Lucas Nogueira

The irrepressible Nogueira lost his rotation spot as the Toronto Raptors' main reserve centre to Jakob Poeltl over the course of last season, and although Poeltl has now been dealt to the San Antonio Spurs, the Raptors have made no obvious signs of re-signing Nogueira, instead signing Greg Monroe for depth and intending to play Serge Ibaka more regularly at five. Nogueira is therefore out of work, despite his length and athleticism making him an active defensive presence who wins possessions. There has never been much polished or consistent about Bebe, but there does not really need to be for him to be effective.

[...] Legitimately good players were available for low prices. Some stand-out examples include Lopez (who took only a bi-annual exception for one year from Milwaukee, quite the pay cut from his $22,642,350 last season), O'Quinn (who did not deliberately opt out of a $4,256,250 one year player option just to sign a one year $4,449,000 but found he had little choice), Alex Len (who signed a mere two year, $8.5 million contract with the team closest to his own name despite how good he was at times last year) and Nurkic (a restricted free agent post player like Capela, who, like Capela, seemingly drew no significant-enough offers from other teams). And some got even less attention than that - after being waived by the Pacers, Al Jefferson went to China, while Lucas Nogueira has not signed at all. Which might explain why he has changed agency.[...]

Lucas Nogueira
C, 7’0, 241lbs, 24 years old, 3 years of experience

Given the first big minutes of his career, Nogueira started well, then wobbled, and eventually got benched. At his best, Nogueira was a shot blocker, athlete, lob threat and surprisingly good high post passer, who lacks the physicality to rebound or the skill to make much other than the point-blank shot (the three made three-pointers an anomaly that lie about his overall shooting percentage on jump shots of 21.7%), but he does a few select things on the NBA court very well. It’s weird, then, that the team went away from that. If he can shore up his weaknesses in his skill set, learn to defend the perimeter and get more experience, they won’t be able to bench him again.

Player Plan: One year of rookie scale salary left. Extension eligible, but has not been reliable enough to merit that kind of talk. Is a useful and potentially very useful back-up big, however, so keep him. And keep him in the rotation this time.