䴡Ұ—T Raptors have been building patiently over a loss-dominated two-year period. Trades have been made, drafts have been conducted, moves have been accomplished.
The next and perhaps most important step will happen in a lighting-quick five-minute period in a Chicago convention centre Monday evening. The NBA lottery will determine the order of selection for the June 25 draft.
The lottery determines the first four picks, with a series of four digits deciding those slots. Each draw is precisely timed at 50 seconds.
Four draws, less than five minutes, the fates of 14 non-playoff teams sealed.
The Raptors were 30-52 last season, seventh worst in the league, and have a 7.5 per cent chance of moving into the top spot and a 31.9 per cent chance of picking in the top four.
The best chance (34.1 per cent) is that they will fall to eighth; there is a 19.7 per cent chance pc28will keep the seventh selection.
When the Spurs upset the Warriors on Wednesday, it clarified Toronto’s lottery chances of
The Raptors are hoping for at least the same luck they had the last time they were seventh going into a lottery. They moved up from seventh to fourth in 2021 and chose eventual rookie of the year Scottie Barnes.
The Raptors are bringing out the big guns take part in the half-hour long television show. President and vice-chairman Masai Ujiri is expected to be the team’s onstage representative for the show with general manager Bobby Webster watching the actual draw in a sealed room away from the stage.
Webster will know the outcome about an hour before Ujiri and the public get the result but he will be locked away — with representatives from each of the other lottery teams, several league officials and media witnesses — until the top pick is unveiled around 7:30 p.m. ET.
The 18-year-old Flagg, who leads the Blue Devils into Saturday’s NCAA Final Four, is a deadbolt
The prize this year is six-foot-10 Duke University forward Cooper Flagg, who is the consensus No. 1 selection. The group behind him is heavy on wings and guards: Dylan Harper and Ace Bailey of Rutgers, Baylor’s VJ Edgecombe and Tre Johnson of Texas. Many of them seem to duplicate young players the Raptors already have.
Ujiri said early in the off-season that the construction of the current roster won’t drive whatever selection the Raptors take.
“Wherever we fall, we’re going to go for the best talent available,” he said. “I know it’s the answer everybody gives — or maybe we give — but it’s a unique draft and we feel that we will have a talented player available, and we’ll try to get one that fits our ball club.
“Yeah, we need another young big, we would definitely look at that, but maybe it’s not really focused on that … There are a lot of talented kids I see in the draft.”
The teams with the three worst records in the regular season — Utah, Washington and Charlotte — have a 14 per cent chance of winning the No. 1 pick. New Orleans (12.5 per cent), Philadelphia (10.5) and Brooklyn (9) are fourth through sixth.
After Toronto, the lottery portion of the draft is: San Antonio (6), Phoenix (3.8), Portland (3.7), Dallas (1.8), Chicago (1.7), Sacramento (0.8) and Atlanta (0.7).
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