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TSN Raptors Reporter

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LAS VEGAS – Ja’Kobe Walter felt like it was time for a change.

Soon after his up and down rookie season ended, the Raptors guard wanted to shake things up and so he chopped off his trademark locks. The dreads that Walter had been sporting since his high school days in his hometown of McKinney, Texas are no more. His hair is as short as it’s been since he was in the seventh grade.

“I did it after our last game of the season,” he told TSN. “I really didn’t have a true reason for it… I just wanted to restart, so I cut it off just to grow it back [again].”

Running drills with his young teammates in the team’s hotel ballroom-turned-practice court at the Wynn resort in Las Vegas, Walter is almost unrecognizable and it’s not just because of his buzz cut. Since Toronto’s 2024-25 campaign came to an early end in April, the 20-year-old has put on 12 pounds of muscle. He says he doesn’t feel like a rookie anymore. He doesn’t look like one either.

The Raptors’ loaded Summer League roster includes seven players who suited up for the NBA club last season, as well as an intriguing group of rookies. Naturally, there will be plenty of eyes on Collin Murray-Boyles – the ninth-overall pick in last month’s draft – when they debut against the Chicago Bulls on Friday. But don’t sleep on Walter. The soon-to-be sophomore could sneak up on some teams and surprise a lot of people this season.

Selected 19th overall in last summer’s draft, a pick that came to the Raptors from Indiana in the Pascal Siakam trade, Walter had a bumpy start to his NBA career. He injured his shoulder during an informal workout just before training camp, which cost him the entire preseason and the first couple weeks of the regular season. He came back, played in four games, then hurt his shoulder again. Injuries and G League stints prevented him from building any kind of momentum.

“That was my first time ever being injured and I got injured plenty of times last year,” Walter said. “It was definitely tough for me, but I learned that I love basketball. Being away from it kinda helped me in other aspects of my game and just in life, understanding myself. So, I think it’s really a blessing in disguise that it happened to me.”

It also allowed his progress to fly under the radar. Fellow first-year guard Jamal Shead led the team in games played and earned a couple of NBA All-Rookie votes. Second-round forward Jonathan Mogbo and undrafted sharpshooter Jamison Battle also turned out to be great finds. 

But quietly, Walter showed encouraging flashes when he was on the floor. The 20-year-old has a nose for the ball. He plays hard on both ends of the court and improved as a shooter over the course of the season, hitting 42 per cent of his three-point attempts after the all-star break, up from 31 per cent.

“That’s when I really started to feel like myself, those last 20 games,” Walter said. “I had a good showing, so I think I’m prepared for this next season.”

Going back and forth from Toronto and Dallas these past couple months, Walter has been training hard. One of his focuses is to expand his offensive package. He wants to extend his range and become a more consistent shooter. He’s worked on his balance. But primarily, he’s been hitting the weight room and concentrating on his diet.

With a deceptively quick first step and his shiftiness around the basket, Walter hasn’t had trouble getting to the rim. The challenge has been absorbing contact and finishing through physicality – a common issue for first-year players, and the slenderly built 6-foot-5 guard was listed at 180 pounds going into last season. He shot 47 per cent inside of five feet, which ranked last on the team among the 10 players with at least 120 attempts from that range. Shead, who’s generously listed at 6-feet, shot 55 per cent on the same number of attempts.

It was one of the things that head coach Darko Rajakovic addressed in his end-of-season exit meeting, but getting bigger and stronger was already at the top of Walter’s offseason to-do list. It’s a tough, physical league, which was among his early takeaways. As his body continues to fill out, he should have an easier time taking hits on either end of the floor, while also improving his conditioning and durability.

At least on paper, this appears to be a far deeper roster than the Raptors have had in recent years, especially on the wing. Walter will have to earn his minutes, battling for time with Gradey Dick (who has an extra year on him) and Ochai Agbaji (who’s coming off a breakout campaign) behind incumbent starter RJ Barrett and Brandon Ingram, who was finally cleared for contact on Thursday and is set to ramp up his offseason training in anticipation of debuting for the club this season. 

Nothing is guaranteed. Dick started all 54 games he played as a sophomore, and assuming Ingram is healthy, should open the new season as the sixth man. However, if the 21-year-old doesn’t make significant strides on defence or start shooting the ball like the team expected him to when it made him the 13th-overall pick in 2023 (he hit 35 per cent of his threes last season), it’s not hard to imagine Walter jumping him in the pecking order at some point.

“Everybody likes to compete, so competition within the game is going to push everybody to be better,” Walter said. “How I look at it is and how I can separate myself is just [by doing] the little things throughout the day that maybe [the other players] don’t do. I think I can separate myself, not only offensively, but defensively. Active hands, getting deflections – that’s something that I was good at last year towards the end of the season, so I want to carry that into this season and show myself early with that.”

He'll get his first opportunity to do so in Vegas, where he’ll share ball handling duties – and likely the starting backcourt – with Shead, while playing alongside Mogbo, Battle, Murray-Boyles and 2025 second-round pick Alijah Martin. The NBA Summer League has become appointment viewing for hardcore basketball fans. Thursday’s opening day matchup between the Lakers’ Bronny James and Dallas’ first-overall pick Cooper Flagg will be broadcast on ESPN and is generating record-breaking ticket prices. However, it’s the Raptors who go in with the second-best odds of winning the whole tournament and Walter who figures to be a big part of their potential success in the desert.

“They all know how important this summer is for them and for us and for the continued growth, so they are taking it very, very seriously,” Rajakovic said on Thursday. “Really proud of the work that guys are putting in individually, and this group over here preparing for the Summer League, they look like they’re in pretty good shape.”