Wade Baldwin hopes Raptors 905 puts him back on NBA path after career detours

As far as sophomore developments go, it felt like the sort of light-bulb moment that shows a young player is beginning for put things together. With Damian Lillard on the sidelines and the Portland Trail Blazers down double-digits to the Houston Rockets, Wade Baldwin IV got the call. The goal: Lock down two future hall of famers in Chris Paul and James Harden as best you can, and be a chaos engine to disrupt the Rockets’ comfort.

Here was Baldwin, playing just his fifth NBA game of the season late in the year, getting called on for 32 minutes against a top contender, and drawing the toughest defensive assignments. In the second quarter, Baldwin used his 7-foot wingspan to force the MVP into a pair of turnovers, earning a tough rebuttal he didn’t take lying down. Later, he’d help key a 17-0 Blazers run in the final five minutes, a comeback that fell short when Paul hit a game-winner. Head coach Terry Stotts called Baldwin’s defence “exceptional” and Lillard described it as “playoff level.” Despite the loss, Baldwin made an impression.

Less than a year later, Baldwin found himself signing into the G League player pool as a free agent.

“One day you’re up, one day you’re the man because you’re guarding James Harden, the next day you’re traded three times and then waived,” Baldwin said.

Enter Raptors 905, who added Baldwin via the G League waiver system and debuted him on Thursday. Baldwin’s path to the 905 was circuitous, to say the least. Despite spending the bulk of his first three pro seasons on some type of NBA deal, he’s at times felt like a basketball transient.

The No. 17 pick in 2016, Baldwin bounced between Memphis and Iowa as the Grizzlies tried to develop him while giving him occasional NBA reps. He’d play 33 G League games across five assignments and 33 NBA games, plus three more in the playoffs, a good amount of rookie experience. The Grizzlies then made the bizarre call to waive Baldwin before the 2017-18 season, eating his sophomore salary and punting on the two team option years on his rookie-scale contract. There were rumblings that Baldwin’s practice habits and attitude played a role, but it’s very rare for teams to even decline the first of those two options and give up on a first-round pick after two seasons; Memphis doing so after one year — without just shipping him to someone who wanted a cheap look at a 21-year-old — was unexpected. (The Grizzlies ate money on Baldwin and Rade Zagorac to keep Andrew Harrison, Mario Chalmers and Jarell Martin.)

Portland swooped in quickly, signing Baldwin to a two-way contract. He’d appear for the Trail Blazers seven times and play 17 games with the Texas Legends of the G League in one of the more unique two-way situations in the league since Portland doesn’t have its own affiliate. Essentially, the Dallas Mavericks were responsible for Baldwin’s G League development while he was a Trail Blazer. It worked out well enough, as the Blazers signed Baldwin to a multi-year NBA contract in March, giving him big minutes over a handful of April games and even playing him in all four of their playoff games. Baldwin continued developing with Portland in a garbage-time role this season outside of a two-week assignment to Texas, and while he didn’t look to be in their near-term plans, they’d allowed his deal to guarantee for the year.

At the trade deadline, Portland needed salary stability to acquire Rodney Hood, and so Baldwin became inseparable from Nik Stauskas for a few strange days. First, Baldwin, Stauskas and a pair of second-round picks were routed to Cleveland for Hood. Cleveland then included both players with Alec Burks and a second-round pick in a three-team trade involving Sacramento to land Marquese Chriss, Brandon Knight’s contract, a first-round pick and a second-round pick from Houston. Looking to shed salary under the luxury tax, the Rockets then flipped Baldwin, Stauskas, a second-round pick and the draft rights to Maarty Leunen to Indiana for cash.

The Pacers were simply eating salaries and getting a pick in return, and so they waived Baldwin and Stauskas; Stauskas landed with Cleveland as a free agent and Baldwin opted to enter the G League player pool. The journey of Baldwin and Stauskas isn’t novel, though it was supposed to be the relic of an earlier collective bargaining agreement. You used to see a fair amount of the re-routing of players for accounting reasons back when non-guaranteed contracts could be used for salary matching in trades, a wrinkle that saw players like Alonzo Gee and Scotty Hopson spending their summers as currency. It’s unusual for a player to be moved this much in a short period in-season — especially since that wrinkle was removed from the CBA. Baldwin has managed to take it in stride.

“It’s the business I chose, so you’ve got to take it with a grain of salt. You know, hearing your name going from one team to another, it is what it is. It’s nothing personal. It’s not a reflection of your ability, it’s just the business and numbers,” Baldwin said. “I think every time you step foot on the court, there’s something to prove. You’ve got 60-plus people coming in the next year with the draft picks, you’ve got free agents from all over the world trying to get in, so I think it’s wise for everybody to get in where you fit in and never feel comfortable, ’cause anything can change.

“Look at a situation like Toronto. They had DeMar DeRozan for his whole career and next thing you know he’s on the Spurs, you know what I’m saying? It’s billionaires versus millionaires in a sense. So you never know, and you just continue with the pride that you play with, continue working hard, and see where the chips fall.”

The 905, who owned the top waiver priority due to losing Deng Adel to the Cavaliers, hope to be the beneficiaries. When Baldwin became available, the two sides discussed whether there would be a fit and, eager to land a player of his caliber before their waiver priority was superseded by another team, the 905 encouraged him to sign a G League deal quickly so they could claim him.

“I think it was easy just in the sense that I love the game of basketball,” Baldwin said. “I want to play. I think in this league you have to show consistency, show what you can do at all times, so it’s another platform for me to show what I can do in order to get back where I belong. I believe I’m an NBA player, rotation guy, talent, all that. It’s opportunity.”

Baldwin becomes a “redraft” player of sorts. That term is sometimes used for players who don’t work out in their initial post-draft situations but show enough promise and have enough talent to warrant another look. Maybe a new environment or development system can help the player make that last jump, and his new team will benefit from the development time invested by another. It’s easy to see why the Raptors would be interested in a longer look at a player like Baldwin.

Entering the draft, Baldwin looked to be a strong shooter with size and athleticism. His ability to generate steals pointed to some defensive upside, as does his 6-foot-4, 200-pound frame with 7-foot wingspan at a guard position. There were questions at Vanderbilt about his leadership on and off the court and his decision-making as a lead guard, but analytically he projected as a high-floor, lower-ceiling type, perhaps a capable backup or low-end starter. In a weaker draft for point guard volume, Baldwin’s distribution of potential outcomes by one model confirmed that thinking, giving him a higher likelihood than most to reach “starter” quality status but with long odds of being an elite piece.

(2016 NBA Draft, top eight PGs projected three-year PIPM peak, courtesy The Stepien. A peak three-year PIPM below -1 is a non-NBA talent, a rotation player falls between -1 and 1, a starter falls between 1 and 3.5, and a top-25 player has a peak greater than 3.5.)

In a messy sample up and down between two NBA teams and three G League teams, so he’s yet to deliver on that potential. His tiny-sample NBA analytics paint a discouraging picture, and while his jump-shot mechanics are solid, he’s hit just 28.1 percent on 3.1 3-point attempts per-36 minutes across all levels as a pro (including preseason and Summer League to expand his sample to 270 attempts). Still, the type of defence he displayed last year against Houston is rare, he has a fluidity to how he pushes the ball with pace in transition and he’s still just 22. It’s not at all hard to see him finding his footing in the 905 system like so many prospects before him, and a strong close to the season could put him on the radar for the parent club Raptors this summer depending on how their guard situation shakes out.

The early returns are encouraging. Baldwin scored 48 points with 12 rebounds and eight assists over his first two 905 appearances with a 56.3 true-shooting percentage. The 905 are undergoing a bit of an adjustment with a roster that’s now guard heavy, but Baldwin and Jordan Loyd looked comfortable together on defence and in an offence that will at times be very big with a guard-centre pick-and-roll option on each side of the floor — Chris Boucher has been seeing some time at power forward alongside the impressive Derek Cooke Jr. — or in guard-heavy lineups that will get Malcolm Miller some more experience as a de facto power forward. It might also mean Baldwin playing out of his natural point guard position.

“I think that the league now is kind of transitioning to position-less basketball, and I’m kind of just a guard, fill in anywhere. It’s a get in where you fit in type league, so that’s how you’ve got to approach it,” he said. “They’ve been winning here without me here at all, so it’s more how am I going to get integrated to them than them getting integrated to me.”

Figuring all of this out on the fly so late in the year is a typical challenge in the G League, and coach Jama Mahlalela has his team sitting at 25-17 through the tumult, with a three-game cushion on a playoff spot with eight to play. (The 905 could earn a first-round bye if they can close a two-game gap with Long Island in their division.) Whatever his ultimate NBA potential, in the short-term Baldwin is a major talent infusion ahead of a playoff push, and he’ll be in line for helpful developmental reps the next few weeks as a result.

“He’s a talented player and I think he shows his NBA skills: His ability to defend and to play on offence in pick-and-roll, play at the rim, finish around the hoop, play in transition, pretty great passer,” Mahlalela said. “He has to continue to develop his 3-point shot, which is the obvious, easy one to say. As that develops he becomes more and more of an NBA prospect. Those are the realities for him, and I think this experience for him is a great one because it allows him to play. The only way he can get back to where he wants to be is to play the game, and we hope he can do a really good job with us in these last few games to get there again.”

(Photo: Craig Mitchelldyer/USA TODAY Sports)