Jordan Loyd looks different this time around.
In the most superficial sense, there is the weight loss. Weighing in at 218 pounds at the end of Las Vegas Summer League a year ago, Loyd cut down to an even 200 last summer, ratcheting up his water intake and eating a little better in a process he (frustratingly, for some of us) called pretty simple. The result has been a little more bounce in his step in the open court, improved conditioning, and a few extra appearances on the highlight reel from his games with Hapoel Eliat in Israel.
Advertisement
“I’m more athletic. Like, last year, I had a bunch of dunks and they’re like, ‘Who is this guy, man?'” Loyd said. “It helped, losing the weight, it definitely helped.”
Mostly, the weight loss has helped Loyd look more like a point guard. He was hardly out of shape at 218, he just looked the part of a somewhat undersized wing. Loyd is 6-foot-4 with a 6-foot-5 wingspan, and until two years ago, he was almost exclusively a shooting guard. Even with traditional positions meaning less and less, it’s better to have positional size as an asset on the smaller end of the position spectrum rather than the opposite. In other words, 218 was was fine for what Loyd was at the time, not for what he wants to be.
Coming out of Division II Indianapolis in the 2016 draft, Loyd learned quickly that he’d need to prove he can handle point guard duties to carve out a bigger role at the professional level. His rookie season with the G League Fort Wayne Mad Ants was a nice step in that direction, and his first extended time with the ball in his hands more resulted in nearly four assists per game. Advanced stats from Division II are sparse, but Loyd’s 13 per cent assist rate as a G League rookie is safely above any level of playmaking he showed in four college seasons (plus a one-game red-shirt year). In Israel, he topped the 20 per cent marker in assist rate, in an environment where scorers don’t tend to be quite as generous with the stat.
Shifting Loyd to more of a combo-guard role has been a focus of the Toronto Raptors in Las Vegas, where Loyd is playing with them for a second consecutive year. Non-centre positions don’t matter quite as much the way the Raptors are operating, but head coach Nick Nurse has been sure to get a look at Loyd at both guard spots.
“He was really good. He’s kind of a versatile combo-guard. Plays the two probably primarily, we played him at some one today, too, and he handled things really well,” Nurse said after the team’s July 8 game. “So for his size, if we can keep kind of shifting him towards that one position. What we like is it doesn’t really matter the position as long as he can take it off the bounce a little bit and shoot, that’s what the guards and the wings need to be able to do. He certainly has the skillset to do it, the ball-handling and the shooting and pick-and-roll game, he has a lot of that skillset. Now we’ve got to just continue to push him a little bit forward on the mindset.”
Advertisement
The skill development is coming along well, with Loyd’s refined attacking approach at the lower playing weight allowing him to slither through the defence and to the rim. His finishing will still need to improve and his 3-point shot — 34.2 per cent in 2016-17 in the G League, 39.9 per cent in Israel last year — can become more consistent to unlock some versatility of potential chemistry with other lead or off-guards, and his on-ball defence is already in a good place with how much pressure the Raptors intend to put on ball-handlers under Nurse. And while Loyd is still coming along as an on-floor general responsible for organizing teammates and running the offence, his off-court leadership has already impressed.
More than any aesthetic changes, Loyd simply looks better. The Raptors came away impressed with Loyd in Vegas last year after tracking him with Fort Wayne, and they were sure to keep tabs on him in his first overseas season. Before the year even ended, Loyd had committed to a Summer League return with the Raptors, and the team has been impressed with what he’s shown both in pre-Vegas workouts in Toronto and in the tournament so far. Loyd’s numbers not necessarily popping — 19 points and four assists in 38 total minutes over two games after missing the opener due to back spasms — has done nothing to dispel optimism.
“We liked him last year, we love him this year, would be a fair way to say it,” Raptors 905 head coach Jama Mahlalela said.
All told, the Raptors see Loyd as someone who could be a big help with Raptors 905 and possibly contribute at the NBA level. He’s close, and such a situation seems like exactly what the new two-way contracts were designed for. Loyd is still just 24, and if he can offer G League leadership while still developing and also provide guard depth for an NBA parent club that may only carry 14 players to save on luxury tax payments (the Lorenzo Brown situation, basically), then Loyd would seem a proper fit.
What is perhaps most fascinating about that idea is what Loyd might look like after some time in an NBA development system. To this point, Loyd is almost entirely self-made. In high school, he was the sixth- or seventh-most highly recruited player off of his team and ultimately landed at Division II Furman University before transferring. At no stop has Loyd had tremendous resources for improving his game, and while development is hardly linear, that could mean the growth he’s shown the last few seasons could take off even further in the right, resource-rich environment.
Advertisement
“There are things he’s never been given the opportunity to use in his development,” Raptors assistant general manager Dan Tolzman said. “I’m really intrigued as to if you were to really put him on a program and see what all that hard work — and he seems like a sponge and a kid that really, really wants to be good — if you go and here it is on a platter for you, I could see him just take off, because he is so talented. You talk about a Division II guard who was a straight two-guard in college to come in and do what he did that rookie year, to not get the kind of sniffs he should have been getting, it’s weird. And then when you actually get to know him, you’re kinda like, ‘Dude, how does this guy not have the right makeup to get it done? ‘”
Loyd is similarly excited at the idea. In Israel, he played once a week, and the onus was on players to gather together to get workouts in, lest you play poorly and have to stew in it for a week. So far with Toronto, he’s been taken aback by the sheer volume of staff around to help aid in his improvement. This is where, somewhat ironically, his circuitous path as a consistently underlooked grinder (apparently a staple for the Raptors now) has developed into an advantage, should he get a chance.
“It actually worked out in my favor, I feel like. I didn’t hit my peak in high school, so I’m kinda happy about that. I’ll take this route, man. I’ll take it,” Loyd said “It’s just like, I know wherever I go, I’m not gonna be that top guy. At least so far. And I have to prove it, I play with that chip on my shoulder. At Summer League, even in Israel, I didn’t know who was gonna be there, so I’m just like, you know, I’ve gotta prove myself. No matter what I do going forward, that’s just the mindset I always have. I have that attitude and it works for me. It’s funny, I was just talking to some of the coaches about that, man. When I was in Toronto working out with the guys, and seeing everything there, the staff, I was just like, man, for sure it would take my game a bunch of levels up. I’m excited.”
It’s an interesting player development question, in general. The Raptors have had plenty of success identifying and developing undervalued talent over the last few years, and in Loyd they can be assured he’ll put the work in. Whether a player like Loyd will plateau or, more excitingly, hit a tipping point where everything clicks and the point guard position becomes more natural, is largely an unknown. There are just relatively few players like him, even as the G League has developed and opened up more of a window for this type of story and other Division II success stories have paved the way. The developmental resource gap is real level by level, and Loyd doing all he has on the lower end of that scale is really intriguing.
For now, Loyd remains in tryout mode, like most of the population at Summer League. He has a solid Plan B, as he’s signed with Turkish EuroLeague team Darüşşafaka, itself a nice jump in competitive environment if he can’t latch on in the NBA for 2018-19. That is the goal, though, and Loyd chose to return to the Vegas Raptors in hopes of eventually making that leap with Toronto.
“I’m ready. I’m definitely ready. I just wanna make that next jump, man, wherever it may be, and be able to prove myself like I always do,” he said. “That’s why I came back a second year, to make it come true. So we’ll see, man. We will see.”
(Top photo credit: Garrett Ellwood/NBAE via Getty Images)