Toronto Raptors: The 23rd pick in the 2017 NBA Draft is a coin flip
The Toronto Raptors will pick 23rd in the 2017 NBA Draft. It's difficult to gauge what caliber of player a franchise can find outside of the lottery, so I completed a small study to find out what Raptors fans can expect from this year's selection.
This time of year, you'll usually hear two opposing hot takes about the NBA Draft. For simplicity's sake, let's assign these takes to Persons A and B.
Person A: "That late first-rounder may already be better than [X Starter on X Playoff Team]. And hopefully that second round steal can replace [X Rotation Player] in a year or two."
No, he isn't, and no, he can't.
Person B: "The whole draft is a crapshoot. Most of these guys won't even play in the NBA. They'll all be in Serbia in a few years."
Person B must be great at parties.
To be clear, most basketball fans understand that, as a team-building tool, the draft fits somewhere between these two extremes. At least one superstar is taken every year, usually at the top of the draft. Beyond that, drafts can vary from multiple Hall-of-Famer bonanzas (see: 2003) to absolute duds (see: 2006).
Teams usually grasp some simple realities about when certain types of players go off the board. Looking for a star? You better have a high lottery pick. Expect a future starter? Hopefully you're in the top 12. Once you hit the 20s – common thinking dictates – you're expecting a player to stick, but it'd be unrealistic to search for a starter.
Well, the Toronto Raptors find themselves in the 20s this year. In the 2017 NBA Draft, Toronto owns the 23rd overall pick. So what can Raptors fans expect from their soon-to-be draftee?
To answer that question, I undertook a small, unscientific study of 20 past drafts, beginning with 1995 and ending with 2014. Specifically, I evaluated the careers or projected careers of every player drafted between picks 21 and 25 to get a complete picture of this area of the draft.
Much like a similar study by Roland Beech, I sorted these players into five groups:
These categories are admittedly wide in scope. I did my best to sort each player, but some guys – especially those who haven't reached their potential yet – were tough to judge. Tim Hardaway Jr. is probably a rotation player (that's what I classified him as), but he might have a soon-to-be-discovered quality starter ceiling.
That said, the sample size of 100 players is probably large enough to keep debatable categorizations from skewing the results.
Anyway, here's what I found:
Over the course of 20 years, just three players with multiple All-Star appearances came off the draft board between the 21st and 25th picks. Those players are Rajon Rondo, Kyle Lowry and Michael Finley.
The news gets only slightly more encouraging as we move to quality starters. Some notable names here include Tayshaun Prince, selected 23rd overall in 2002, and Serge Ibaka, taken 24th overall in 2008.
Apr 18, 2017; Toronto, Ontario, CAN; Toronto Raptors guard Kyle Lowry (7) talks with forward Serge Ibaka (9) after beating Milwaukee Bucks 106-100 in game two of the first round of the 2017 NBA Playoffs at Air Canada Centre. Mandatory Credit: Dan Hamilton-USA TODAY Sports
Still, well over a quarter of the sample consists of rotation players, and several drafts have yielded multiple such players in this range. In 2013 for instance, Gorgui Dieng, Mason Plumlee, Solomon Hill, and Hardaway Jr. came off the board one-by-one between 21 and 24.
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Finally, as you can see, we've got 11 bench guys. In reality, this group is a mixture of replacement-level players who stuck around (Omri Casspi, for example) and decent players who didn't (Nenad Kristic).
Unfortunately, that leaves 49 players of minimal NBA value – the Daequan Cooks, Jared Cunninghams, and Luther Heads of the world. That's right, nearly half the players taken in the range where Toronto will pick in two weeks don't even stick in the league. In terms of finding a helpful player, the 23rd pick is almost literally a coin flip.
It's not all bad news, though. The players that do stick tend not to loiter at the end of the bench, since 39 of those 50 landed somewhere in a rotation, mostly near the bottom, but also close to the top. Getting a star will take luck. Rajon Rondo needed a perfect situation to blossom, and Kyle Lowry needed the better part of a decade. Getting a sixth man, however, isn't impossible.
Raptors fans shouldn't expect anything this year. But they also shouldn't be Person B. It's not unreasonable to believe the Raptors can snag a valuable player in this draft. And in a summer of uncertainty, finding a valuable player would be an excellent first move.
*This could be 50, but I decided to omit Anthony Parker from consideration. Parker played just 55 games in three seasons before leaving to play overseas, but he ultimately came back as a rotation-level player.
