One of the most pleasant surprises of the Toronto Raptors regular season was the play of Jakob Poeltl. This was the Austrian center’s second year in the NBA, and I expected incremental improvement. Instead he displayed a number of positive skills I didn’t know he had, and earned himself a lot more playing time.
Poeltl was an unexpected pick by the Raptors at the #9 spot in the 2016 draft. He played with Delon Wright at the University of Utah, and our previous year’s selection gave a positive recommendation about Poeltl to Masai Ujiri.
The 2016 class has been disappointing so far.