Draft workout notes: Chinanu Onuaku, Guerschon Yabusele, Perry Ellis, and more Raptors Republic
Among the names who worked out yesterday in a session that didn’t have media avaialbility was Isaia Cordinier. He’s a name I really like. The question with Cordinier, who probably needs another year of polish, is whether he’ll stay in the draft, whcih seems likely if he’s getting sniffs around the first-round bubble and is amenable to being stashed for a year. You should read this piece on Cordinier from friend of the site Sam Vecenie of CBS Sports, who should be on your must-read/follow list ahead of the draft.
A few of the Raptors’ staff is off to Treviso, Italy, later this week for the 2016 adidas EUROCAMP, an annual scouting event founded by familiar face Maurizio Gheardini. Bill Bayno is the event’s coaching director, and Nick Nurse will be among those assisting at the camp. Per adidas, “Former participants include 82 first and second round draft picks…Thirty-seven former adidas EUROCAMP participants currently hold NBA contracts and 88 currently play in Euroleague Basketball.” So it’s a pretty big deal from a scouting perspective. At least three on-the-radar potential 2016 picks are participating in Petr Cornelie (France), Ante Zizic (Croatia) and Paul Zipser (Germany).
There’s more than just the benefit of getting to know players, though. The June 10-12 event helps the organization get a feel for the general quality of the prospect pipeline, which can help determine the value of current prospects and assets.
Luis Scola finishes 9th in voting for best teammate (with Vince Carter quotes) | Raptors Republic
Luis Scola placed ninth in voting for the NBA’s Twyman-Stokes Teammate of the Year Award, the NBA announced Wednesday. Scola received 28 first-place votes and earned 528 total voting points, appearing on 84 ballots that included 12 award finalists. Generally considered to be the best dude – he also won the NBA’s sportsmanship award for the Atlantic Division – Scola functioned as a starting power forward, mentor, motivational speaker, and de facto assistant coach throughout the season for the Raptors, helping provide an infusion of experience, toughness, and leadership to the locker room as the Raptors took a major step forward in 2015-16. It’s great to have great people in the organization.
Vince Carter is the winner the award for 2015-16 for his role with the Memphis Grizzlies, which serves as what should be an unnecessary reminder that despite how Carter’s tenure in Toronto ended, he’s generally also considered to be among the best people in the NBA. Another former Raptor in Chris Bosh placed third, yet another in Jose Calderon placed seventh, and future Raptors forward Marvin Williams placed eighth.
Draft Workouts Continue As Raptors Aim To Improve For Next Season | Toronto Raptors
For the Raptors staff, the success of this season has provided a new challenge: fitting in a bunch of workouts after a 20-game playoff run that had the franchise playing in the Conference Finals through May for the first time.
“We kind of have been cramming a lot of workouts into a much shorter window than we normally do,” Tolzman said. “It’s been kind of nice that everyone knew this was what we were going to be dealing with. It’s honestly a really good problem to have. It means you’re playing longer than you’re used to.”
The Raptors had four players splitting time between Toronto and Mississauga in 2015-16. Norman Powell, Delon Wright, Lucas Nogueira and Bruno Caboclo each did stints with Raptors 905 and the staff will now assess the development of those players as well as decide how many spots on next year’s roster will be open for players they’ll be developing to contribute at a later time.
Having a group of younger guys already committed to can make more experienced players particularly appealing when looking at potential add-ons to the roster. It doesn’t outweigh talent or potential, of course, but it’s something that will be taken into consideration.
“Last year we essentially had a rotation of four or five players that spent time in the D-League and we kind of had them as our developmental guys,” Tolzman said. “We probably want to keep that going forward, so we kind of need to look at our roster and see which guys are graduating to the next level out of that rotation [as well as] how many spots do we have to fill in on the back end of our roster.”
Raptors GM Ujiri heads to Europe as draft prep continues | Toronto Star
Ujiri and his staff have been working at double time getting ready for the draft after a six-week run to the Eastern Conference final occupied their attention and time. They have held a series of gang workouts in Toronto, found a way to schedule and see workouts in Cleveland during the series with the Cavaliers, and still get to agency-sponsored workouts while the playoffs were going on.
Ujiri and executive vice president Jeff Weltman left for Europe hours after announcing coach Dwane Casey’s new contract on Monday; they will see games involving potential 2016 picks for two days before landing in Italy.
While there, they will see some of the more promising 2017 European picks and also continue to talk about deals that may be consummated around this year’s draft.
“It’s more of a convention for higher-ups, like GMs of NBA teams, to kind of get away from the NBA media and whatnot,” Raptors scouting director Dan Tolzman said Tuesday.
“They kind of convene over there and there’s a lot of trade discussions, things like that, leading up to the draft.”
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Vince Carter ‘proud’ of Raptors’ record-setting season | Sportsnet.ca
“It was awesome,” said Carter before Game 3 of NBA Finals. “I reached out to Kyle [Lowry] and DeMar [DeRozan]. I’m not really big on doing the whole reaching-out-through-social-media-so-everybody-sees-it type thing. It’s just not my thing. You know, we talked. I just told them, I was like, ‘You guys are the best,’ and they should hold their head up high. Because not only did they make history, they actually changed a lot of minds of a lot of people. Everybody thought they could be here.
“So I think they had a heck of a run, and I was just proud to read about it, to listen to people talk about it. Where it was like at one point they weren’t even talking about them in the Finals and next thing you know, the Raptors could possibly do it. It was great to see it, and to know at one point I was part of that and to see your record go down, I mean, all records are broken at some point. We’re seeing a lot of history this year throughout the NBA, and it’s great to see, because that’s why we play the game.
“All these young kids that are growing up are now in their minds thinking they want to make history and beat the records that are being set today. So it was awesome.”
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By the numbers: Who should the Raptors target at power forward? | Sportsnet.ca
If I’m Ujiri (I’m not; I’m much, much worse), and if Atlanta pulls off that rumoured Nerlens Noel-for-Jeff Teague trade signalling a major rebuild, I’m going hard after Millsap. Not only does he check off every box—he rebounds, he shoots, he might be the most underrated defender in the league after being the only guy in 2015–16 to appear in the top five in defensive rating, defensive win shares and defensive box plus-minus—but he’s exactly the type of character guy the team is looking for.
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NBA Free Agency Sliding Doors: What if DeRozan stays, but Biyombo leaves Toronto? | Raptors HQ
If DeRozan is being kept, pretty much no matter what he signs for, the Raptors are lined up to have $3.8M in cap space. By retaining his rights, his 15M cap hold would then take up most of their 18.8M in theoretically available space. This is essentially no cap space at all, as if the team operates over the cap, they get the mid-level exception (6M). So, that’s the starting point – the team can re-sign DeRozan because they have his Bird Rights, and they can’t currently re-sign Biyombo because they don’t have his, and they don’t have enough space for his new deal under the cap.
So what does DeRozan sign for, and what impact does that have on what else they can do this summer? Well, DeRozan’s maximum salary is projected right at 26 million. Whether he signs a full 5 year max contract with the highest allowable raises (5 years, 144 million) or takes a more team friendly flat deal at 26 million per year, for this summer he’ll be about 26 million on the cap regardless, once he signs. I suppose there is a possibility that he signs an even cheaper deal (say, 5 years, 110 million, a few million below the max other teams can offer on a per year basis, but higher in cumulative dollars), but that seems unlikely to me. Let’s assume a maximum salary this summer, whether it is on a flat contract or a true max deal.
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Toronto Raptors: Looking Ahead To The Draft | Hoops Habit
After all, this is a team that’s coming off a 56-win season, which ended in their first trip to the Eastern Conference Finals in their history. Although they’ll be faced with big questions over the next 12-15 months, the Raptors are clearly on a defined timeline.
That timeline is further bolstered by both the extension of Casey as well as comments from Raptors general manager Masai Ujiri about prioritizing the re-signing of DeRozan this summer.
That’s not exactly the best situation for a young, inexperienced player who is in need of playing time to develop, if the Raptors were to add one or two rookies into the mix.
With that said, that could open the door for the Raptors to explore different avenues with their picks, such as moving either one of their picks or using one to draft-and-stash a player.
Both of those scenarios obviously give the Raptors some financial flexibility, along with opening up an extra roster spot for them as well.
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How Terrence Ross’ future can be better than his past | Raptors Rapture
Regardless of DeMar, Terrence will still need to persuade his head coach that he’s worthy of a larger role. To do that, he must:
– improve his shaky handle – he’s easy prey for quick-handed ballhawks
– dump the spectacular play in favour of the fundamentally sound one. Anyone remember Terrence skying for an uncontested rebound in the playoffs, trying to grab it with one hand, and knocking it out of bounds instead? I do.
– lessen his reliance on his raw athletic ability on defense…he’s too often the victim of an opponent’s quick first step, particularly when he’s not in a sound posture at the outset
– strike a better balance between shooting 3-balls and attacking the basket. I’d like to see him use the 2-point bucket to set up his 3-pointers, rather than the other way around. Let’s see him utilize his improved dribbling (we hope) to take uncontested jumpers in the paint.
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