Raptors Preseason Begins!

Tonight the Toronto Raptors played their first preseason game against the Sacramento Kings winning 99-94. While these are only observations from one game it's already apparent that the Raptors have improved in at least 2 aspects during the offseason. 

1. The bigger the better: Many of the Raptors decided to bulk up during the offseason including Terrence Ross, DeMar DeRozan, and Jonas Valanciunas each doing so for seemingly different reasons.

     Ross was criticized after the playoff series against the Nets for being too skinny because it allowed Joe Johnson and Paul Pierce to back him down in the post leading to easy buckets. He seemed to have taken the criticism as best he could and simply responded by coming back with more bulk to deal with larger the sg/sf  in the league. 

     DeMar DeRozan made his first NBA all-star appearance last season and he seems intent on making sure he will make it back there this year. DeRozan already had enough weight on him to deal with larger apposing guards but he seems to have made "mad gains bro" over the summer in an effort to make his drives to the basket even more deadly. DeMar has shown to be a great finisher at the rim but plenty of big men can still get in his path forcing him to lean and attempt a more difficult shot. This year however thanks to his weight gain DeRozan can now finish against the stronger big men which will hopefully lead to more and-one opportunities. 

     Last season Jonas Valanciunas averaged 8.8 rebounds a game which is quite respectable for a players second year in the league but still not enough to make a title run. Jonas doesn't have many issues reading how a rebound will come off the boards but rather he struggled with stopping larger centres who used their size to push him out of the spot for the rebound. Although there aren't a lot of these behemoth type players in the league this was still an issue that led to Chuck Hayes having to play extra minutes which isn't exactly what the Raptors would like. So to combat this he's gotten a little bigger and I'm sure his rebounding numbers this season will improve because of this. 

2. Tyler Hansbrough spent the summer shooting corner 3's apparently.... I guess he just saw how much people enjoyed seeing Amir Johnson shoot 3's and he thought it would be fun if he could shoot them too. Either way I doubt he will be seeing very many minutes next season but hey it's nice to see that even the players deep into the rotation are working hard to enhance their game.