Will simply leaving the DISASTROUS New Orleans Pelicans unlock Brandon Ingram’s best?

Will simply leaving the DISASTROUS New Orleans Pelicans unlock Brandon Ingram’s best?

And I, you know, I guess let me ask you like what do you make of the leaving the Pelicans effect as like a thing to bake into your expectations for him because like you said, just like a horror show of a franchise for the last however many years, the context has been miserable. And it’s not to say the Raptors are the Boston Celtics in terms of context. Obviously, there’s some issues with spacing and um you know, maybe in depth we’ll talk about, but as far as just the effect of like the psychological boost of leaving that franchise, it’s got to be worth something, right? Yeah. I was looking at his lineup data last season and he didn’t play a ton last year because of the uh the ankle injury and various other ailments, but his top three teammates that he played with were uh Eve Mei number one, number two was Brandon Boston and number three was Javvante Green. So that just kind of helps contextualize just, you know, what happened last season. And it’s like really hard to be the guy when you’re on the court with such inexperience and such just the defense is just not going to pay attention to like two or three sometimes four of his teammates and the ball is in his hands a ton. He’s making all these decisions and I just think like leaving that and going to a situation where he’ll be on the court I would imagine you know health willing like he’ll always be on the court with at least one maybe two of Scotty Barnes Emanuel Quickley and RJ Barrett and I think that those three are I guess all of them are kind of in a similar situation when we talk about perception versus reality because of how much money they make. And I think all our quality NBA players like I think Scotty Barnes is way better than quality. Like and I think that RJ Barrett’s efficiency last season was a byproduct of what was happening on the team and you know their direction and who else was on the court and all the injuries. But I thought he made great strides as a playmaker. And the season before when he was traded from the Knicks to the Raptors, he was like inc like what was his his true shooting was like like 60. Yeah, 60. It was it was like eye opening. Um and he looked very comfortable. And I think that Quickley is uh obviously like an incredibly important player for them this season and his ability to stay healthy will be huge. But he is a established, proven catch and shoot three-point shooter, pull up three-point shooter. He’s awesome in transition. You know, you watch his pull-up threes in transition and defenders are like backpedaling because they’re so petrified of the blowby and he can hit the shot. So, he’s just really dangerous player in a lot of different ways. He’s got the floater that we all know about and he’s a tenacious defender. So, I think that uh having, you know, at least two of those and a lot of minutes he’ll have all three when he’s going against opposing starting lineups will just benefit Brandon Ingram in in myriad ways and uh you know, give him a leg up in a way that he just never really had uh in New Orleans where like you know, Zion’s in and out and okay, who is the third best player here? Okay, we have like Lonzo Ball for two seconds. We have Drew Holiday, we have Dejante Murray, and then he gets hurt. Also is just like a terrible fit with Brandon Ingram for his own shooting issues. So, I think playing with like capable ball handlers and being able to operate offball will actually increase his shot quality. Um, and you could see the most efficiencies from Brandon Ingram, a guy who’s like right now in his prime. So, I think I think there’s just a lot of reasons to be bullish about his uh his first season in Toronto. Yeah.

From the cutting room floor of Thursday’s episode of Locked On Raptors: Sean Woodley and Michael Pina discuss why the mere act of leaving the horror show that is the New Orleans Pelicans franchise could unlock the best version of Brandon Ingram.

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