Title: Draft profiles: 6 guards the Raptors could select with the No. 28 pick
Date: May 29, 2020
Original Source: The Athletic
Synopsis: In my latest for The Athletic Toronto, I wrote about six guards the Raptors could take a look at with the No. 28 pick in the draft.
Appreciating a great situation now should not restrict you from contingency planning if the situation gets worse.
That’s where the Toronto Raptors might find themselves with the point guard position moving forward. Kyle Lowry is the greatest Raptor of all time, defying age and nudging a hypothetical decline phase further out into the future. He’s also 34, with only one year left on his contract. Fred VanVleet, meanwhile, was a key fixture of the franchise’s first championship and one of the avatars of their cultural and developmental success. He’s also set for unrestricted free agency, near the top of an admittedly cloudy market.
Even if you’re of the belief Lowry and VanVleet will be around for a while — reasonable! — it’s easy enough to make a case for the Raptors to look at a point guard in the draft. Outside of those two, the next closest things to a point guard on the roster are Patrick McCaw (not really a point guard) and Terence Davis (intriguing developmentally but probably best cast as a slashing/secondary playmaking two). Tyler Ennis had a great season with Raptors 905, but he’d project as a third point guard, not as a higher-upside developmental piece. With how often the Raptors have successfully run two-point guard lineups and how important that position is to their success, getting another guard in the pipeline would be a justifiable use of a pick in a quality guard draft.
Blake Murphy Sports Writing 