A Look Back at the 2000 Draft – Raptors Draft Morris Peterson with the 21st Pick in the Draft

With the 2022 NBA approaching on June 23rd, we want to take a look back at the Raptors draft history; giving a bit of an accounting of the state of the Raptors, what we thought of the pick in the moment and in retrospect. Each day we will examine the Raptors significant pick(s) and additions in each draft, and frame it in the context of what was going on during that year. You can find all the pieces in this draft history project here. 

The State of The Raptors Heading Into The Draft

While it was super disappointing getting swept by Larry Johnson and Latrell Sprewell the previous year (sidenote: I absolutely HATED those Knicks teams…not as much as the C**tics or Nets, but an easy third on my list), we were given a team that was constructed in a thoughtful and holistic way through the draft and trades, that improved every year since inception (except year two), with an excellent mix of vets and rising stars.

The Raptors had already traded their 2000 pick to the Knicks as part of the John Wallace deal, but acquired a 2000 pick in the Chauncey Billups deal, with the end result of the team sliding back four spots in the draft.

There was a ton of expectations and hope for the 2000-01 season, with this draft looking it could add some wing depth to the rotation. The Raptors made a series of moves shoring up the front and back courts, and adding a bit of depth and shooting to the wing, and Vince Carter was coming off an epic Summer Olympics that shot his jersey sales up to to the top of the league.

From a roster perspective, notable moves included:

August 5, 1999

August 1, 1999

Traded Jonathan Bender to the Indiana Pacers for Antonio Davis.
– Covered this in yesterday’s piece

Signed Dell Curry as a free agent.
– A solid 3-point specialist and veteran who brought a lot of balance to the lineup. Opened up spaced for Vince to cook, and for our bigs to operate in the paint. We also got the treat of watching a young Steph Curry shoot jumpers in the pre-game. That jumper was sweet back then too.

September 23, 1999

Signed Muggsy Bogues as a free agent.
– Muggsy was always more hype than substance, no disrespect. Standing at 5-foot-3, he held his own against the giants of the league, but the Raptors, desperate for any leadership at the point, grabbed him right at the end of his career. To be fair, he played well, but he wasn’t winning us games; more stop-gap…he was better than Alvin Williams though; I’ll stand on that.

The Draft

This wasn’t a great draft, might have been the worst of modern times, from top to bottom; only producing three All Stars. It did, however, have a lot of guys who were rotation pieces on NBA teams with MoPete being one of them.

Morris Peterson was a real nice college player in Michigan State, teaming up with Mateen Cleaves (who I was targeting, but got drafted a few spots before; we needed a PG more than a SF at the time) to lead the Spartans to consecutive No. 1 rankings, and winning the title in the 1999-2000 NCAA Tournament. Cleaves was named the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player, but MoPete joined him on the NCAA All-Tournament Team.

He came with a solid resume, and frankly, we were a bit surprised he dropped so low in the draft. In reality, while he was a solid scorer, better shooter than creator off the bounce, his rebounding and defense were a welcome addition. He was tough. We liked tough. We needed tough.

In The Moment

What a steal! So in retrospect, while MoPete was one of two remaining players in the draft who made any meaningful impact in the NBA, at the time we just got ourselves a college champion who played a pivotal role on a championship team with the 21st pick. While we are better at evaluating college players today, that skillset really didn’t exist as abundantly as it did then. No YouTube, no Twitter, no readily available scouting reports from a million people who converge on the same pros and cons. It was a win.

What It Meant For The Raptors

In some ways, the benefit of being an expansion team was that you started at the bottom. While we started at the bottom with the Grizzlies, with both teams subject to the same ridiculous draft rules (they couldn’t pick #1 for three straight years) the Raptors did everything better from drafting to trading. For example, the 1999 draft, The Grizz had the number-two pick and chose Steve Francis. Now you might be looking at his Basketball Reference page, and notice that he had a great, All-Star level career, but you will also immediately notice that he didn’t play a single game for the Grizz. Why? Because heading into the draft, he was considered one or two with Elton Brand (an absolute stud in college who went up a level in the pros) and also straight up said he didn’t want to play for Vancouver.

That’s not the face of someone happy to selected by the Grizzlies. Those aren’t tears of joy he’s choking back lol. They literally drafted someone who didn’t want to be there and had previously told them that, when guys like Baron Davis, Lamar Odom, Richard Hamilton, Shawn Marion, Jason Terry, Corey Maggette, and Ron Artest were still on the board. You needed a PG? How about you pull a Grunwald, take Francis, then flip him for Davis and some assets? Nope, Stu Jackson sucked. Don’t even get me started on the previous four drafts.

So with that in mind, and accounting for the Raptors track record, we were super happy. Success by measure of comparison with failure can still feel pretty great and we were headed in the right direction.

In the short term, and with the scoring being an issue in the Knicks series, we had another guy who could stretch out the floor on the break and open up space with his shooting. He was also a capable defender, and you can never have too many of them.

Over the long term, he was a guy who didn’t need to be catered too. He showed up and got his where he could. Did he force things sometimes? Sure, but what you couldn’t say was that he didn’t play hard. He was also an ironman setting the record for most consecutive games played by a Raptor at 371 from February 12, 2002 to November 22, 2006.

I don’t have a lot to say, really, he was a good pick, he added incremental value to a team that was ascending, and he turned out to be a steal in a really weak draft providing more value than everyone but five guys drafted ahead of him (Michael Redd had the highest VORP in the draft and he was drafted 43rd by Milwaukee).

With all that good, though, there were real issues brewing under the surface with the team, namely Tracy McGrady. The shit show of the first round against the Knicks didn’t sit well with him, he had two coaches in three years, and while he improved tremendously from year-to-year, he was looking for less complications. He also gave WILD quotes during the summer of 2000:

“You have the veteran guys on the team that don’t want to be there, and those are the guys I want to play with,” McGrady, 21, said yesterday. “But those guys don’t want to be there, so it’s going to be real tight for me to really consider Toronto.”

“It’s just a lot of stuff that’s just not right, right now,” he said. “Here we are in the off-season, we’re supposed to be talking where Tracy McGrady’s going to go and thinking about re-signing Tracy McGrady.

“But we have all this other stuff going on in the organization. It’s not the time to be going through that right now. I mean the [coach]Butch [Carter]stuff. I mean all that.

“It’s going to be real tough to sign me back,” McGrady reiterated. “It’s going to be real tough.”

Concerning right? When someone is saying that it’s going to be tough to sign him back you have to take their word for it and do something. We’ll cover that tomorrow.

—–

We’re giving away FREE $RAPS Coins to the first 2000 people who come through. Click here to get them and be automatically entered in a draw to win an additional 500 $RAPS Coins. No purchase necessary. Learn more about them here.