or after the game, Pat Delaney was talking about a lot of the players felt that rust in this game. A lot of them haven't played in a really long time. And I think that was pretty clear with Gradey that he just didn't have that rhythm that he was accustomed to having.

But him shooting 2 of 9 from 3, those were all very makeable shots, those are shots that we've seen him make at the college level. They were no different. They were maybe a little bit more rushed, but he's been rushed in college too. Everyone knows-- they know the kind of shooter that he is. So I expect some of those are going to start dropping at some point. They're going to start going in. And I hope that happens probably next game.

But what did intrigue me was the other parts of Gradey's game, and that's what makes him exciting as a prospect is that yes, he does have that shooting gravity, but there's more to it. He made some nice kickout passes. One was to Ron Harper. Another one was to [INAUDIBLE], who I want to talk about in a second. He was driving with purpose. A few times he did get blocked or he got stifled at the rim. That's OK. I just like that he's able to make those quick decisions and he's decisive in what he wants to do.

I did find that in the second half the Raptors, they were going a little bit more to him. And they were making some plays where he's coming off some stagger screens, or he's being a screener and he's emerging out of nowhere, and he gets an open 3. They didn't go down. But I think there's reason to think that they're going to go down next game.

And post-game, he wasn't worried about it. So why are we worried about it, right? Part of his MO is that he does not worry about the misses. He's thinking about the next make. And this was a game where, you know, didn't shoot very well.

Obviously, with some of the heightened pressure or the heightened interest in how he's going to do because it's Summer League game one, you know, you'd like to deliver a little bit more, but it didn't go that way. I just want to see that he's paying attention to the details, especially defensively. There were some blow-bys on him, and there are a few cases where he didn't close out properly and now his man is getting an offensive rebound.

Those are the kind of things that he does have control on. But the shot's going down, sometimes the shots aren't going to go down. It is what it is. Hopefully we see a better performance next game. But I think it was a good performance from Gradey overall, just the shots didn't fall necessarily.