There will be a few players in this year’s NBA Draft, a class that is widely considered to be weak, who will become legitimate difference makers. They probably won’t reach the level of Giannis Antetokounmpo or even Rudy Gobert, both future Hall of Famers picked in the poor 2013 class, but they will become parts of teams’ cores.
Likewise, one or two players will be picked in the top five of the next two draft classes who will fail to live up to that stature. By the end of their rookie contracts, the teams that selected them will wonder if they can be long-term starters and if they will be worth the expensive second contracts necessary to retain them. When you pick a player that high, you hope after three years he locks himself into the nucleus.
Those predictions are not bold. That is how nearly every draft unspools. There are vague disappointments at the top even if there are no classic “busts.” Inevitably, there are also gems in the second half of the first round. If you are part of the Toronto Raptors fanbase (or front office), those realities should be internalized. Whatever happens with their draft pick at Sunday afternoon’s NBA Draft Lottery (3 p.m. ET, ABC) will not be inherently good or bad.
Due to the Jakob Poeltl trade in February 2023, the Raptors enter the lottery in one of the most intellectually interesting spots in recent memory. As part of the deal with the San Antonio Spurs, they will surrender their pick this year if it falls outside the top six. They finished the season with the sixth-worst record in the league, giving them a 45.8 percent chance of keeping it.
Raptors 2024 NBA Lottery Odds
Pick | % odds in lottery |
---|---|
1 | 9 |
2 | 9.2 |
3 | 9.4 |
4 | 9.6 |
6 | 8.6 |
7-10 (lose pick) | 54.2 |
If the pick does not convey this year, the same protections carry over into 2025. In that scenario, if the Raptors kept the pick next season, the protections would carry over one final year. If the Raptors haven’t sent their pick to San Antonio by 2026, they would owe two second-round picks to the Spurs to complete the trade.
A similar situation transpired last year, when the Dallas Mavericks, who executed a late-season tank to obtain the 10th-worst record, needed their pick to fall in the top 10 to retain it. (They did, staying where they were, and eventually used the pick to make a draft night trade to get surefire all-rookie team member Dereck Lively II.) That was a simpler case: The Mavericks have Luka Dončić and could gamble somewhat safely that the mid-to-low lottery would be the highest they would pick in the near future. They also entered last year’s lottery with a 77-percent chance of keeping their pick. Now Lively looks like a future starter for the Mavericks, they are playing in the second round and will send the 24th-overall pick to the New York Knicks this year.
There is much less certainty for the Raptors. Scottie Barnes is the franchise’s Polaris, but he’s not an MVP candidate like Dončić has been since his sophomore season. There is reason to hope the Raptors could be battling for a Play-In spot next year; anything more requires squinting, meaning they are more likely than not to be somewhere in the lottery at this time next year.
The Raptors did not quite tank their way to this position in the way that the Mavericks did at the end of last season, as injuries to Barnes and Poeltl (as well as March absences for RJ Barrett and Immanuel Quickley) organically undercut the Raptors. But, the Raptors weren’t afraid to rest veterans late in the season and did not rush anybody back from injury as they put some distance between themselves and the Memphis Grizzlies, who finished with the seventh-worst record.
That brings us to the question underscored in the second half of the Raptors’ season: What should they hope for on Sunday? I was struck by a segment of an article from my Detroit-based colleague at The Athletic, James Edwards III. The Pistons finished with the league’s worst record, and will…
This article was originally published by a theathletic.com . Read the Original article here. .