Raptors focus on prospects at draft combine after lottery disappointment

CHICAGO — They were all gathered, watching intently, some with their laptops open, taking notes, occasionally conferring with each other, but for the most part keeping their own counsel.

After the dust settled on Monday night’s explosive draft-lottery results, the Toronto Raptors front office got to work Tuesday morning on how to make the best of not having the No. 1 overall pick in the June 25-26 NBA Draft, and identifying the best possible player that will be available when they pick ninth.

There is no guarantee that the events this week in Chicago will automatically help that cause.

There is likely nothing that will happen this week or even at the draft that will have a bigger potential effect than what has happened in the past two days around the NBA.

Among the key developments:

• A not-to-be underrated benefit of the Dallas Mavericks and the San Antonio Spurs ending up with the first and second picks in the draft is that it likely means the two best players in the draft class will end up in the Western Conference, a long-term trend, it seems.

• The news that Celtics star Jayson Tatum tore his Achilles tendon late in Boston’s Game 4 loss to the New York Knicks on Monday night. Tatum had surgery on Tuesday and will most likely miss the 2025-26 season. In an instant, the defending champions lost their best player just as they are about to hit a wall financially that likely would have required them to make some significant roster moves. However it pans out in the long term, the Celtics will almost certainly be a weaker team next season than they were this past year when they finished 61-21.

• Not to be ignored is an ESPN.com report that Milwaukee star Giannis Antetokounmpo is open to exploring the possibility of leaving the Bucks after 12 seasons of brilliance, culminating in two MVP awards and the 2021 NBA title. If he ends up moving to the West — San Antonio and Houston are two possible trade partners that could win a bidding war — the East would get that much weaker.

In that context, a team like the Raptors — even coming off a 30-52 season — has no reason not to think it can return to competitive relevance sooner than later.

“It’s going to be very competitive, that I know,” Raptors president Masai Ujiri said Monday night after the lottery. “We’re hoping to add a talented player that can come in and compete.

“(Head coach Darko Rajakovic) is proving to be a one of the good developers of talent and that’s how we need to attack it, (but we will) continue to grow as a team, everybody make a jump and see. Get (Brandon Ingram) back healthy and see how we all jell together.”

The draft combine, which takes place the remainder of this week in Chicago, is just one more piece in the effort to assemble the puzzle of what a playoff team in the East could look like, a bar that suddenly seems more attainable than it was even a week ago.

The combine brings together most of the top draft prospects — the exception being a small handful of Europeans who remain overseas competing for their professional teams — in one place so that the league can take their official measurements. It’s not just height, weight and reach — if want to know the width of a prospect’s hands, you can find that out too.

Yes, teams pay attention to that stuff.

After the measurements are taken the prospects go through a battery of standardized tests on the floor of Wintrust Arena, home of the DePaul University basketball teams, to determine to what degree they can move, run and jump like an NBA player.

They start with a standing vertical jump test, then test their maximum jump with a brief running start, and then do two different types of agility tests and a three-quarter court sprint.

What does it have to do with basketball? Not all that much. It’s a little bit like trying to judge whether someone will be able to parallel park based on how they play Mario Kart, but it’s interesting fodder.

For example, VJ Edgecombe, the Baylor star many believe will be the third-overall pick in the draft behind Cooper Flagg and Dylan Harper, delivered as expected and set the early standard with a 38.5-inch vertical jump, compared with presumptive No.1 pick Flagg — no slouch himself, athletically — who came in at 34 inches.

All it really means is that Edgecombe can jump higher than Flagg. There is no height that Edgecombe could jump to that would convince anyone that he’s going to be a better NBA player than Flagg.

It’s the same with the shooting drills the players do once they’ve competed their athletic testing.

But when you’re trying to determine why to take a certain player first or second, or ninth rather than 10th, there is no harm in gathering all the data possible.

The point is to gain context. While Ace Bailey, the Rutgers star who has been projected as a top-five pick or better all season, certainly showed that he has the athleticism that typically translates at the NBA level, it almost works against him. With all his speed, quickness and explosiveness, there are questions about why Bailey wasn’t even more impactful at the college level as a freshman. Executives look at his relatively poor shooting percentages and lower-threshold blocks, steals and assist rates and question if he has the feel for the game — the anticipation and decision-making abilities — to fully leverage his athleticism. They’re trying to determine if he’ll end up as the proverbial strong-armed quarterback who keeps throwing the ball off-target and into coverage?

These are the waters the Raptors and the rest of the NBA will be trying to navigate this week and in the weeks to come prior to the draft.

It’s not just what is happening on the floor either. It’s interesting that seven-foot-two Duke centre Khaman Maluach shot an intriguing 11-for-23 in a timed three-point shooting drill where he had to move from the sideline to centre court and to the opposite sideline, while Derik Queen, another top big-man prospect from Maryland, converted just 4-of-21 attempts.

Does it mean anything? Only that Maluach might have more shooting ability than he was able to demonstrate while playing for a loaded Duke team that used him mostly as a rim protector and lob threat, and that Queen, who has earned a reputation as a highly skilled player with a knack for getting the ball in the basket, might have some work to do on his shooting, his fitness or both.

Perhaps the most valuable exercise of the week will take place in the suites at the hotel adjacent to the arena where the basketball activities take place. The Raptors are hoping to meet with roughly 20 prospects the next three days for a series of 20-minute interviews.

They’ll use video clips and photographs from the prospect’s background as ice-breakers, ask for insights about any relevant moments of conflict that might need clearing up, and save time to go over the prospect’s on-floor performances — good and bad — while getting a feel for their basketball knowledge as they go through video from the ongoing NBA Playoffs.

The draft lottery and the two days of developments around the NBA may have changed the trajectory of the off-season in a matter of hours, but for the Raptors the job remains the same: identify the best player that might be available with the No. 9 pick in the draft.

The ongoing NBA combine is one more tool for that.

There is no promise that they’ll learn anything definitive, but that’s no reason not to play close attention.

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