How much of a player’s draft stock is tied up in the value of his name? And how much is out of sight really out of mind?
Those are interesting questions that Dewan Hernandez faced this draft season, and they made him one of the more unknown picks of a second round always rife with them on Thursday. The Toronto Raptors selected Hernandez with the 59th overall pick, their lone selection in the draft, betting on his athletic profile and defensive upside as a low-risk, potentially high-reward play.
Raptors fans unfamiliar with Hernandez could be justified. The last time he was on the draft circuit — back in 2018 before he withdrew to return for a junior season at Miami — he was going by Dewan Huell. In October, he
changed his last name to Hernandez after his mother, Christian Hernandez. Were that not confusing enough for his draft stock, he then lost his entire 2018-19 season due to NCAA eligibility violations.
Hernandez had been caught up in the FBI’s probe of college basketball corruption, as he was found to have
entered into a verbal agreement with Christian Dawkins, one of three defendants found guilty in that October trial. Hernandez’s camp felt
he’d been singled out from a larger group for allegedly agreeing to accept between $500 and $1,000 per month, something he denied and there was no track record of payment for. (Miami coach Jim Larrañaga has
blamed Hernandez’s AAU coach, Jordan Fair, for the situation.) An appeal was upheld in January, and eventually Hernandez opted to shift his attention toward the NBA Draft.
“I was advised of the NCAA’s decision about my eligibility and am very disappointed with the outcome,” he said in a January statement. “I do not believe that the NCAA treated me fairly, and it is with a heavy heart that I have decided to withdraw from the University of Miami to prepare for the 2019 NBA Draft. … While I am saddened by the NCAA’s decision, I look forward to starting the next chapter of my life and focusing my energy on preparing to compete at the next level.”
By all accounts, Hernandez has tried to leave that issue in the past, but it wasn’t all that easy when it meant asking an NBA team to select him after 15 months without any game action. The upside was still pretty easy to picture. Hernandez was a five-star recruit and a McDonald’s All-American, and there were times over his first two seasons at Miami when some thought he could be a first-round pick. Still, he had to prove it all over again after a year off.
That meant heading to the NBA G League Elite Camp, where he played well enough to earn an invite to the NBA scouting combine. His momentum continued to build at the combine, where he turned in some of the most impressive measurements and athletic metrics among bigs.
NBAthlete‘s bSPARQ score, which classifies a player’s overall combine performance by z-score among their position, graded Hernandez as the third-best combine performer among bigs who participated. He measured 6-foot-10 with a 7-2 wingspan, clocked in at 233 pounds with just 6 percent body fat, had 70th-percentile hand size among bigs and scored well in agility and vertical jump metrics. Combine performances are what they are — far more descriptive than prescriptive — but he also performed well enough in scrimmages and drills to keep him firmly on the pre-draft workout cycle.
The Raptors came away impressed when he worked out for them in Toronto on May 21. That obviously carried a lot of weight, because it’s difficult to project from his college performance. Due to the year off and the fact that he was already a little older for his class (he’s 22 now), Hernandez didn’t show up on most analytic-based draft boards. (
Jacob Goldstein‘s model ranked him 91st, and he didn’t appear on any of the other quant models I examined.) In fact, he didn’t rank higher than 85th on the dozen big boards I usually sample at this time of year, and
The Athletic’s Sam Vecenie ranked him 93rd in his final draft, right in line with his average mark.
That seems to have at least something to do with the out-of-sight nature of his status. When he was last in view, he’d taken strong statistical leaps as a sophomore, nearly doubling his scoring output on greater efficiency in a higher-usage role. That was in part due to better finishing and improved free-throw shooting with an improved ability to get to the line, and in part due to elite transition play (93rd percentile, per Synergy Sports) and work on the offensive glass (96th percentile).
He was serviceable-to-good as a roll-man, too. He does have a tendency to slip screens a little early or telegraph those slips, and that can make trapping a bit easier for a defence. He’ll need to pin the ballhandler’s man more aggressively at the next level and improve his footwork so an early slip isn’t as necessary to get into scoring position.
He even showed minor growth as a passer while cutting down on turnovers. It’s in the post that his development was perhaps most interesting, as he went from a non-threat to a slightly above-average one, showcasing a number of different moves that almost always involve him going to his left shoulder.
At the other end, his block rate remained steady and his defensive rebounding rate surged, helping him profile as a potential difference-maker on that end. He has the athletic profile to be at least a little switchy as a defender, and in fact, he at times seems better suited for guarding the perimeter than inside. The great bounce he shows for dunks or offensive rebounds also hasn’t materialized in elite shot-blocking yet, although — and this is not the highest of praise you can give a prospect — Hernandez does well recovering for blocks when he misses a coverage or otherwise gets lost.
Overall, he averaged 11.4 points on 60 percent true shooting with 6.7 rebounds and one block in 25.8 minutes. Hernandez’s appeal is more obvious on tape than in the numbers, which were admittedly modest. Hernandez’s speed and fluidity in the open court jump out, and if that sounds like a very Raptors trait for a developing big, that’s because it is. He can sprint the floor and get up to complete a lob, and while he doesn’t appear to have a ton of moves to create for himself yet, he’s a good play-finisher. How much his face-up game and post moves, or even his ability to make more dynamic moves on the roll, have improved will be interesting to watch. He mentioned at a few pre-draft workout stops that he
has some new moves he’s not sharing, which should be fun to watch for in Summer League. It’s really hard to tell from afar what he might have been able to develop with a year — or at least five focused months since declaring his draft intentions — to solely focus on his game. As with most young players, he’ll also need to have improved his shooting range, as he rarely shot even college 3s.
If this sounds like a lot of unknowns, well, the Raptors just drafted an in-process development project who has taken most of the work behind closed doors for the past season. The Raptors are making this pick based on a combination of prior scouting during his time at Miami, the G League Elite Camp, NBA combine and pre-draft workout and the quality of their interviews with him. With only the 59th pick, they were unlikely to land a sure-fire piece, and their front office has earned the benefit of the doubt with late- or undrafted players. (There are a number of interesting undrafted pieces, by the way, and it will be interesting to see who among them lands on the Raptors’ Summer League roster.)
The Raptors have options with Hernandez from here. The process will begin with Las Vegas Summer League, and from there the two sides will determine the best course of action. It’s easy to forget the process with second-round picks since the Raptors haven’t had one since Norman Powell, but there are a few ways this can go. Hernandez could sign a standard deal in the offseason, enter camp competing for a roster spot, be tabbed as a two-way player, agree to head to Raptors 905 as a sort of domestic draft-and-stash or some other setup that balances his long-term development with the team’s needs and his own financial situation. Sometimes, like with Powell, the route becomes obvious. This late in the draft, a pick is largely a claim on a player for the offseason ahead, and there are plenty of questions to answer from there. That’s especially true for Hernandez after an unfortunate year out of the limelight.
[\spoiler]
