Ja’Kobe Walter can do the math.
It runs in the family, though he is decidedly not the best at math in his family.
How could he be?
His older sister, Nikira, recently earned a Master’s degree in statistics from Columbia University. She’s planning to pursue a PhD.
Walter is no slouch. He was a good student and took math through his junior year at McKinney High School in his hometown of the same name, just outside Dallas. But he knew his limits.
“Math was my favourite subject before it started getting all complicated,” he says. “Junior year of high school, that’s when it started to get tough.”
Other than his older sister, who can’t relate?
But even by then, the second-year Toronto Raptors wing had picked up enough to calculate what it was going to take for him to earn a steady role in the NBA. The most significant part of the equation starts with forcing opposing ball-handlers into low-percentage situations. It’s been a recurring theme this season, the latest example coming in the Raptors’ win over the Chicago Bulls on Thursday night.
But it’s not like playing sticky on-ball defence is a new concept for him.
As a McDonald’s All-American coming out of high school, his status as a willing two-way player was one of the elements that made him a top 10 recruit heading to Baylor for his one year of university basketball. He was also the Raptors’ preferred choice with the 19th overall pick in the 2023 NBA draft.
Playing defence wasn’t optional growing up. His father, Eddie Walter, was a successful college player who demanded that defence be part of his son’s basketball repertoire. But as Walter developed into one of the top high-school players in the country, his ability to put the ball in the basket was inevitably front and centre. He led Baylor in scoring as a freshman.
But for all but a select few, finding a niche at the NBA level means identifying a key skill and excelling at it, with scoring rarely being that niche. It hasn’t taken Walter long to figure out what that would mean for him.
“I was always a defender, but I didn’t know I was going to be aiming towards being the main guy,” he told me in a recent conversation. “When I got here, they were telling me that they see the length and tools that I have, and just make sure I use them all the time. When I got to Toronto is when I really started focusing and realizing that I wanted to be the stopper type guy.”
He’s got plenty of teammates who will vouch for his abilities to do just that.
There aren’t many practice days that go by where Walter and Immanuel Quickley don’t play one-on-one against each other in some shape or form.
And the six-year veteran appreciates it. “He’s one of the better people that guards me, for sure,” said Quickley. “He makes me better. I know what it’s like to go against him: he doesn’t go for a lot of fakes, he’s got active hands, he’s very physical, and he’s athletic. But part of it’s just mentality. He’s a dog.”
Agreed, says Brandon Ingram, who might have height, length and eight years of additional NBA experience on his younger teammate, but still finds him a tough puzzle to crack when they match up.
“On the defensive side of the basketball, he’s aggressive,” says Ingram. “With his on-ball, his defence, he makes guys not want to dribble the basketball. We actually kind of went at it in practice the other day, where he was actually kind of getting into my shit, playing defence.
“I definitely think he has that mentality every single time he steps on the floor. He has high character. Whenever he comes on the floor, he wants to do the best he can. He’s willing to learn. He gets better every single game. Overall, I think he’s going to be a good pro, I think.”
The sooner the better, as far as the Raptors are concerned.
There is a window for a more consistent role in what will likely end up being a nine-man rotation once the playoffs come into view, now that the Raptors have traded Ochai Agbaji. It’s likely going to come down to one of Gradey Dick and Walter.
Walter’s willingness to dig in defensively against tough covers – he’s given the likes of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Donovan Mitchell and Jamal Murray fits at various points this season — could give him the edge. Rather than head somewhere for a sun vacation over the all-star break, Walter went home to spend time with family and work out.
How big the role becomes will likely come down to his ability to make open threes. He’s shown a good instinct for cutting and scoring in transition, but being able to space to the corners, the wing and force defences to play him as a shooter could tip the balance. Ingram thinks Walter is ready on that end, too. The Raptors’ leading scorer didn’t hesitate to find Walter wide-open in the corner with a laser pass at a critical moment in the fourth quarter of Toronto’s win over Chicago on Thursday. Walter nailed it.
“It’s funny. I saw Ja’Kobe pass up a jumper earlier in the game, and I’m always telling him to shoot because he’s one of the best shooters on our team,” said Ingram. “I just told him once [Thursday], and he started to shoot the basketball. He shot it with confidence at an important time of the game.”
Overall, Walter looked exceptionally sharp in the Raptors’ win Thursday, logging three steals and two deflections along with 14 points on nine shots in 22 minutes off the bench, treating Bulls ball-handlers like he does his teammates in post-practice one-on-one battles. He made two of his five three-point attempts and is at 35 per cent from three for the season.
Walter’s output was noted:
“I thought he played a very good game. I thought he did an outstanding job defensively. I thought he was in the right spots on offence, took the right shots,” said Raptors head coach Darko Rajakovic. “There is a growing confidence inside this group that he’s ready for this challenge.”
Creating chaos defensively is his entry point for bigger opportunities and has become something Walter’s fully bought into, and he’s come to enjoy, even if it makes opponents miserable. He enjoys frustrating people – teammates and opponents alike. He’ll get another chance when the Raptors visit the Milwaukee Bucks on Sunday.
If anyone gets irritated with him, so be it.
“For real,” said Walter. “Me and ‘Mal [Jamal Shead] talk about it all the time. When you get into players, and they start [getting frustrated], it just kind of gets you going, knowing that they don’t want the ball. That’s just something that excites me, knowing that they don’t want the ball around me.”
It’s a formula that could pave the way for long-term NBA success. Walter had more than enough math in high school to figure that one out.
