Title: Raptors 2021 NBA Draft board 1.0: An early look at Evan Mobley and the lottery tiers
Date: May 27, 2021
Original Source: The Athletic
Synopsis: In my latest for The Athletic Toronto, I took an early look at the Raptors options with their lottery pick in the draft.
It has not been often these last few years that I have had to take the lead of our excellent Pistons reporter, James Edwards. A draft board, barely a week after the season has ended? Even last year, when the league hiatus allowed us to go extremely deep on several prospects, we didn’t Raptor-ize the big board until late in the process. But these are unfamiliar times, and so we lean on our friends who haven’t seen the playoffs much to guide us.
Friends in low places, but make it emo. Or something.
Before we start, I wanted to link back to this piece from last draft season, which explains my general approach to predraft work here. The lack of in-person draft workouts for 2020 and 2021 limits our availability to gather intel, particularly on some of the non-skill components of the evaluation process. That’s not a huge deal — we were pretty in on Malachi Flynn and Jalen Harris last year, after all — but there’s some fidelity lost by only studying players without respect to the Raptors context. And I do try to add Raptors context to this analysis. They have a culture and a development style, and that will work better with some prospect types.
Blake Murphy Sports Writing 