You don’t win an NBA title without some luck and if the Toronto Raptors are going to make their 2019 championship more than a one-off thing, they could start with some good luck in the draft lottery on Tuesday night.
They made history by winning that title without having a single player on their roster who entered the league as a lottery pick, a feat that almost certainly won’t be repeated.
The Raptors probably don’t want to have to do that again. There’s nothing they’d like better than to add the kind of talent you can almost only get near the top of the draft.
As presently constructed, the Raptors are good and solid and respectable and capable, but hardly have the look and feel of a championship team.
The fastest and simplest way to put themselves in position to change that is for something special to happen when the ping pong balls are drawn under the watchful gaze of Fred VanVleet, the undrafted point guard success story who will be representing the Raptors at the virtual proceedings.
Toronto has a 7.5 per cent chance of picking first and a 31.9 per cent chance of picking in the top four, but also a 68.1 per cent chance of picking between seventh and 10th. The way the lottery is structured, the Raptors can’t move up to fifth or sixth.
Where the balls finally land could have a significant impact on what both the immediate and long-term future of the Raptors looks like.
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If they win the draft lottery like they did in 2006 things get very simple and very exciting very quickly.
The Raptors would likely draft Oklahoma State star Cade Cunningham, a six-foot-eight playmaking guard with a game projected to translate into the NBA immediately and with great effect.
The 19-year-old is touted as a future superstar; the kind of player that provides the foundation for winning for a decade or even more. It would be the equivalent of a cheat code for the Raptors because most of the time players of Cunningham’s profile join teams that are in the thick of a long rebuild.
In the Raptors’ case, he’d be joining a ready-made core of high-end players with recent championship experience. He would help them rebound from their anomalous 27-45 season in 2020-21 and would make them all the better for years to come.
If the Raptors win the lottery and get Cunningham, everything falls into place.
Lots of other good things happen if the Raptors are lucky enough to move into the top four.
The draft is considered deep at the top and the Raptors would be able to potentially choose between the positional advantage and long-term upside of USC big man Evan Mobley, the two-way strengths provided by Gonzaga star Jalen Suggs or the raw but compelling star power of Jalen Green who shone in the G-League bubble, as examples.
But it’s fair to wonder at that point the Raptors might consider trading a top-four pick other than first overall with an eye towards adding a ready-made piece to their existing core.
Internally, Toronto believes that Pascal Siakam, VanVleet, OG Anunoby and Kyle Lowry – should they choose to re-sign him – represent the bones of a group that can be competitive with almost any team in the East.
But they know they’re short a starting big man – with all due respect to Khem Birch.
Signing one in free agency is a pipe dream, unless repatriating Serge Ibaka, who is coming off back surgery, or swallowing hard to overpay the likes of Bucks stretch four Bobby Portis is appealing (it’s not).
Kelly Olynyk would love to play in Toronto and his offensive skill set would be a perfect fit but would do little to solve the Raptors needs for rim protection or defensive rebounding.
So, with the free agent market a little dry, perhaps dangling a top-four pick would get things moving on the trade front. The likelihood of the Raptors trading their pick if it falls in the 7-10 range would only increase for all the same reasons, it’s just that the return might not be as lucrative.
The elephant in the room as all of this is going on is what will happen with Raptors president Masai Ujiri, whose contract officially runs through July 1, according to sources, but may have some language adjusting it to reflect the NBA’s business calendar for 2020-21 extending to the end of July and the opening of free agency.
There have been no new developments regarding Toronto’s most important free agent. Raptors ownership remains confident he’ll re-sign with the club for his ninth season and beyond, even as Ujiri continues to slow play negotiations.
According to those who have been doing business with the club Ujiri is very much present and engaged in the Raptors’ off-season preparations.
“He’s acting very much like an executive under contract,” is how one person put it to me.
But you didn’t have to read too closely between the lines of Ujiri’s end-of-season comments to get a sense that fighting uphill to keep the Raptors a champion contender as the NBA’s only Canadian team is wearing on him.
“Everything you want to consider becomes challenging,” said Ujiri. “Lots of complicated issues, but we need to grow in our minds. We need to be visionaries. We need to think big in this league on how we consider these things. We are trying to make the game really big and global, which I think the NBA is doing an incredible job of, but there are many issues that I think we have to address in terms of us.”
Winning makes things simpler and winning the draft lottery makes that winning on the court simpler still.
It’s unlikely that Ujiri’s future in Toronto is tied directly to the Raptors’ draft position, but it’s hard to imagine that should the lottery balls bounce in their favour that he’d be able to identify an opportunity that would check off as many boxes as the current Raptors core and addition of a top-four pick – and Cunningham especially.
The draft lottery math is simple, but how the equation shakes out will present all kinds of possibilities.
