Ahead of the NBA draft, many top Raptors front office executives have temporarily relocated to Los Angeles, which is a fairly central locale for prospects and their agents, Josh Lewenberg of TSN reports. Because agents, many of whom are located on the West Coast generally and in L.A. specifically, are holding individual workouts for their player clients ahead of the draft, an L.A. residency made the most sense to Toronto brass.
The Raptors brain trust gathered in L.A. includes team president Masai Ujiri, GM Bobby Webster, assistant GM Dan Tolzman, and director of global scouting Patrick Engelbrecht. “You are just focusing more on skill set and conditioning and their level of preparation for that moment [in an individual workout,” Engelbrecht said. “But in terms of competitive nature, who is going to push through a drill, who is going to out-compete somebody else, yeah, those are things you are just not going to have a chance to see and you are going to have to rely more on your past scouting and in-game scouting you have done throughout the year.”
There’s more out of the Atlantic Division:
- Engelbrecht highlighted the fact that he logged significant time assessing international prospects before the pandemic, according to Michael Grange of Sportsnet. “I spent the entire month of January and half of February out of the U.S.,” Engelbrecht said during a Monday conference call. “It seems like right when the basketball world or the world shut down, I just had a fresh look at all those targets, all those prospects.”
- After a breakout season with the Pistons, free agent power forward Christian Wood is expected to be a top free agent target for the Knicks, per Ian Begley of SNY. When he became a full-time starter following the trade of Andre Drummond to the Cavaliers, Wood sported a stat line of 23 PPG and 10 RPG, while connecting on 40% of his attempts from behind the three-point line.
- As we relayed in a prior story, the Nets have officially announced their revamped coaching staff. Assistant coaches Mike D’Antoni and Ime Udoka and player development coach Amar’e Stoudemire are new hires for first-time head coach Steve Nash. They will be joined by 2019/20 holdovers Jacque Vaughn, Adam Harrington, Jordan Ott, and Tiago Splitter as assistant coaches, plus player development coordinator Ryan Forehan-Kelly.
Christian Wood
Real value 3 years 36 million
Market value 3 years 60 million
Wood will be a better player than Grant？
The Raptors need to seriously consider a permanent relocation. I love Toronto. It is a beautiful city. But the logistics of being the only team in a different country is just a lot of extra headache that the team would not have if it were in Buffalo or Cincinnati or Nashville. And it doesn’t look like the world of 2021 is going to be that much better than the world of 2020 either.
That’s never going to happen.
The word “never” does not exist. There is nothing in the world that could “never” happen.
You could “never” be in the basketball marketing business… let’s strip a city of its team for logistical reasons a year after they won the title… you’d be out of the job by lunch time
If I could “never” be in the business, how would I ever lose the job? Wouldn’t I have to be in the business in order to get fired? Oh well, at least I got a nice lunch.
Maybe we will wake up tomorrow and be in the world of The Walking Dead.
You mean like Houston?)
Burner done burned lol
I can NEVER time travel back to the 90s and whisper to the Knick’s Charles Smith, “kick the ball out to Starks! Trust me, it will not end well if you try to dunk against Jordan and Grant.”
One of the more impressive stats on Christian Wood is in his final 13 games (11 of which he started) the team only won 1 of them but yet he still managed to have a +/- of just -0.8 — that’s pretty impressive and tough to do on a team that loses 12/13. He should definitely be a player teams are highly interested in as a free agent, and the other teams he played for prior to last season must be kicking themselves that they essentially just wrote him off/didnt even really give him a chance to show he could play. Then as soon as he gets the opportunity he averages 22/10 with a 40% 3-pt shot. Quite impressive, hope he can build off of that for his sake and really establish himself going forward. He’s obviously put a lot of hard work in and it shows.
Actually to me that’s kind of scary, the W-L starting.
+/- can be hard to figure, as it means different things in different places and I may not get it straight. But his on/off for the year is very good, plus11.
Agreed. Wood is a good player but has burned bridges with multiple teams. Goodluck to any team paying him more than 8 million a season.
If the Knicks somehow get rid of Randle they probably go after Wood.
Wood, skill set wise, fits what the Knicks are looking for. But I don’t see them breaking the bank for him.
Knicks better trade bust Ntilkina! I can’t believe they selected him instead of DM or Bam. They already have 3 PFs so they don’t need Christian Wood. I heard that Jrue is up for grab so maybe they can pull a hail mary.
You can’t believe the Knicks reached on an inexperienced player from France? It was déjà vu to Knicks fans.
Please name the 3 Knicks PF that would prevent them from getting a better starter? You do realize that every team in the NBA has at least 3 PFs on the roster, right?