Raptors: Rautins takes one more long shot at NBA

VICTORIA— The opportunity to be an NBA player for a second time doesn’t come too often and when Andy Rautins got the chance, he couldn’t possibly have said no.

Having shown well in a couple of informal open-run sessions with a handful of Raptors at the team’s practice facility the past few weeks, the 30-year-old Rautins earned himself an invitation to the team’s full training camp. It was too good to turn down. “I had a couple offers in Turkey and Spain on the table, but this has been a lifelong dream of mine, so I’d be a fool not to pursue it,” Rautins said after Toronto worked out at the athletic facility on the campus of the University of Victoria on Wednesday.

It’s not Rautins’s first go-around with the NBA, which he hopes can work to his advantage. Drafted in the second round, 38th overall, by the New York Knicks in 2010, he played just five games before a series of transactions landed him without a job. He was traded from New York to Dallas and waived, surfaced in training camp with Oklahoma City in 2012 before heading to the D-League.

He has had an excellent career in Europe, with stops in Spain, Germany, Italy and Turkey, and now has one more shot at the NBA brass ring.

Whether or not Rautins can stick with the Raptors is impossible to tell. The team has 13 players with guaranteed contracts, leaving two roster spots should general manager Bobby Webster and president Masai Ujiri want to fill them. Four other players — Alfonzo McKinnie, K.J. McDaniels, Kennedy Meeks and Kyle Wiltjer — are also fighting for those spots.

But Rautins’ undeniable three-point shooting prowess — he was the best D-League three-point shooter in 2012-13 — can’t hurt.

“The thing that Andy can do is he is a stone-cold shooter and that’s something where the game is going to and as many natural three-point shooters you can get, the better,” Toronto coach Dwane Casey said.