raptors-darko

10/05/2024 11:41 AM

Montreal—When Jamal Shead got drafted and ended up with the Toronto Raptors, a familiar name popped up in his DMs.

It was Fred VanVleet, who Shead had met when the rookie guard was playing out his senior season at the University of Houston, where VanVleet was playing for the Rockets after spending the first seven years of his career in Toronto.

"He just said 'anything you need, hit me up,'" said Shead after a practice at the University of Quebec at Montreal, where the Raptors are holding training camp.

The Raptors would surely love it if Shead would lean into any and all advice VanVleet might have for the young point guard.

And doubtless, too, the Raptors would love it if Shead and the young core of players who will likely fill out the bottom end of head coach Darko Rajakovic's roster and rotation will one day emulate the path taken by VanVleet and his peers early in their careers in Toronto, which represent the highwater mark for the franchise and its player development program.

Granted, it's unlikely.

No one could have reasonably expected that VanVleet, Norman Powell, Pascal Siakam, and Delon Wright—four players who were either undrafted (VanVleet), taken in the second round (Powell), or taken late in the first round (Siakam and Wright, chosen 27th and 20th, respectively) in 2015 and 2016—would all turn into fantastic NBA players. The Raptors hit the jackpot again when they selected OG Anunoby 24th overall in 2017.

Collectively, that quintet now has 41 years of combined NBA experience (and counting) and is guaranteed $854 million through the end of their current contracts.

Siakam, VanVleet and Anunoby share all-NBA and All-Star designations, Powell remains one of the most valuable reserve players in the league, and Wright remains a sought-after veteran rotation player.

How unlikely it is that any of the youngsters vying for minutes in the rotation this season have even a fraction of that impact is underlined by the reality that for all the success the Raptors had finding and developing young players taken outside the draft lottery, they haven't been able to emulate it since.

The only undrafted player they've hit on after VanVleet is Chris Boucher, and they haven't had a second-rounder turn into a rotation player since Powell. Malachi Flynn, taken 29th overall in 2020, never panned out.

This time around, the team is taking a strength-in-numbers approach.

In addition to Shead – who was the 45th player taken this past summer, the Raptors have rookies Jonathan Mogbo (31), Ulrich Chomche (57th), and Brandon Carlson (undrafted), who will get opportunities to prove themselves. They also have high hopes for Ja'Kobe Walter (taken 19th overall in June) as a non-lottery first-rounder, and Ochai Agbaji, who was taken 14th in 2022 by Utah, but was acquired last season as a re-draft candidate, someone the Raptors believe can be moulded into a contributor after falling out of the rotation with the Jazz.

If even one of that group – or anyone else the Raptors have in camp outside their core six or seven players – can establish themselves as worthy of steady rotation minutes, it will go a long way towards accelerating a rebuild that would benefit from some unexpected talent injections.

The good news is there will be plenty of opportunity.

"I think this season, we don’t have a cemented five [starters]," said Raptors head coach Darko Rajakovic. "Off the bench, I think pretty much all the roster, going from five to 15, those guys are talented and great players, and they’re competing for minutes. They’re competing for a spot. So I can see us being this year much more fluid and I’m going to be much more experimenting and giving guys opportunities in games just to see their growth and how they can affect the game."

The opportunities have been even more generous through the first week of training camp. Starters Scottie Barnes (personal reasons) and Immanuel Quickley (thumb) haven't been present to this point, and veteran reserve Bruce Brown (knee) will be out until late November at least.

For Shead and the Raptors’ crew of unproven prospects, it's a moment to be seized. Their first crack came Friday night as the Raptors held an open scrimmage at McGill University.

Among the standouts were DJ Carton, an athletic point guard prospect who is on a two-way contract with the team and Agbaji, who looked the part of a relatively polished prospect as defended aggressively and made some smart cuts for baskets.

Shead was held out due to a bump he took on his hip in practice. Mogbo looked a little out of sorts and shot poorly, while Carlson had one nice moment when he blocked veteran Kelly Olynyk on one end and hit a three in transition at the other. Chomche, who has yet to turn 19, was predictably a step behind on many instances, but he's a longer term project in any case.

There will be plenty of chances, with much of the young group likely headed for Raptors 905, where they can earn their stripes, much like VanVleet, Siakam, Powell, and Boucher did in years past.

The Raptors have already invested plenty in them over the off-season, starting with Summer League and then following up with player development camps in Spain and Miami. They also had most of them in the gym in Toronto for most of September.

One of the keys to the success of the 'Bench Mob'—the nickname of the successful bench unit that VanVleet, Siakam, and Wright were at the core of in 2017-18—was a sense of being a team within a team fostered by hours of additional work they put in as a group.

"I think whoever does end up coming off the bench, whether it’s me or whoever… I think that we’ve created such a togetherness that they’re going to be ready to play together and help those guys that are, that are starters. So I think we are creating something special," said Shead.

Mogbo echoed a similar theme.

"I feel like we have a lot of chemistry. We’ve been through the NBPA program (the rookie orientation program put on by the player's union) together, so we had another segment of us just being teammates off the court," said Mogbo. "So I feel like we had a long summer [of development], summer league too, just being the young guys, but also trying to learn from the vets and, you know, try to have a higher understanding.

"We don’t want to, we don’t want to be that young group that comes in doesn’t know too much. We want to be in the rotation. Everybody wants to be a part of the rotation."

The most likely candidate for now is probably Agbaji, who is entering his third season and has 50 NBA starts on his resume. He's a couple of years ahead of the Raptors rookies but still has plenty to prove now that he's on his second team and has so far shot just 32.6 per cent from three over his career, a crucial hole he needs to fill if he's going to have a long-term career as a 3-and-D wing.

He also feels a sense of identity is beginning to form among the team's youngest players, among whom he is a veteran.

"The opportunity and the amount of opportunity that’s out there, you can feel it," he said "And obviously everyone that’s going in here and going 110 per cent it’s just making everybody better. Collectively it's making the black team better, that grey is going so hard. Everyon is wanting to compete and be on the floor and play. So I think that’s only going to raise the level of our team, everyone competing and collectively wanting to be better. "

And while the Raptors haven't had much success in the area recently, the Bench Mob example is still relatively fresh. It took VanVleet and Siakam and the rest nearly a full season to get their feet under them, but when they did, they were formidable and their careers reflect the foundations they were able to put in place early.

For Shead, VanVleet is almost a touchstone. They are both undersized point guards who played four years of college for programs that were winning machines: the Houston Cougars lost just 19 games in Shead's four seasons, while VanVleet's Wichita State Shockers lost only 24 games in his college career.

"He was in Houston while I was there, so I got to watch him up close and personal every game that I went to. And, you know, he was around for us at the university," Shead said of VanVleet.

"He [Fred] carved out his own role. And, you know, we have similar play style, similar body types, and that’s, that’s definitely somebody I look up to, especially since, you know, he’s doing something that I want to do. So, of course, you know, Fred’s somebody that that can definitely be a great role model for me. "

And as for the rest of the Bench Mob, who have gone on to such great things?

"Now look at them, it's crazy. I think there's a chance for that here," says Shead. They probably bonded the same way we are and had great attitudes, the same way we do, so I think if we continue to work, then we got something here for sure."