TORONTO -- Alex Len has waited a long time for a chance like this one.
A player once projected to go first overall in the NBA draft, Len saw his professional career jump off to a snake-bitten start as ankle injuries dogged him for many years.
First starting with an ankle ailment he suffered just about a month before the 2013 draft, which saw him drop to No. 5 overall, and play just 42 games in his rookie season with the Phoenix Suns, then another one in his sophomore campaign coming down from an alley-oop that forced him to miss more time.
By the time he finally managed to stay healthy and on the floor, the unfortunate pressure that comes from being a top-five pick had already deemed him a bust despite the fact he had barely got out of the starting blocks in his NBA career.
But, as time went on and Len found himself in Atlanta in the 2018-19 season, a glimmer of the player he was supposed to be emerged, followed up by a decent showing last season that saw him split time between the Hawks and Kings.
Those past two seasons appeared to revitalize Len’s career, but something was missing there: The chance to win.
After signing with the Toronto Raptors, however, that scratch will finally be itched for Len after seven seasons toiling away on some truly bad teams.
“The whole time I thought I was coming back to the Kings then when Toronto reached out, I just jumped on board,” Len said Thursday of his free agency. “It was not about the money, just the opportunity to play for a top-notch great organization. It was just an amazing opportunity for me going forward, playing in the playoffs, being a part of a winning culture.”
It’s a little sad that Len would speak of winning like it was a foreign concept to him, but that’s, unfortunately, just how the majority of his career since he arrived in North America has gone, but that wasn’t always the case.
As a youngster, Len, a Ukranian who was born in the small town of Anntratsyt, played professionally for BC Dnipro of the Ukrainian Basketball SuperLeague in 2010-11, winning a Ukrainian Cup.
Since then, however, Len’s had a bit of a rough go of things. Though talented, he was unable to elevate Maryland to anything beyond the semifinals of the NIT in his two years there, and has never played a playoff game in his NBA career.
That should change now with the Raptors, and even beyond just finally being part of a winner again, Len is excited to be part of the organization as he’s seen what the club’s famed player development team can do before and wants in on some of that magic.
“It felt like a good fit,” Len said of why he was so interested in joining the Raptors. “It’s like the guys have a lot of great player development stuff and it’s like an international culture. So I feel like every international player that came through always got better, they came and then in a few years you see them flourishing and just developing. So I was always interested and intrigued by that.”
Len expanded on this: “It’s just more of my observation, just watching guys come through. Like Pascal [Siakam] came through, I remember playing him four years ago and he was just a guy who was running the floor, passing, finishing, then you see him three years later and he’s doing everything, putting it on the floor, he’s an all-star.
“Then you see a lot of guys who came through here, international players and just flourishing. Even VanVleet came in, nobody knew about the guy and you see three or four years later, he’s an all-star-type player. So player development. Everybody knows about the player development in Toronto, that’s for sure.”
As part of a development program, Len and the Raptors may look to focus on his three-point shot.
Known when he came in the league as a lumbering, traditional centre, it feels like the game may have passed him by, but over the years, he’s been working on his three-point shot and during that first season with the Hawks, we saw a glimpse of the kind of shooter he might develop into.
Over the first five seasons of Len’s career, he attempted only 25 triples, making just six of them, but when he arrived in Atlanta in 2018-19 under head coach Lloyd Pierce, Len saw a dramatic spike in productivity from beyond the arc, taking 204 attempts while making them a decent 36.3 per cent of the time.
He had a more disjointed 2019-20 campaign between splitting time between the Hawks and Kings and battling through injuries so he didn’t get to showcase that three-point stroke as much, but with Toronto, he should get his chance.
“My first five years I didn’t take many of them and then when I got to Atlanta the coach started letting me shoot,” Len said. “I’ve definitely proved I can shoot the ball and so it’ll be up to coach to how we want to use them.”
Nick Nurse and the Raptors run a modern NBA offence predicated on pace, space and shooting, so if Len can stroke it like he says he can, he’ll get his chance.
And, really, that’s probably all he’s ever been looking for.
