In his second season with the Toronto Raptors, there was no easing into things for Ja’Kobe Walter. Walter was thrown into the deep end, straight into the fiery battlefield known as ‘internal competition’. Alongside Gradey Dick, Ochai Agbaji, and Jamison Battle, Walter had to fight for his spot in the rotation. ‘May the best player win.’
It’s an excellent situation for the team, but for the players involved it’s grueling and it really didn’t seem to work as anticipated. Walter slowly but surely began to pull away from the others, but it had more to do with their poor play rather than him excelling. Agbaji and Dick couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn from beyond the arc, the former shot 18.5% from deep and the latter hit 30.1% of his attempts. Battle on the other hand could never seem to earn head coach Darko Rajakovic’s trust long enough to get consistent minutes.
Walter primarily earned his minutes through his energy on defense. He and Shead were a destructive duo off the bench, hounding other guards relentlessly for turnovers. Walter also shot the best of the bunch by far, finishing the season shooting 40.9% from deep, averaging 7.5 points, 2.6 rebounds, 1.2 assists and a steal per game. His play throughout the season earned him an increase in minutes per game in the playoffs, leaping from 20.5 to 32.0. That did have a lot to do with Immanuel Quickley being injured, but the Raptors also counted on Walter to be a primary defender on Donovan Mitchell, an incredibly tough task for your first playoff series.
The 2026-27 season is the first time Walter has a clear sense of where he sits in the pecking order since entering the NBA. Most of his competition from last season is gone, Agbaji was dumped at last year’s deadline and Dick is theoretically en route to Los Angeles as part of the Kawhi Leonard trade. Walter’s also proven to be a more dynamic and trusted player than Battle. For the first time in his young career, Walter can focus on fighting to win his minutes rather than fighting for his minutes.
Raptors Republic’s Louis Zatzman has been doing a series this month on the biggest questions for the Raptors heading into the season, and the questions he’s posed about Walter offer a lens through which we can preview his upcoming season.
The first question, ‘Is Ja’Kobe Walter ready to be a proper sharpshooter?’, has clearer answers, but the Raptors are so desperate for legit shooting, it’s a question worth asking. In his first NBA season, Walter shot 34.9% from deep on 3.6 attempts per game. That number rose to 40.9% in his second season on 3.7 attempts but he couldn’t maintain it in the playoffs, making just 17 of his 52 attempts. Walter’s shown flashes of being a high level shooter, but hasn’t found the consistency or had the volume to be amongst the league’s best.
The current ‘proper sharpshooters’ of the league — Collin Gillespie, Sam Merrill, A.J. Green, and Duncan Robinson — all shoot 7+ threes per game while maintaining their 40% accuracy. Nearly double Walter’s attempts. The Raptors have ranked near the bottom of the league in three point attempts for years, if Walter can ratchet up his attempts and sustain his efficiency from last year, it would help tremendously, but that’s a tall order.
The second question, ‘Is Ja’Kobe Walter ready to dribble and finish?‘ is a slightly more layered inquiry. The first layer is whether or not Walter is actually ready to take that step. It’s a question that we won’t know the answer to until we see it, but we have seen some encouraging signs. Walter started to show some flashes of off-the-bounce creation towards the second half of the season, but he’s never been a good finisher. Last season he ranked in the 19th percentile in rim accuracy amongst qualified wings and a big reason for that is he’s simply too small to muscle his way through the defense. Regardless, Walter has shown tremendous growth throughout his two seasons in the league, if dribbling and finishing is a priority for him this offseason, he’ll figure it out.
Which is actually the second layer of the question. Is dribbling and finishing a priority for him? Do the Raptors need Walter to dribble and finish? Sure, having Walter be a more dynamic player is good for everybody, but does it need to be a priority right now? The Raptors need play finishers more than they need another guys who has the ball in his hands. They particularly need players that can space the floor and finish plays off Barnes, Barrett, and Leonard drives. There’s no doubt that being able to beat defenders off the dribble would make Walter a greater threat from beyond the arc, but of the two areas — shooting or dribbling and finishing — it would be far better for the team if Walter hit 38% of his threes on 6+ attempts a night rather than being able to break guys down off the dribble.
We’ve seen what Walter has been in his career thus far. He’s been a strong on-ball defender, who at times is too small to contain the more physical guards. He’s been a solid three-point shooter, with the potential to rise to the level of the elite sharpshooters. He’s been a high-energy, disruptive guard who still has more to offer as a chaos creator. This season, the Raptors need him to be more than those things. They need him to step up. The trade for Leonard is a vote of confidence in Walter, now he needs to prove that it was justified.