5 must-watch Summer League players Raptors fans focus on

3. Markquis Nowell

It’s not unfair to say Nowell’s size is the only reason he was undrafted. Even his most prominent supporters will acknowledge his challenges. Very few players who are 5-8 or shorter have ever played in the NBA, and just a few have weighed 160 pounds and still broken through that barrier.

The Raptors signed Nowell to a two-way contract with the goal of seeing which parts of his game will end up translated to the NBA. He is fresh off a tremendous season that featured averages of 17.6 points and 8.3 assists per game on a Kansas State team that did some damage in March.

Will Markquis Nowell play well for the Toronto Raptors?

Nowell plays a very inefficient style of basketball that will get some fans worried about the lowest points of Fred VanVleet’s tenure. However, the cheesy comparisons to VanVleet also mean that many of the positive traits that VanVleet had apply to Nowell as one.

Nowell was the engine that made the Wildcats’ offense roll despite it becoming very obvious how the team was running through him. Nowell had 11 games with ten or more assists in 40-minute college games, and that skill can’t be taught. It is simply intuition.