The middle and late stages of the first round of the NBA Draft is often where you find your small school standout prospects. Think of guys like Paul George from Fresno State, Kawhi Leonard from San Diego State or Jalen Williams from Santa Clara. who was a late lottery pick. Well, Santa Clara has its next export ready to go, as Allen Graves has ascended from an unknown to a first-round player.<\/p>\n
Allen Graves (born July 28, 2006) is a born and raised Cajun from Ponchatoula, Louisiana, which is just north of New Orleans on the other side of Lake Pontchartrain. The Graves family has a great basketball lineage, as Allen and his two older siblings have each gone on to play Division One hoops. His brother, Marshall, played for four years at LSU, while his sister, Amoura, played three seasons at Auburn. Few, if any, have a better basketball resume in the state of Louisiana than Graves, who finished as a two-time state champion at Ponchatoula High School. The forward won the Gatorade Louisiana Boys Basketball Player of the Year award in 2024, as well as the Louisiana Mr. Basketball award.<\/p>\n
After redshirting at Santa Clara in his freshman year, Graves played all 35 games for the Broncos this year, helping lead them to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since Steve Nash took them there in 1996. Graves averaged nearly 12 points per game and led the team in rebounding all while playing less than 23 minutes per game this season. Graves also totaled 67 steals, which was tied with Baylor\u2019s Tounde Yessoufou for the most by a freshman this season. The West Coast Conference awarded him the Freshman of the Year award, as well as the Sixth Man of the Year award.<\/p>\n
Following the season, Graves declared for the draft while also entering the transfer portal. It seems likely that Graves will indeed be keeping his name in the Draft, but has until May 27th to officially make the decision.<\/p>\n
In the twenties of the draft, you aren\u2019t getting anything close to a perfect prospect. Intangibles, traits and certain skills that could be translatable are what you\u2019re after here. Graves has each of those things, which is a unique quality in a prospect. This is going to be a fascinating evaluation for the league, as there might not be a prospect with a wider range of potential draft ranges than Graves.<\/p>\n
For Dallas in particular, having a high basketball IQ combo-big who can help facilitate is a very valuable thing. With that, you can have Graves start developing a two-man game with Cooper Flagg and the rookie guard that we all assume they\u2019ll draft. This would be an excellent fit. The bigger question is what Dallas has to do to be in position to draft him, as most mocks have Graves in the mid-twenties.<\/p>\n
Masai Ujiri\u2019s last draft with the Raptors was headlined by Toronto drafting Collin Murray-Boyles out of South Carolina. I think CMB is a good comp for Graves, as both are not the most athletic players you\u2019ll see, but both leverage their frame and smarts to be solid on both ends. Murray-Boyles was one of the most impactful Raptors in their first round series against the Cavs, and it\u2019s not a stretch to think Graves could have similar impact in a bench role early on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The middle and late stages of the first round of the NBA Draft is often where you find…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":743565,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3793],"tags":[7,686,149,4057,166,42852,6],"class_list":["post-743564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas-mavericks","tag-basketball","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-mavericks","tag-dallasmavericks","tag-mavericks","tag-mavericks-draft","tag-nba"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116635215062986224","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=743564"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743564\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/743565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=743564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=743564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=743564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}