It’s been six years since Jaden Bradley suited up for Cannon School and won the 2020 Gatorade North Carolina Boys Basketball Player of the Year award. But on Wednesday, the former N.C. high school standout realized his dreams of making it to the NBA after the Toronto Raptors drafted him with the 50th pick in this year’s draft.
Since his days at Cannon School, Bradley’s had a few stops along the way: first at IMG Academy for his final two years of high school, then at Alabama for one year of college basketball before settling at Arizona where he led the Wildcats to the Final Four as an All-American and Big 12 Player of the Year in 2025-26.
In high school, Bradley was a McDonald’s All-American in 2022. The 6-foot-3 guard was rated as a 5-star recruit by ESPN before landing at Alabama. In his lone season with the Crimson Tide, Bradley averaged 6.4 points in just under 20 minutes per game.
He made the jump to Arizona in the 2023 offseason and put up 7.0 points per game as a sophomore in 2023-24. He made strides as an upperclassman, putting up 12.1 points, 3.7 assists and 1.8 steals per game for Tommy Lloyd’s group as a junior in 2024-25.
As a senior, he helped lead Arizona to its first Final Four since the program won its lone national championship in 1997. Bradley averaged career bests in points (13.3), assists (4.4) and rebounds (3.4) as he started in all 39 contests for the Wildcats.
Now, he moves to the NBA with the Raptors where he joins a playoff-determined team led by all-star caliber forwards like Scottie Barnes and former Duke stars Brandon Ingram and R.J. Barrett.