Former first-rounder Caboclo remains work in progress

"This will be my tough year,'' Bruno Caboclo says, and yet he doesn't sound as if he fears the hard work to come. He rather can't wait for the challenges of next season.

At 6-9 and 212 pounds he looks bigger than he did nine months ago, when he was launching his NBA career as the great experiment of the Toronto Raptors. Caboclo is by no means as strong as the NBA forwards he expects to be opposing someday, but progress is being made. He has been away from his home in Brazil for one year. His English is improving. He is on his way, but he is still only 19 years old.

"I will have more chance,'' he says of the opportunities waiting in October at his second training camp, where he will continue to be the Raptors' youngest project. "But I need to be good in this chance and work hard.''

The potential that led Toronto to gamble the No. 20 pick in last year's draft is displayed by a drill that Caboclo runs with several teammates during a recent Summer League practice in Las Vegas. They circulate into the corner one after the other to catch and shoot 3-pointers as fed to them by their coaches. No one shoots faster than Caboclo. The ball is in and out of his hands and up and down through the net with a mechanically rhythmical confidence. In other drills, as well as in the scrimmages and the Summer League games, his long lithe arms -- the source of his difference-making potential -- dangle and bob like loose bungee cords.

"He's always been able to shoot the ball from the corner,'' says Raptors coach Dwane Casey. "But now he's understanding how to get there more efficiently, get to his spot, relocate quicker and understand spacing. Defensively he's still missing an assignment five out of 10 times; offensively he's getting to the right place seven out of 10 times. So you see all of those things coming together for him.''

Someday it will come; for now, Caboclo continues to seek connections that are beyond him.