TORONTO — At the very least, the practices promise to be exciting and hard fought.
After two rounds and two picks at the NBA Draft, the Toronto Raptors remain a team with some balance issues on their roster.
Jakob Poeltl is still the team’s only viable option at centre, now and in the near future. The roster lacks the depth in proven three-point shooting that most of the teams they are trying to catch in the Eastern Conference can claim to have. Size across various positions is just so-so and there is a fair bit of role overlap, too. And as promising a rookie season as Jamal Shead had, banking on him to be the only point guard behind Immanuel Quickley might be a big ask.
But in taking Collin Murray-Boyles with the ninth pick on the first night of the draft on Wednesday, and then on Thursday selection Alijah Martin, the Raptors have doubled down on tough, athletic, defensive-minded players who at the very least should ramp up the intensity of their practices and development workouts — even if they don’t fill a specific positional need.
It’s no small thing. It’s part of the reason the Raptors flashed some promise in the second half of last season when they finished 22-21 after an 8-31 start and posted the NBA’s third-best defensive rating over the final 43 games of the season, albeit against a laughably weak schedule in most cases.
In the absence of having superstars fall to them in the draft, accumulating a lot of tough-minded, physical, team-first players with positive basketball IQs is not the worst way to go. They did it with Murray-Boyles in the draft lottery and again with Martin, the fifth-year senior who was key player on the NCAA champion Florida Gators after having led upstart Florida International to a Final Four as a junior in 2022-23.
“He’s shown a lot of traits that we’ve looked for in previous Raptors second-round picks, he’s just cut from that same cloth of just being a competitor and a proven winner,” said Raptors assistant general manager and vice-president of player personnel Dan Tolzman. “I don’t think he’s a finished product even though he’s a senior, he’s got a lot of room for growth still. One of those guys, get him in our program and see what he can do. He’s going to fight for everything he can get.”
The recently completed NBA Finals were certainly instructive with regard to what it takes to have a winning team. Sure it starts with MVP-level talent like Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, but the Oklahoma City Thunder also relied heavily on the likes of Lu Dort, an All-NBA defender who was undrafted out of college, and Alex Caruso, a former All-NBA defender who went undrafted as well. The Indiana Pacers were lifted by the likes of Andrew Nembhard, a second-round pick in 2022, and T.J. McConnell who was undrafted in 2015. The best attribute for both players might be their competitive will.
“I think we see guys that when the game gets tough and winning time happens, these are guys, they won’t back away from that fight, they’ll run to it and they’ll do all the little things,” said Tolzman. “And hopefully the skill development comes with just working our development program from there.”
Not that Martin is without skill. He shot 39 per cent from three on 5.9 attempts in his second and third year of college before dipping to 34.4 per cent on six attempts over his final two seasons. His defensive activity never wavered as he averaged 1.3 steals per game in his four years as a starter. He’s a rim-wrecker in transition.
He measured six-foot-one-and-a-half without shoes at the draft combine but plays bigger due to his six-foot-seven-and-a-half-inch wingspan. He also doesn’t shy away from the physical commitment high-end defence requires at the NBA level.
“As a defender, you gotta lay your body on the line,” said Martin who described himself as the ‘ultimate role player’ on a video call from the draft in Brooklyn. “My best attribute defensively is my ability to match your body up, being able to stay mentally poised. You’re not going for every fake, and just laying it all on the line. As a defender, you gotta take that step mentally.”
Martin will fit right in on a team that has added Murray-Boyles — considered one of the best defensive prospects in the draft — to a young group on that includes Shead, Ja’Kobe Walter, Ochai Agbaji and Jonathan Mogbo, who hang their hats on their defensive competitiveness.
Whether that alone will be enough to lift the Raptors out of the draft lottery and into playoff consideration is another matter. Neither Murray-Boyles or Martin address any of the roster’s immediate needs and it’s not clear if there are any roster-remaking trades in the pipeline, given how many deals have already come and gone. And given that the Raptors have minimal financial flexibility and only three open roster spots available as they head into free agency, there is a better chance than not that some version of their current roster will be the one they take into training camp.
“Ideally (it’s) getting to training camp healthy, and seeing what that group looks like,” said Tolzman. “It might look a lot different than what it looks like on paper right now once you get everybody on the court together, and then you get a little bit better idea from there what’s really missing heading into the next deadline.
“So there’s definitely a little bit of work to happen between now and camp. But in the grand scheme of things we’re still trying to fine tune the roster for the longer term.”
Ryan Nembhard was widely expected to get drafted late in the second round, but the Gonzaga University star from Aurora, Ont. ended up signing a two-way deal with the Dallas Mavericks, which could provide a better opportunity than any team that drafted him could have offered. Nembhard will join a talented roster that will be looking for point-guard help with Kyrie Irving expected to be out most of the year recovering from a torn ACL.
Martin needs a new number
The Florida star is so attached to his jersey number, 15, that he had a custom, diamond-encrusted necklace made with his college number as the focal point. But the Raptors don’t have No. 15 available, having retired it on behalf of Vince Carter.
“Fifteen has a lot of meaning to me, but I’m not trying to take away from Vince’s legacy,” Martin said. “Obviously, he’s a legend and I want him to keep his number retired. But I’m also trying to find out what number that I can have some meaning to next and be excited to put on my back.”
Tolzman said that his next task is to identity free agents that would be willing to come with the Raptors to Summer League and training camp, a path that Jamison Battle took to earn a two-way deal out of camp before being converted to a standard NBA deal late in the regular season.
ESPN reported that the Raptors signed Louisville guard Chucky Hepburn – the ACC Defensive Player of the Year – on a two-way deal.
