Gradey Dick: Rise of the Beast
Gradey Dick is easily one of the best shooters in the 2023 NBA draft class. Come see why Garbage Time Ghim sees more to Dick than meets the eye.
I saw the new Transformers movie this past week, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts. It was a fun summer movie, but it wasn’t good. The movie did make me think, though; it made me think about roster construction, players excelling in supporting roles, and the burden of leadership. The movie may have defined mid, but there were lessons to be learned and concepts to think about. With this being my final player profile piece for this draft class, I started getting into my feelings and missing this class. Soon the mystery of what team they end up on, how they look on an NBA floor, and how they function against NBA-level competition will all be gone. Not that these players will be defined as finished products in a couple of weeks, but they won’t be in the draft anymore, and we’ll no longer be seeing them through that lens. We’ll be moving on to a new group, but before we do that, let’s see what Gradey Dick’s game may offer an NBA team and how he has more skills than may meet the eye.
Recently our very own Corey Tulaba wrote an incredible piece on Kansas’s Kevin McCullar and how he could potentially be a star player in his role. Unfortunately, McCullar decided to go back to school. Still, it was a beautifully written piece that got me thinking differently about star players and how we should highlight guys that may not be conventional star players but should receive more praise for being excellent in the role they’re being asked to play. This is important because not everyone can be a lead guy. Even when you look at the Academy Awards every year, you have people winning Best Actor, but you also get people that win Best Supporting Actor as well. Playing a supporting role in basketball may not be traditionally glamorous, but I think it’s becoming increasingly evident that NBA teams are not built on star players alone. To compete or win a championship, you need the perfect symphony of star players and star role players synergizing into a beautiful team. Look at the two teams fighting for the title as we speak. You can identify some awesome role players that are not considered stars by any means but provide incredible value and have been major factors in their respective teams making it to this point in the season.
Look at the Miami Heat; through every round of the playoffs, we’ve seen so much talk about their undrafted guys and the guys they’ve picked up off the scrap heap of other teams in the league. Guys like Max Strus, Caleb Martin, Kevin Love, Cody Zeller, and Gabe Vincent—all these guys have been huge contributors and have been almost as important as their main headliners, Jimmy Butler and Bam Adebayo. The Nuggets roster has the same theme going on; you’ve got guys like KCP, Aaron Gordon, Jeff Green, Bruce Brown, and Christian Braun playing next to their stars, Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray. As you can see, both sides needed the help of many guys outside of their stars to keep playing basketball into the middle of June.
All of this leads me to Gradey Dick. Five years from now, I think we’ll look back at this draft and remember the Victor Wembanyama hype, and the battle for the second spot between Scoot Henderson and Brandon Miller; we’ll remember the Thompson twins because you don’t get freaky athletic twins all the time, and guys like Gradey Dick and the deluge of terrible jokes about his name. Beyond all of the headlines, I think we will look back at Gradey Dick’s game and potentially ask ourselves if we severely underrated his game. I want to state at the top of my piece that I’m not about to go into a longwinded argument that I believe Gradey Dick is the second coming of Ray Allen or Reggie Miller. The point that I’m trying to string together here is that I think he will offer a good array of skills that will enable him to star in a role for a playoff team one day. If I’m wondering whether or not I think he can play in a Conference Finals one day, my answer to that question is yes, and let’s dive deeper into why.
Offense:
The foundation of his value on offense will be rooted in his shooting. As much as I will be trying to sell his other skills in this piece, I’d be a fool if I didn’t start by saying that the foundation of his offensive impact and gravity is rooted in his shooting. Gradey Dick is a lights-out shooter who shot the ball excellently in his lone season at Kansas. Dick had shooting splits of 44.2/40.3/85.4 on good volume. It’s important to note that Dick shot over 40% from three for the season on 5.7 attempts per game. That’s more than enough volume for us to know that Dick can really stroke it from the outside. In his piece on Dick earlier in the season, Tyler Rucker did a great job of highlighting Dick’s shooting numbers at the time and how they were stacking up against the top snipers in the last ten draft classes. The efficiency from outside came down a little bit by the end of the season, but he still finished the season with great numbers, and it shouldn’t come to anyone’s surprise as teams had more film and were doing everything in their power to contest all his shots from outside.
When we get into the guts of his shooting ability, we have to note that Dick is not some standstill shooter who can only get his shot on corner hits. Shooting off the catch is where he’s most comfortable, but it won’t be the only type of shot he takes. Dick is a willing shooter off the dribble, attacking closeouts, but it does need to improve. It looks smooth when he’s shooting off the catch. Still, it does look a little less smooth when he shoots it off the dribble. He’s not going to be a guy that hits you with a bunch of combo moves and a step back to nail a shot from deep, but he can dribble the ball without sending it into the stands every other time. He’s not Jalen Brown, am I right? (Just not kidding. I hate you, Tyler Rucker).
It's pretty when you get into the mechanics of Dick’s shot. Do you need more analysis than that? His shot is repeatable; it looks easy, and the balance and footwork are good. I think his feet can be a little narrow on misses, but it doesn’t happen enough for me to flag it as an issue he needs to address. We have to throw in the fact that he’s also 6’8” with good athleticism, which makes it harder to block his shot, and his flashes of on-ball ability make him that much more of a threat. He’s not Dwight Schrute, who once described his speed as somewhere between a Snake, a Mongoose, or a Panther. But he’s also not Woody Harrelson. Dick has some decent vertical pop, and he loves to show it off in transition, where he does a good job of leaking out and attacking the rim to make sleeping defenses pay. If you didn’t know his shooting percentages, he’d easily be a guy that you could tell would be a good shooter just based on how his shooting stroke looks. Sometimes you just have to trust your eyes; they know what’s beautiful. Watch the compilation I posted below and look at how pretty that stroke can be but also note the misses and how he does have some cleaning up to do.
Where things get fun is with his passing. Dick is a pretty good passer that will be an excellent connector. As a guy filling a role and playing off a primary creator, it’s nice to have another guy on the floor that you know can reliably move the ball, make the extra pass, and even create out of the pick and roll in a pinch. Now when I say pinch, I mean a pinch. Dick will not be a guy that will get a high level of usage in the NBA as a creator. He will mostly be a secondary or tertiary option that can move the ball and keep the offense humming. This connecting and ball movement type is huge because those guys are fun to play with.
You won’t ever have to worry about Dick being a black hole or ever doing too much. He’s a guy that knows how to play within himself and also sacrifice for the team’s success. Dick is willing to be a decoy and bend the defense with his shooting. He knows how to stay active to keep defenses chasing and bending all over the floor. Guys like Dick are always super valuable. Imagine Dick running off of screens and taking wide-open looks off of a guy like Nikola Jokic or Giannis Antetokounmpo.
Dick’s at-rim finishing is just okay. As I’ve mentioned before, he has sometimes shown some athletic pop on his drives to the rim and even some creativity with some of his layups. Overall though, his lack of strength hurts him in this area. He must bulk up to increase his efficiency around the rim and free throw attempts. He had some excellent finishes at times, but this will not be his marquee skill overall. As I mentioned earlier, he can be a terror in transition when it comes to taking the ball all the way to the rim, but in half-court sets, the lack of elite ball handling and speed hurt him.
In Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, there’s an Autobot named Mirage that’s voiced by Pete Davidson. He’s not the main character in the movie; that’ll always be Optimus Prime, but Mirage is huge because he offers a ton of comic relief, and he’s the one that builds the bond with the main human character, Noah. As the movie progresses, you see Optimus go through this wild existential crisis as a leader, bearing the weight of his team's situation, worried about the fate of his home planet, and balancing all that with a new budding relationship with mankind. Through all his angst, characters like Mirage play a huge part in keeping things moving and keeping the Autobots on track with their goals to ultimately defeat Unicron. Mirage was a really fun character, and Pete Davidson killed it with the voice acting.
This is important to note because Mirage wasn’t a super high-usage guy in the film but he got a good chunk of action and almost all the funny lines. Characters like Mirage are huge for teams because of what they offer in support of your stars and what they can offer in place of your stars. It was hilarious to see Optimus being moody and in his feelings, which was a side of him that I don’t think we’ve ever seen in a Transformers movie. I also don’t know if it was necessary or even worked, but seven movies into a franchise, you have to start taking risks. Just look at what the Fast and the Furious franchise has done in their last four movies; some truly wild stuff.
Gradey Dick will be the Mirage of a playoff team one day. He won’t ever be asked to carry the burden as the number one option on a team, but he will do a great job of filling in the gaps, leveraging his strengths, and playing a significant role in a team’s success. As an offensive weapon, he’ll be in the right places, provide great spacing with his outside shooting and off-ball movement, and keep the ball and the defense moving. As a third or fourth option on a playoff team, that’s a star. Dick is going to be high up on a lot of draft boards because his strengths are needed on every team in the league. Everyone wants shooting, a shooter that can do more than just shoot, and a guy that can do all that with size and athleticism.
Defense:
This is where things get less interesting. I won’t take this as an opportunity to take a hot steaming dump on his defense. I think Dick is going to be an okay to decent defender on the next level. Let’s talk about his strengths first. Dick has good size to guard wings. He’s every bit 6’8” on the floor which he should be able to use to his advantage. He doesn’t have the longest wingspan, but at least it’s not negative and will be an asset for him. Along with the decent wingspan, he has good hands. He does a good job staying active with his hands and being a pest. My main issue with him right now is the lack of strength. If Dick doesn’t want to get bullied on the next level, I think he will have to bulk up and add a good amount of mass. I don’t need an Anthony Davis-level bulk-up, but I think he needs to get stronger to deal with the NBA wings. I also think he lacks the top-end foot speed and flexibility ever to become a truly elite defender. Another aspect of his defense that I think is a plus is his willingness to go and grab a rebound. He averaged over five per game last season, which is pretty good, and we all know that rebounding is a part of defense. He also did a pretty good job of attacking the offensive boards; I forgot to mention that above.
I thought Dick showed some ability as a team defender, was good about rotations, and was usually in the right spots. The issue with him was his focus at times, I thought he got caught dirty, ball-watching at times. If he gets caught ball-watching like that on the next level, he just won’t see the floor. He needs to work on his screen navigation because it can look really clunky at times. I know that sometimes it was due to a lack of communication, but I genuinely thought he looked awkward. I also thought he was caught flat-footed a lot and needs to continue to work on his lateral mobility. Even with intense work and coaching, I don’t think he’ll ever be a dazzling lateral mover, but I do believe there is room for improvement. But I want to make sure you understand that I think he will get there. If you watch the clips in the compilation I attached below, you can see some of the awkwardness with him getting over screens and how he can be attacked in isolations\.
Considering his ability on both ends of the floor, it’s safe to say he’s a lock to be a first-round pick and should probably go somewhere in the late teens to early twenties. Dick will be highly valued for his shooting ability and size, and I think he’s just good enough at everything else to lock him into the first round. I think grabbing him in the lottery might be a stretch considering the other guys that’ll be available in that range, but I’d feel fine grabbing him anywhere from picks 18-30.
In terms of NBA Comps, you can’t help but think of guys like Doug McDermott or even Luke Kennard. Am I lacking creativity in picking two white guys to compare Gradey Dick? Maybe, but it’s also pretty damn good.
I appreciate all of you guys riding with me and my madness all cycle long. I’m really excited to keep pumping out content for you guys that’s always unabashedly me.
(The Ghim dispatches were always fun to read)
Some of the clips in that defensive anthology just look so obviously bad. He is not really staying with the offensive player-- just hoping for the best putting his size in the other guy's face.