Takeaways from Thaddeus Young's debut with Raptors

The newest addition made his debut with Toronto in a lopsided loss and while it may be tough to find the positives vs. the Pelicans, Thaddeus Young could be an impact player off the bench once he gets acclimated to the Raptors' system. Listen to the full podcast on the Raptors Over Everything podcast feed

Video Transcript

AMIT MANN: And just touching on, I guess, the game itself, he only played 12 minutes, but what were your thoughts in those 12 minutes, although, it was a blowout?

KATIE HEINDL: I mean, it wasn't like the best showcase game to come in on.

AMIT MANN: No, it wasn't.

KATIE HEINDL: Right.

AMIT MANN: No.

KATIE HEINDL: But, again, there's really nothing-- he's a player where, like, you're not going to get the sense of him immediately right away. It's going to be a cumulative thing over time, you know what I mean? So, again, I'm not really sweating, or I'm not sweating at all the addition. I think he will get it really quickly. It can take kind of a bad game, but if it just takes one bad game to then have a string of good, competent, excellent games, then that's fine. Sometimes you got to learn ugly lesson, and then you'll never do it again.

AMIT MANN: Yeah. And I appreciated him yesterday saying that the difficulty with learning the Raptor system is that because they are so positionless, you have to learn every position.

KATIE HEINDL: Yeah.

AMIT MANN: That could be really tricky, especially for a player-- I mean, he's a pretty heavy guy. His basketball IQ is through the roof, that's why the Raptors have wanted him for so many years, but that can be challenging. And him going out there again only playing his, I guess, fourth game this year, also factoring in he has been pretty much in school, in class the past couple of days since he became a Raptor trying to learn the system and learn multiple positions. I thought it was pretty good.

And without even knowing, he's been a fit for years on the Raptors because of his size, able to guard on the perimeter, I love his screen rolling ability, he's mastered the art of the moving screen, which is something that can't be dismissed. It's a very technical thing that you've got to be able to do properly, but some big men can do it and he knows how to do it. He rolls really well, he passes out of screen and rolls really well, his activity without the ball, offensive rebounding.

KATIE HEINDL: Yeah. The passing.

AMIT MANN: Yeah.

KATIE HEINDL: Tha'ts what I was going to say. His outlet passing, his passing is just good, and it's like that boring little stuff that can turn a game around and that we've seen happen. I was going to say too, to your point, of him being in school, it's interesting because it's almost like I imagine for him-- who didn't, yeah, he wasn't getting that many minutes on the Spurs, but you're still integrated into that system. It would almost be like tossing out one very intense textbook for another, right? To go from almost extremely position-oriented to position-less, right? Like, that's got to be a little bit of a head trip. So give him a couple of games to catch up. I think he's a very intelligent player, he'll be able to pick it up pretty quick.

AMIT MANN: Yeah, I would agree. And I think that's going to happen. He was the Hustle Man of the Year in 2020, 2021, so he certainly fits the Raptors mold in that way. And then the previous four years, he was also top five in that voting. I feel like I made a highlight reel of his plays yesterday and I posted on my Twitter if you can find it at AmitMann_Man, and I felt like I was making a lowlight reel as a joke because I was focusing on these weird things. Like, oh, look at this pass out of the double team, look at this offensive rebound, look at this turnover that happened because of him, but it was telling smart he is on the court, and I think he's going to be a great player for the Raptors.