Best 5 Active Undrafted Players: Most players enter the NBA by going through the draft but for some it is different. Players like Fred VanVleet and Joe Ingles went a different route that required a lot of faith.
The NBA usually picks its talent from the draft but they watch others outside the draft work extra hard and improve their skills after being passed over.
#5 Chris Boucher
6-foot-9 forward Chris Boucher out of Oregon went undrafted in 2017. He quickly proved to the NBA he was a star when he was the first to ever be chosen as the G League MVP and Defensive Player of the Year at the same time in the 2018-19 season.
He is now a part-time starter for the Toronto Raptors. He is putting up good numbers averaging 13.5 points per game, 6.5 rebounds, and 1.9 blocks per game. He is a great rim protector and rebounder.
He is shooting an amazing 51.7 percent from the field and 38.3 percent from behind the arc and he does all this in only 23.7 minutes a game.
Boucher has the most win shares on the team with 5.6 and recently on April 8th, Boucher earned a new accolade to add to his growing collection. He put up a career-high 38 points and 19 rebounds making him the first player since Chris Bosch in 2010 to score 35+ points and grab 15+ rebounds.
#4 Joe Ingles
Joe Ingles went undrafted in 2009 and played in Europe and other places before making his way to the NBA. Joe Ingles is 33 and is on his seventh season with Utah and is getting better.
This season Ingles has played fewer minutes than he has in the last three years but he is a better player than he has ever been.
He has become a deadeye shooter with a 3 point percentage of 48.7% (2nd). He is shooting 52.1 percent from the floor. Ingles is third on the team in win shares with 5.6 behind stars Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell.
#3 Duncan Robinson
The Miami Heat a skill for finding a needle in a haystack. Duncan Robinson is one of those needles and has become one of the top three-point shooters in the league. He takes 8.5 threes a game and makes 3.5 of them for a 40.8 three-point percentage.
He is arguably the best catch and shoot player in the NBA besides Steph Curry. In 12 games this year he has 5 threes and has a season-high of seven. Robinson went undrafted in 2018 and he hasn’t missed a game this season starting all 54 games.
That’s big for him and the Heat to be able to stay healthy since other heat players have been plagued by injuries over the course of the season.
#2 Christian Wood
Rockets Center Christian Woods went undrafted in 2015. He is making a name for himself this season and is in line to be this year’s Most Improved Player.
Woods is very close to being a double-double machine like Nikola Jokic with 21.1 points, 9.5 rebounds, and 1.5 blocks per game. The Houston Rockets are Wood’s sixth team in five years but it seems like Houston will be holding on to him for a while.
#1 Fred VanVleet
VanVleet is a big part of why they released Kyle Lowrie to other teams during the NBA trade deadline. 6-foot-1 VanVleet went undrafted in 2016 after four years at Wichita State.
He was able to get signed by the raptors in 2016 and work his way up until he was starting every game with Kyle Lowry. Lowry set a franchise record scoring 54 points against the Orlando magic including 11 threes in February.
He also made NBA history for most points by an undrafted player beating Moses Malone’s record by only one point.
