Time to talk another fascinating team. It interesting that we've saved all the good East teams until the end, but they all had some real question marks. That's a big part of why I wanted to save some of these so we had some preseason games under our belt and no team more prominent among those with that I wanted to see in the preseason, then the Toronto Raptors and joining us now the Athletics Blake Murphy. How you doing man? I'm doing well man. How are you? Great. I'm glad to be back getting locked in.

I'm going to play for the season and really excited to talk about this Raptors team and obviously the place to start there is quite Leonard. So just individually, how does he look so far this preseason?

I've been pretty impressed with how he's looked at there. Obviously there's some rust. He said he hadn't played five on five since January and while he's been keeping up with his workouts clearly, you know, there's only so much you can do to simulate game action. So I thought you played in the teams first two preseason games.

The aggression was still there, the embracing of the physicality, especially in the offensive end was still there a couple times he got felt pretty hard and bounce right back and kept attacking.

So there's some rust to work out. You know, the jumper hasn't fallen at his normal clip. His free throw shooting has been off. He hasn't been super locked in defensively, but in terms of attacking and being engaged in the offense and the kind of things you want to see from him from a comfort perspective.

All of that's been there so far. It seems like, you know, it's been a while since he's played now because the Raptors have had this long gap and he sat one game, but it did seem like the offensive chemistry was starting to come along with him and Kyle Aurel a little bit as well.

Yeah, and I think a couple of things that haven't looked great so far. The three ball is only one out of six, but his misses have not looked great to me.

He doesn't look like he's getting a ton of left. I think he's kind of been sure he's been off left and right with those, but you know, it's six shots. I'm not going to panic about it.

And I think he's had a couple of times where he's gotten to the room where you might have thought, oh, he could have dunked that in a study. He went in for a layup, but he has gotten to the foul line plenty.

I mean, he's basically just played like two first halves essentially, right? So and he's got 19 free throw attempts. In that time still looks strong only 10 out of 19 from the foul line, but that's not nothing to worry about there.

I assume either, but his game offensively isn't really as susceptible to this kind of, oh, how does he look athletically analysis because despite his reputation, he's a guy.

He's not like an elite leaper. He's got the great length. He's got great strength. He's more about patiently working to his spots, rising up with that fantastic touch in the mid range.

And so, you know, I think he hasn't looked bad to me. I mean, that's, that's at least a bonus. You know, I, but I'm not sure that I have the ability to compare him to how he looked and say Antonio based on those first two pre-season games and say, already looks better. He looks worse, but he didn't actively look worse. So that's at least a good sign.

Yeah, exactly. And you mentioned the strength and the strength is really, you know, I've watched a lot of quiet Leonard, but you kind of forget that he can really just kind of put his shoulder down and bully guys to the rim.

And you mentioned the free throw volume. The mid range volume has actually been interesting too because the Raptors obviously a big storyline last year was the kind of modernization of their offense where more of the reins were handed to Nick Nurse, who's now the head coach through the first two games.

They had only taken about 10% of their field goal attempts as non-paint twos, which would be even fewer than they did last year. And the bulk of those were co-I Leonard. And I dug into, you know, Benfalk's great stats of cleaning the glass. And co-I Leonard is one of the few guys who, you know, shoots not quite as much from the mid range as the Marta Rosen, but a comparable rate of a shot and hits it an even better clip.

So it was kind of interesting that especially early on in the first game, a couple of Leonard's early shots were very derosen shots. And in that sense, it almost, it almost seemed like he fit in pretty seamlessly.

Yeah, I think you know, he does have that kind of same patient game as derosen, but to me, I think he's more capable of creating good mid range looks against the best defenders than derosen due to that superior size, strength and length. And then I think, you know, he's got even better touch.

And also the fact that he can shoot the three ball off the ball, you know, which derosen famously began to embrace a some degree last year, but co-I is a very accomplished three point shooter in an off ball role, which is kind of how he started his career in San Antonio.

So I think it's the one thing I'd say is not as good as derosen at is passing.

And that derosen made a lot of strides as a pick and roll player and derosen probably can put a little more pressure on the rim, although neither of those guys are really burners who are going to blow by their man necessarily, but I still like quies and ISO score against the best defenders, maybe late in games as well.

In a way that I don't think derosen was quite capable of doing against the top echelon guys defensively, how is he looked?

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