It’s taking me a little longer than expected to hammer through a monster mailbag and a salary cap primer (blame a pretty vicious week-plus head cold), and so in place of those (for now), we’re going to try to crowdsource an opinion on what the Raptors should do with the No. 27 pick. We talked about the No. 9 pick yesterday.
I know that the preference of most is to trade the ninth pick, which is totally fair. In all likelihood, if the Raptors are to move the pick, it will happen some time in July or August, for salary cap matching purposes. They’ll probably move one of the picks, or at least stash one overseas, but we’re talking prospects today, not trade scenarios. So for the purposes of this exercise, assume the Raptors are keeping the No. 27 pick (but obviously feel free to discuss trade scenarios in the comments).
It’s tough to “crowdsource” a straight ranking without everyone doing a mock draft, so this is really going to be more of a discussion with a poll that won’t work. For a player to be considered eligible for the poll, they have to have slid past No. 20 in the latest Draft Express and Chad Ford mock drafts (and I’ll caution everyone again to stick to those two, as they have statistically out-performed all others over the last several years), and they couldn’t last past No. 40 in both. Essentially, “20 to 40” is the range we’ll look at, though it’s cool if you’d prefer to reach for someone outside of that group.
(And yes, at least one of these names, by definition, won’t be there, and a few ruled out will slide, but a lot can change between now and June 23, so we’re casting a wider net to see who people prefer/are hoping to slide/because it would be boring to look at the candidates ranked 27th only.)
Not eligible (appears in top 20): Ben Simmons, Brandon Ingram, Kris Dunn, Marquese Chriss, Jamal Murray, Dragan Bender, Buddy Hield, Jaylen Brown, Jakob Poeltl, Henry Ellenson, Skal Labissiere, Wade Baldwin IV, Deyonta Davis, Demetrius Jackson, Timothe Luwawu, Dejounte Murray, Furkan Korkmaz, Ante Zizic, Ivica Zubac, Denzel Valentine, Thon Maker, Domantas Sabonis, Taurean Prince, Cheick Diallo, Juan Hernangomez
Eligible pool (outside top 20, inside top 40): Damian Jones, Tyler Ulis, Petr Cornelie, Brice Johnson, DeAndre Bembry, Guerschon Yabusele, Diamond Stone, Zhou Qi, Malik Beasley, Malachi Richardson, Stephen Zimmerman, Rade Zagorac, Chinanu Onuaku, Isaia Cordinier, Patrick McCaw, Ben Bentil, Jrrod Uthoff, Malcolm Brogdon, Isaiah Cousins
Not eligible (doesn’t appear in top 40): Everyone else
So, assuming all of that eligible pool were to slide to No. 27 (unlikely, but for the purposes of this exercise), who would you want? Explain why in the comments.
And just because, here’s an expanded set that allows for a couple more names sliding.
