Dan Tolzman on Raptors' approach to 13th pick in NBA Draft

The assistant GM/VP of Player Personnel for the Raptors discusses the skill level available at No. 13., how much Toronto is looking into moving up in the draft and more. Full availability is on our YouTube channel.

Video Transcript

DAN TOLZMAN: No, not really. I think it's-- I mean, it's a total cliche every year that it's best available. But there actually is something to that just because of the uncertainty of rosters at any time. Free agency is just a part of that. So it's really hard to make any decisions based on a current roster. So you can't deny talent when it's all said and done with the draft picks because you never know what the team could look like two weeks later, a month later, six months later. So you just kind of have to-- you plan for what's the best decision long term, at least we do, what the best decision is for us long term regardless of what our current roster situation is.

It's actually quite deep. I think, yeah, everybody is kind of going nuts about the top of the draft, which is it seems like as good as it's ever been. And we seem to be really comfortable with a lot of players in this draft, though. I think we like where we're at 13. And even we're getting a lot of offers or things coming across the table for picks all around the draft as well. And there seems to be at a number of different places in this draft there's players to be had. So it's a fairly deep draft we feel like. And we're pretty happy with where we're sitting right now.

- How has this year without a coach for so long and now a smaller assistant coaching staff been different from years past as you go through this process?

DAN TOLZMAN: Not all that different. I mean, usually-- I mean, we've had draft processes where our main team is still playing in the playoffs and that coaching staff and that part of the organization can't really focus on the draft as much as the front office does. And so every year, we really lean on the 905 staff to help run our draft workouts. And the coaching staff doesn't really have a ton of input in terms of the actual draft process themselves.

I mean, usually we like to have them around and watching and getting their take on the players that are working out. And this maybe more than years past that wasn't the case. But other than that, the actual running of the workouts and the main decision making that's going on in our room isn't really any different than normal.

- Andy.

- [INAUDIBLE] the draft is far deeper. Did you run a lot more guys through than you maybe normally would [INAUDIBLE]?

DAN TOLZMAN: Not really, mainly because not having a second round pick, it kind of limited the number of players that-- a lot of it is agents that are sending their players to us. And so we tried our hardest to get in a wide net of players for 13. But you know how it goes with-- there's 20 players that think they're going to go in the top 10. And then there's another 20 players that don't think they would go at 13.

So we're kind of right in that middle ground of trying to convince both directions of coming in and getting in front of us. And I thought we did a really good job of getting as many in as we could. But not having the second round pick, it kind of limited some of the deeper cut type players that usually we like to get in and get to know a little bit better.

- How many guys would you have in? So we didn't get to know.

DAN TOLZMAN: Yeah. I'd say probably maybe like 20.