Raptors Assistant GM Explains Reasons for Doing Due Diligence on Top NBA Draft Prospects

The Toronto Raptors want to keep all their options open and will meet with even the very best NBA Draft prospects just in case something happens down the road

Aaron Rose | Jun 8, 2022

Stephen R. Sylvanie-USA TODAY Sports

With the 29th pick in the 2020 NBA Draft, the Toronto Raptors knew they weren't going to get anywhere close to drafting Precious Achiuwa.

Every mock draft had the 6-foot-9 forward out of Memphis going well outside Toronto's range and normally that creates problems for organizations like the Raptors who regularly find themselves drafting toward the later parts of the first and second rounds.

These days the whole pre-draft process is organized by agents who meticulously plan their clients' workouts, hoping to orchestrate exactly where each player will land. Teams too late in the first round have almost no hope of bringing in prized prospects for pre-draft workouts.

"It's hard when we feel like we should be getting certain guys in ... but for whatever reason their representation feels otherwise," said Raptors assistant general manager Dan Tolzman on Wednesday afternoon.

That's what makes combine interviews so important. When the Raptors spoke with Bennedict Mathurin, Dyson Daniels, two top lottery picks in this year's class, and other highly-regarded players at last month's draft combine, they were taking advantage of a rare opportunity to get to know players that they'd never normally meet face to face. Most of the time, nothing comes of these conversations. They're stored in some file, collecting dust along with the hundreds of other player profiles that never see the light of day. Occasionally, though, those meetings can turn into game-changers down the road.

"I think every year we kind of approach the combine as (we) do our best to get to know as many high-level guys as we can," Tolzman said. "You never know what comes up on draft night in terms of moving up to where if you have the opportunity to have at least sat down with them and get to know them a little bit. You have something to go off in addition to all the film work that we've done and the background checks that we've done."

With Achiuwa in 2020, things played out a little differently. His agency permitted the Raptors to speak to Achiuwa virtually during the pandemic combine. It was a somewhat unusual situation, Tolzman admitted, but Toronto's serious interest in the Nigerian prospect created an opportunity.

A year later when Kyle Lowry made it known he wanted to sign with Miami as a free agent, Toronto had already done its due diligence on the prospect the Raptors wanted.

"These guys, they're all eventually free agents and everybody falls in love with players in the draft that two years later, for whatever reason, the situation is not the same and they come up in trade talks and we can look back on some of these pre-draft preparations that we've done and use them as much as we can later on," Tolzman added.

By all accounts, Toronto isn't going to make a big move ahead of the June 23rd draft. Tolzman even shot down the notion that OG Anunoby is unhappy and the Raptors are going to have to move him this offseason. Eventually, though, those conversations could prove fruitful, not today or tomorrow, but at some point down the road.

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