One of the traditional methods of building a good team is to suck for high draft picks and hope those picks turn into superstars that you can win championships with. I’m not sure how successful this strategy has actually been in terms of producing actual championships and not just frustrated fanbases and a few mediocre playoff runs, but it’s still a widely used and talked about strategy.
The Raptors have a different idea, though. Instead of trying to lose games in order to draft the best players, why not just have those players go undrafted and then straight up sign them? That way, they can keep their team together as much as possible, win some games, and get the same benefit that the tanking teams do when it comes to young talent.
Of course, Toronto’s methods rely on having the scouting to find those undrafted players and having the development personnel/team culture to turn them into good players. And a lot of luck. The draft is a crapshoot, everyone agrees on that, and so is signing undrafted players. No one remembers all the unsigned dudes who sucked so bad that they couldn’t even stick past training camp (what even happened to Fletcher Magee he has such a nice name).
Terence Davis, if you haven’t heard by now, is one of those undrafted players. He started off slow, but he’s been slowly increasing his career-high seemingly every game (it’s actually been every other game). At some point, it feels like he’ll turn back into a pumpkin at the stroke of midnight, but for now, I’m going to enjoy the fun. I am getting a little tired of making vids for him, though. Would it be too much to ask for some double-digit scoring games from Oshae Brissett instead?