The NBA off-season moves at lightning pace. 

After a swirl of trades and rumours of trades in recent days has helped give a new outline to the Eastern Conference, for the Toronto Raptors, Tuesday night was a moment of relative calm, a pause in a continuing storm.

It was time to do what an NBA front office is supposed to do: Choose the best player available when their turn comes around. 

The Raptors, picking 19th, were inevitably dependent on who was taken before them. In the end, they got Allen Graves, a player they had been hoping would be available all along and who multiple sources had indicated to me was high on their board of eligible prospects.

A six-foot-eight freshman from the University of Santa Clara, Graves fits a lot of what the Raptors want to do under head coach Darko Rajakovic, as he jumped out on analytical models for his ability to gain possessions by way of his remarkable steal rate (1.9 in 22 minutes per game) and knack for offensive rebounding (2.8 per game). That he can shoot — he converted 41.3 per cent on nearly three attempts per game from deep — is a bonus. 

“As a player, he’s a high processor, two-way player, wins the possession game, I think, on both ends of the floor,” said Raptors general manager Bobby Webster. “Obviously a developing player as well, just played one year of college, so he'll have the usual and typical adjustment to NBA pace, speed, quickness. But sort of a young prospect that we think does a few things really well on the defensive end, and then offensively, obviously shooting, feel for the game. So we thought we got one of the better two-way players in the draft.”

Never let it be said the........

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