Toronto Raptors: Five undrafted players that have succeeded with Raptors
By Jason Mills
The Toronto Raptors select 29th overall in the 2020 NBA Draft next week, November 18th, 2020. In a weak draft, the Toronto Raptors may still find a gold nugget of talent as they seem to every year.
Every year it seems the Toronto Raptors find NBA caliber talent in unusual ways. The organization has become the master of building a competitive franchise without lottery picks. The past seven NBA Playoff competitions have involved the Toronto Raptors.
However, the only significant contributors to the Toronto Raptors’ success in recent years who been lottery picks are DeMar DeRozan (drafted by the Raptors 9th overall in 2009), who was then traded in 2018 for Kawhi Leonard and Jonas Valanciunas, a 2011 lottery pick of the Raptors was traded in 2019 for Marc Gasol.
Finding overlooked and undervalued talent has become a trademark of the Toronto Raptors management team in recent years. Every year, 60 players get added to NBA rosters through an annual draft. Many more players declare for the NBA Draft and either never get a chance or get overlooked for years. Terence Davis is the most recent example of the Toronto Raptors’ successful exhaustive searches through undrafted talent.
In a league that wants to prove that megastars are the only way to win, a franchise like the Toronto Raptors has provided a blueprint to how winning can be achieved in another way.
The Raptors’ management team conducts comprehensive searches for the unwanted or undrafted talent that can provide depth and contribute to their team. There are five times the Toronto Raptors succeeded with this style of acquiring talent.