The future of the NBA will start to look a little clearer Thursday evening.
The NBA Draft Lottery is Thursday night at 8:30 p.m. ET, with 14 teams all hoping to win the No. 1 overall pick and, perhaps, instantly change the fortunes of their respective franchises with the draft a few months later on Oct. 16.
These 14 teams all have a shot at getting the first overall pick in the 2020 @NBA Draft.
Which one of these teams do you think will win the NBA Draft Lottery tonight? pic.twitter.com/qLqrep3LT3
— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) August 20, 2020
Of the teams competing in the lottery, the Golden State Warriors, Cleveland Cavaliers and Minnesota Timberwolves all share the best odds to win the No. 1 overall pick at 14 per cent each.
However, if mock drafts are to be believed, all three of those teams should end up happy if Thursday’s festivities go as planned and they each win one of the top three picks.
This is because the top three projected picks in this year’s draft — Anthony Edwards, James Wiseman and LaMelo Ball — all could go first overall.
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Edwards is a six-foot-five, built-like-a-brick-house freshman shooting guard out of Georgia with all the raw tools from both an athletic and skill standpoint that has him drawing Dwyane Wade-like comparisons.
Despite only playing 69 total minutes of collegiate basketball, Wiseman still figures to be an elite prospect because of his intriguing combination of size and quick, agile feet. A seven-foot-one centre prospect, Wiseman boasts explosive athleticism that will allow him to play above the rim and finish strong off rolls and the kind of lateral quickness that teams dream of in their big men to be able to defend the pick-and-roll and opponents in space. Wiseman is nearly everything you want in a modern big, and as such his ceiling is considered to be very high.
As for Ball, he’s the youngest of his brothers and is probably the most talented. A six-foot-eight pure point guard prospect, Ball plied his trade in Australia’s NBL before taking the leap to the NBA, where he was named rookie of the year for averages of 17 points, 7.4 rebounds and 6.8 assists per game. Though not an explosive athlete, Ball’s unique blend of size, vision and elite playmaking all figure to translate to the NBA level.
All three of these young men are being pegged as sure-fire bets, according to scouts and pundits, but here’s the thing: in the draft there really aren’t any true guarantees.
“In terms of how big a deal is a lottery pick? A lot of drafts, they’re tiered and you have guys who are what you would expect to be a franchise player in the top two to three to four to five picks,” said Patrick Engelbrecht, the Toronto Raptors’ director of global scouting and international affairs. “And then normally every draft has guys that end up being that kind of player outside of that range. So we more try to focus on who could be the guys that are outside of that range that we really like that we think will be impactful players.”
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Last season the Raptors made NBA history as the first team to win a championship without a single lottery pick on their roster, and they’re looking to do it again – only this time sans even a top-five player in the league in Kawhi Leonard.
The Raptors were universally praised for pulling off this unprecedented feat mainly because the NBA is viewed as a league where you need a big star to win and the most likely place to find one of those guys is near the top of the draft.
As the Raptors – who ended the season with the second-best record in the NBA, set the franchise record for winning percentage and are currently up 2-0 on the Brooklyn Nets in their first-round playoff series – have proven, championship-level talent can be found from anywhere.
The best example of this is probably Fred VanVleet. The Raptors guard has probably played the best of all Toronto players during the restart and famously went undrafted despite a sterling four-year collegiate career at Wichita State. During that tenure he won Missouri Valley Conference player of the year twice and helped lead the Shockers to the first-ever 31-0 regular season in NCAA Division I men’s basketball history in the 2013-14 campaign.
“…Fred’s case, that is a little bit unique, you know, because the guy played so many big games and he was a key component and a decision-maker in a lot of those key games. So how he kind of slips through the cracks, that’s sort of puzzling,” said Engelbrecht. “But I will say, in the population, there are more small people than there are tall people. So same thing with basketball. There are more small players than there are big players, and for whatever reason, whenever you’re identifying talent, there are smaller players people sort of tend to think are maybe a dime a dozen.
“And Fred had a sterling college career and he also had a sterling high school career. And then you know him and how he works in the off-season and people who knew him throughout his high school and college career and how he worked and how he went about getting better. It really isn’t a surprise that he improved this much because that’s who he’s been.
“Like, you didn’t really know what his ceiling would be but you definitely knew he would get better, because that’s the only thing he’s ever done. He’s only gone to a place, gotten better left, gone to the next place, gotten better … he’s pretty much just living up to who he is and what he’s done his whole life.”
Despite being an undrafted player, the Raptors identified VanVleet in much the same way they would identify any player in any given draft, an approach that probably isn’t much of a trade secret but works for Toronto, regardless.
“[Raptors president] Masai [Ujiri] and [general manager] Bobby [Webster] and [assistant GM] Dan Tolzman, they look at the draft a different way. We like to target players that we want, that we like and whether or not draft boards say this guy is here, there or anywhere, we try to focus on finding the guys in the draft that we like and then targeting them and trying to get them,” said Engelbrecht.
“…For us, it’s targeting people we think can help us and that we like from a playing standpoint, from a background standpoint, from a grit and toughness standpoint. We try to find players that we like and then we can try to acquire them. I think it’s real simple. A lot of times you get sort of caught up in pick numbers and that sort of thing and we try to stay away from that.”
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The Raptors take a holistic approach to the draft, paying attention to every prospect, but specifically narrowing in on players they believe will be more in their range. With that said, however, it’s not like that homework done on every prospect can’t be utilized later, either.
“We always extensively scout the lottery and we’re always doing our due diligence with those guys because a draft is only a moment in time, it’s only a snapshot in time,” Engelbrecht said. “And at that moment, people think these players are, let’s say, in this pecking order, but what happens is they come into the NBA, the slate gets wiped clean and then people start playing and things change and some players don’t fit in certain teams and don’t fit with certain organizations and don’t fit with certain coaches, and then they become available.
“So doing that work throughout the draft process helps you whenever you want to sign a guy as a free agent, or help you when you want to trade for a guy or helps whenever you want to maybe move up in the draft and go get a guy.”
Toronto’s first-round pick is locked in at No. 29, the second-last of the first round where names like Tyler Bey, Cassius Winston, Udoka Azubuike and Isiah Stewart are supposed to go. All of these guys have the potential to turn into good NBA pros, but they don’t carry the same profile as supposed studs at the top of board.
No matter, the Raptors have made a point of becoming one of the premier player development teams in the NBA and with success stories like VanVleet, Pascal Siakam, Norman Powell and OG Anunoby, it goes to show that profile definitely isn’t everything.
So best of luck to the lottery teams Thursday evening, in the meantime, the Raptors look to still be here just collecting talent.
“…Go back to that rule that I said Masai likes to go by finding talent,” said Engelbrecht. “You still gravitate towards the players that you think are talented and you get a grouping of them. And then after that you say, ‘OK, this is where they’re rated and this is where it is supposed to go.’ And then you make a strategy around getting them.”
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