It took less than a minute to see that Bruno Caboclo was locked in.
At home against the Oklahoma City Thunder on Monday night, the Memphis Grizzlies corralled a missed shot and, on their second possession of the game, sprinted up the floor in transition. Caboclo, starting his fifth consecutive game and 12th of the year — before this season he had just one start to his name, in his sophomore campaign in 2015 — immediately peels toward the right corner, catches a pass, and hoists a smooth, confident three-pointer with no hesitation.
Swish.
The next trip up the floor, the 23 year-old Brazilian forward pump-fakes a triple, drives to the hoop, and sinks a nifty floater over OKC’s Jerami Grant. As his shots continued to fall, Caboclo was getting it done on the other end as well, draped over All-NBA forward Paul George contesting shots and using his six-foot-ten frame and Stretch Armstrong arms to make life difficult for the established star. George would wind up with 30 points, but shot just 10-of-29 from the field.
Caboclo emptied his vast, if unproven, tool-belt on the Thunder. The result? A career night and breakout performance: 24 points on 8-of-13 shooting (4-of-7 from deep), 11 rebounds, a steal, and a block in 35 minutes of action along with a convincing win against a playoff-calibre opponent.
This was the Caboclo which Masai Ujiri and the Toronto Raptors envisioned when they shocked the NBA world and drafted the then-18 year old with the 20th pick of the 2014 draft.
It wasn’t hard to see what they liked in Caboclo. Blessed with a body frame straight out of the NBA laboratory — tall, incredibly long-limbed, able to cover huge lengths of the floor in just a few strides — and a naturally smooth jump shot mechanic, he had the makings of a diamond-in-the-rough.
But he was also wildly inexperienced, having played sparingly as a 17 year-old for Brazil’s top club team. Before signing with the team, Caboclo had planned to play at a prep school in the United States, secure a scholarship to a major NCAA D-1 program, and join the NBA ranks from there. But a breakout performance at the Basketball Without Borders camp changed all of that.
He remained a raw talent, but one suddenly being fast-tracked to the NBA.
Infamously dubbed “two years away from being two years away” on that night in June, it was an assessment the Raptors’ brass agreed with all along. And yet still, expectations out of the gate were always too high. Even while many acknowledged he’d be a project player that would take years before he could even remotely begin to flourish, the team opted to bring him to the NBA ranks from Day 1.
Well intentioned as it was, it was a mistake the club would surely admit today.
Remember: this was before the Raptors 905 existed — although Ujiri maintains he drafted Caboclo with the yet-established G-League franchise in mind. But it meant Caboclo would be an NBAer far ahead of schedule, without a system in place to nurture such an untested player.
He couldn’t get much reps in practice in the NBA — there were too many players ahead of him in the rotation — and was forced to hone his skills in unorganized three-on-three games against the Raps role players after practice had wrapped.
There was plenty to learn, but not enough opportunity. He warmed the bench with the Raptors, before the team sent him down to their then-affiliate, the Fort Wayne Mad Ants.
There, without any Raptors team coaches or personnel present, Caboclo’s development suffered. His teammates, many veterans looking to play their way back into the NBA, didn’t care about making this shy kid better at basketball. The coaches had little room to foster his growth there either, and were focused on trying to win games.
“So strange,” Caboclo recalled to me for this 2015 Big Read feature. “I would play well in the practice; the coach would tell me I’ll play in the next game. The next game, I sit on the bench. I wait, wait, wait, then nothing. I think, ‘What am I doing here?’”
The Mad Ants coaches understood the frustration but were less than sympathetic. “Fort Wayne was tough,” said then-assistant Jaren Jackson Jr. “But this is pro ball, man. At some point, you’re going to have to get it.”
There were just as many challenges away from the court. Caboclo was an 18 year old on his own in a strange city and more than 8,000 kilometres from the city he grew up in.
“The first three months, I was alone always,” he remembers.
Prior to his second season he had gotten his own apartment, a 37th floor penthouse condo overlooking Lake Ontario and downtown Toronto, and was learning how to navigate life as an adult. He turned 20 just one week after moving in, and held a raucous birthday party that went into the wee hours, received several noise complaints and a visit from the building’s security asking him to keep it down.
He entered year two in the NBA with high expectations placed on himself but in reality was still far from contributing.
By then the Raptors 905 were established, and the team was able to govern his day-to-day development. He was getting playing time, and thriving, while being taxied back-and-forth between NBA practices and G-League games. All told, he was assigned to and recalled from the Raptors 905 nearly 60 times between 2015 and early 2018.
He was putting it together in the G League. In 2017-18 he averaged over 14 points on 40 per cent shooting in a little over 30 minutes per game. He had added much-needed weight and muscle to his frame, was playing assertive and had all but fully lost the deer-in-the-headlights look he often wore during NBA action.
Unfortunately, by the time Caboclo was ready to test the NBA waters with more playing time, the Raptors organizational focus had shifted entirely. They were an established playoff team, looking to make inroads toward the franchise’s first Finals appearance as opposed to putting their effort into avoiding Caboclo’s very real bust potential.
For awhile it looked like it might have signalled a quick and disappointing end to Caboclo’s NBA journey.
With his rookie deal expiring and a future up in the air, the Raptors traded him to the Sacramento Kings at last year’s trade deadline. With the Kings, he was unimpressive in ten appearances and sent back to the G-League. The team didn’t re-sign him last summer, and he wound up inking a deal with the Houston Rockets but was waived before the 2018-19 season began.
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In January, a depleted Grizzlies squad rolled the dice and signed Caboclo to a 10-day contract. Ten days later, on Feb. 3, he signed another one. That night, he had a promising showing against the same Thunder team he would torch nearly two months later. The Memphis front office liked what they saw enough to offer Caboclo a multi-year deal on Feb. 13.
The strides were minuscule in Toronto. So, what’s changed in Memphis? Time, maturity, and the perspective that naturally brings. And now more than ever, opportunity, and the ability to play through mistakes.
Unlike the Raptors, the Grizz aren’t playing for anything but the lottery and have the luxury of throwing Bruno out there to see what he can do in a featured role.
Now, there’s a sense of familiarity, too. Caboclo wasn’t the only former Raptor doing damage for the Grizzlies on Monday night. Delon Wright scored 18 points along with 13 assists and four steals in the win over the Thunder, while Jonas Valanciunas, who has been unstoppable since being traded from Toronto, posted 18 points and 14 rebounds — his 9th double-double in 16 games with Memphis.
Caboclo’s is a cautionary tale in many ways. He was given too much too soon and would have obviously benefited from more seasoning abroad before joining the NBA ranks.
His story isn’t about a player who suddenly figured it out five years and three teams after he was drafted. It’s about a wide-eyed teenager who was part of a failed basketball experiment and a team that thought they could build a basketball player on an arbitrary timeline.
Who knows what the future has in store for him, and if he’ll join Valanciunas and rookie Jaren Jackson Jr. as a focal point of the Grizzlies’ rebuild. But in Memphis, Caboclo has been granted a new lease on his NBA career.
