Who's the starting SF next season?

[Inspector]

Basically, I'm asking who's the best player on the roster to fill out the small forward position? Do you see Weems coming back and running the athletic dynamic duo of DeRozan and Money Weems? Should we give Kleiza another chance after that horrific knee injury? I personally hope we don't, and we allow James Johnson to start for the season. His defensive ability was really helpful last year, hes' an O.K jump shooter...and he's athletic. Plus, we're tanking, right?

[Check my Stats]

Probably Kleiza because we committed so much money to him, but it should be Johnson for sure, especially if he improves his spot up jump shooting and is smarter with the ball.

[Built Ford Tough]

Kleiza is out until at least January anyways, possibly longer, so he isn't really a factor in this as it will likely be late Feb/early March by the time he is actually back into game shape anyways. There is probably a good chance that we won't even see him in the lineup at all next season, assuming there is one.

 

Johnson will likely be the starter assuming no real changes are made and the Raptors just bring Weems back and hunt for a center in FA, which seems like that is the plan. He compliments Bargnani well with his defense and rebounding, but him and DeRozan aren't exactly the ideal pairing at the wing spots considering that neither one are capable of knocking down shots and neither one are particularly great at creating offense off of the dribble (DeRozan is competent enough at creating his own offense, but is a poor playmaker, while Johnson is pretty much the opposite). Of course, this is assuming that both come into next season as the same basic players that they were last season, which isn't exactly a fair assumption considering both of them are still young and developing.

 

If I had the choice, I would like to see Kleiza as the starting small forward because his perimeter shooting would be huge next to DeRozan, but that isn't happening. I also think that a healthy Kleiza is a much better player than he showed last season. In an ideal world he is a 7th-8th man off of the bench (like his Denver days) but the Raptors lack talent and he is the most talented small forward that they have.

 

I'd bet that Johnson is the starter, though.