Welcome to the North: Dan Tolzman Talks Raptors’ Day 2 Draft Moves | Post-Draft Presser

Welcome to the North: Dan Tolzman Talks Raptors’ Day 2 Draft Moves | Post-Draft Presser

dan why did you zero in on Elijah Martin uh well I think from you know just watching him at his different stops in college um he’s he’s a proven winner he’s you know he’s been to two different Final Fours with two different teams which doesn’t happen often um he’s shown a lot of traits that we look for in previous Raptors players second round picks and he’s just cut from that same cloth of just being a competitor and and like I said a proven winner that you know I don’t think he’s a finished product even though he’s a senior um he’s got a lot of room for for growth still so just one of these guys that get in our program see what he can do and he’s going to fight for everything he can get you you were talking the other day about some of the takeaways that you guys had from watching the playoffs and the finals in particular in terms of like playing through physicality defensive mindset versatility and all of that fair to say that those are the some of the common denominators that you guys saw in the two guys that you drafted over the last couple days yeah I mean I don’t think it’s a it’s a coincidence at all you know like we I think we see guys that when the game gets tough and and winning time happens like these are guys that will they’ll they won’t back away from that fight they’ll they’ll run to it and they’ll they’ll do all the little things and and hopefully this the skill development comes with um just working our our development program from there you mentioned there’s maybe more upside with the where is that growth that you guys potentially see with Elijah uh I think he’s you know he’s one of these guys that he’s got some positional versatility that maybe is a little bit untapped um at the next level like he can he can probably guard one through three but then offensively um you know work on his ball skills and and see how much like on the ball stuff he can do think as a shooter pretty much everybody can can improve with when guys are focusing on basketball all the time as instead of in college when you’re kind of focusing on other stuff too um you just get way more shooting reps in so I think that generally if you’re if you’re working on the right things like you can get some growth in that last year you were able to load up on second round picks this year none was it the market change or did your philosophy change uh I would say it was probably more of our own our own choice to not like try to be too active in terms of getting back in after our pick there was a little bit of of movement around our our pick with some teams trying to get in and and we felt really comfortable with with where it was at to where you know it was just kind of we could have been active if we wanted to but it doesn’t feel like anything to do it just to do it um and then we just were as soon as our pick went off you know we’ve been working the phones pretty good to see what the market might look like after the draft and that’s kind of what we’re working on right now and and we’ll see how that plays out but um yeah I think we we’ll probably end the night with some pretty good players regardless of just one pick but we’re going to do what we can to to try to fill out the summer league and then training camp that sort of stuff you guys don’t have a ton of roster spots open fin not a ton of financial flexibility does this feel like the roster that you think you could see sort of coming into the season with or do you think there’s still work to be done i would say there’s always probably a little bit more work to be done i think we’ll that’s what we’ll do the next few days is is really look at it a little bit harder and and see what from a free agency standpoint you know like you said we don’t have a ton of room to work with but there’s there’s always a little bit of tweaking that can happen and I mean again we’ll see what the undrafted market looks like as well and just kind of take a a little step back and look at the bigger picture and see where the biggest holes are in terms of at least at the start of the year what we need to to look at and then I mean it’s always just a it’s a process of getting to training camp i mean ideally getting training camp healthy and seeing what that group looks like which it it might look a lot different than what it looks like on paper right now once you get everybody on the court together and and then you get a little bit better idea from there what’s really missing heading into the next deadline so there’s there’s definitely some a little bit of work to happen between now and camp but you know in the grand scheme of things we’re still we’re still trying to fine-tune the roster uh for the longer term

Dan Tolzman breaks down the Raptors’ Day 2 draft strategy. From late-round gems to long-term vision, here’s how the front office closed out the 2025 class — and what it could mean for the future of the North.
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