Raptors Discussion: v94 | Raptors land 4th pick in NBA draft lottery. Draft set for July 29

[Transplanted Caper]

I like the Overdrive guys and they do a good job in the broader talk of other sports, but anything involving minutiae like NBA trades and it gets simplistic to the point of ignorance.

 

[phillipmike]

Paraphrasing
He said he doesn't care if it's a 2027 pick, should have just traded Lowry.

Yeah it is clear Hayes is out of his depth when it comes to basketball. After the 2017 or 2018 he said many times that the Raps were treadmill team and they needed to blow it up.

If they listened to him, the Raps don't have a championship.

Basketball is one of the hardest sports to build. Tanking doesn't guarantee anything. Look at Orlando, they have been rebuilding since 2014 and have a few first round losses to show for it. Today they just traded all their players for picks. They got to do it all over again and may go at least another 5 years before they MAYBE relevant.

Hayes knows other sports very well but he doesn't know basketball and to extent baseball.

Nothing wrong with staying in the fight to wait for the right opportunity again like we did with Kawhi.

 

[Marmoset]

Is Rodney Hood and Trent Jr a good haul for Powell? Not really familiar with them

Trent Jr. is a good player. He has actually been described as a younger version of Powell by a lot of people (he's 22). That's not entirely accurate: he's an excellent 3pt shooter but his offense is limited beyond that, not as much variety as Powell. I'm not as familiar with his defence but I'm reading that it's quite good.

Hood is included to make the salaries work. He used to be decent but he's been either injured or ineffective for quite some time.

In some ways it seems like a lateral move, but you replace Powell with a much younger player (even if not quite as good right now) who can hopefully improve, and who is a RFA compared to Norm who is a UFA and should get more $.

I don't mind the move in isolation, but the series of moves and non-moves today has me a little confused about where the team is going.

 

[kb]

Yeah it is clear Hayes is out of his depth when it comes to basketball. After the 2017 or 2018 he said many times that the Raps were treadmill team and they needed to blow it up.

If they listened to him, the Raps don't have a championship.

Basketball is one of the hardest sports to build. Tanking doesn't guarantee anything. Look at Orlando, they have been rebuilding since 2014 and have a few first round losses to show for it. Today they just traded all their players for picks. They got to do it all over again and may go at least another 5 years before they MAYBE relevant.

Hayes knows other sports very well but he doesn't know basketball and to extent baseball.

Nothing wrong with staying in the fight to wait for the right opportunity again like we did with Kawhi.

Out of his depth when it comes to talking Leaf prospects too - Liljegren mainly.

Basketball is the toughest sport to build a winner unless you are a chosen market where stars want to go.

 

[The Nemesis]

Trent Jr. is a good player. He has actually been described as a younger version of Powell by a lot of people (he's 22). That's not entirely accurate: he's an excellent 3pt shooter but his offense is limited beyond that, not as much variety as Powell. I'm not as familiar with his defence but I'm reading that it's quite good.

Hood is included to make the salaries work. He used to be decent but he's been either injured or ineffective for quite some time.

In some ways it seems like a lateral move, but you replace Powell with a much younger player (even if not quite as good right now) who can hopefully improve, and who is a RFA compared to Norm who is a UFA and should get more $.

I don't mind the move in isolation, but the series of moves and non-moves today has me a little confused about where the team is going.

The team is likely headed towards maximum flexibility in the off-season.

The way things stack up now (to the best of my understanding. I'm not 100% on the business of cap holds and guaranteed money):

• They have about $71m of guaranteed money next year owed to Siakam, VanVleet, Anunoby, and Flynn. They also have Jalen Harris and Yuta Watanabe on 2-way contracts though I'm unsure of the duration (it seems likely that Watanabe's could be up. Harris' might go longer since he was a 2020 draft pick)
  
• They have about $30m of non-guaranteed cap holds on Banes, Boucher, Bembry, Watson, Trent, and Hood
• Lowry, McCaw, and Stanley Johnson are free-and-clear UFAs
• They have until June 23rd to do something with Hood before his cap hold guarantees. They can cut him before then or they can flip him to a team that intends to cut him for salary savings purposes (allowing the Raptors to take back about $10m)
• Trent has to be issued a qualifying offer prior to the end of July
  
• Banes, Watson, Boucher, and Bembry's holds become guaranteed money in early August
• If they were so inclined to consider moving him, OG's contract extension's poison pill provision expires on August 2
• Sign & Trade deals have been neutered somewhat in recent CBA tinkering, but they remain a relatively powerful option for Lowry in the off-season if that's the direction the team wants to go.
• Current estimates place the 2021-22 Salary Cap at about $112m, with the luxury tax threshold around $136m

So heading into this off-season the Raptors have just 4 confirmed players on the books, a maximum of about $40m of cap space to play with, the freedom to return any of 6 additional players who have pre-set cap holds (and thus some trade value if they don't want to keep them, only one pending RFA who shouldn't break the bank in a big way unless another team in the offer sheet market does something stupid. and the freedom to basically let Lowry figure out what he wants and extract value from helping him get there (either via S&T or sticking around)

And realistically only the Siakam deal looks like it might be iffy. VanVleet and Anunoby are both fair market or better and Flynn is a cheap rookie deal.

They're in about as good a situation as they can be this off-season to figure out what direction the franchise will go moving forward. And based on what we've seen before, flexibility has always been one of Masai's big priorities in off-season planning.

 

[tmlms13]

Odd that no one has mentioned yet that Gary Trent Sr. is a former Raptor too.

 

[Habsfan18]

 

[The Nemesis]

Lol if that was a deal on the table then good on Masai for walking away

 

[ER89]

My prediction is that Pascal Siakam will be traded before/at the draft and Kyle Lowry will be given a 2 year, 40 million dollar (total) extension

inject that in my veins

 

[ER89]

LOL yeah, Im willing to trade matt thomas and norm powell for anthony davis too.

 

[Swervin81]

Odd that no one has mentioned yet that Gary Trent Sr. is a former Raptor too.

Not only that, but he was traded from Portland to Toronto as well. He was iin the Damon Stoudamire deal, alongside f***face Kenny Anderson who refused to play here.

Well, at least we flipped Anderson for Billups. Too bad we got impatient with Billups - we had him, T-Mac, Camby and Carter's draft rights on the roster at once at some point. And Grunwald blew it all to hell.

 

[sparxx87]

Odd that no one has mentioned yet that Gary Trent Sr. is a former Raptor too.

 

[The Nemesis]

pfft, there's a comment under an Athletic article breaking down the failure of a Lakers/Raptors Lowry trade to materialize in which a clearly high or delusional fan insists he wouldn't have parted with Schroeder alone for Lowry.



Good times.

 

[Emerica]

I think the issue right now is some people are viewing Lowry not moving through the lens of NHL deals. Trading in the NBA is quite different.

Was coming in here to say this.

Any Lowry trade done today would’ve meant taking back matching salary thus quite possibly crippling our cap flexibility and our chances of being active in FA. Expiring contracts and available cap space are extremely valuable assets in the NBA.

Kyle’s salary coming off the books > trading for average players who are locked up to longer term deals.

 

[stickty111]

I like Hayes, but that's a ridiculous take on the situation.

I like the Overdrive guys and they do a good job in the broader talk of other sports, but anything involving minutiae like NBA trades and it gets simplistic to the point of ignorance.

Yeah it is clear Hayes is out of his depth when it comes to basketball. After the 2017 or 2018 he said many times that the Raps were treadmill team and they needed to blow it up.

If they listened to him, the Raps don't have a championship.

Basketball is one of the hardest sports to build. Tanking doesn't guarantee anything. Look at Orlando, they have been rebuilding since 2014 and have a few first round losses to show for it. Today they just traded all their players for picks. They got to do it all over again and may go at least another 5 years before they MAYBE relevant.

Hayes knows other sports very well but he doesn't know basketball and to extent baseball.

Nothing wrong with staying in the fight to wait for the right opportunity again like we did with Kawhi.

Hayes' takes have gotten worse and worse progressively. Even Jeff for some reason is very negative towards the Raptors and positive towards the Leafs, even though Raps have actually achieved something..

 

[horner]

How many picks do they have for this year's draft ?

 

[hockeywiz542]

2021 Trade Deadline: Masai Ujiri - March 25, 2021

• March 25, 2021

Toronto Raptors

President of Basketball Operations Masai Ujiri speaks with the media following the Raptors' activities on Trade Deadline day.

 

[ryno23]

I like what Masai did this TDL. I would see if Lowry is willing to sign a retirement deal in Toronto. You see how many years he wants to play and adding each year his salary goes down accordingly. He wants to play 2 years then 20-30 mil per. He wants 3 then its 15 per he wants 4 then it's 12 per.

Getting Lowry to take less to stay then go out and sign Derozan to be the 6th man off the bench the scorer maybe get him on a discount to come back to play with Lowry. Find a rim protector for the 1st unit and you have a starting point of a competitive team

PG - Lowry
SG - FVV
SF - OG
PF - Siakim
C - rim protector

Bench Gary Trent Jr, Derozan, Boucher, Flynn then the rest of the bench fillers.

That team can compete in the East be a top 4 team for sure.

 

[sparxx87]

I like what Masai did this TDL. I would see if Lowry is willing to sign a retirement deal in Toronto. You see how many years he wants to play and adding each year his salary goes down accordingly. He wants to play 2 years then 20-30 mil per. He wants 3 then its 15 per he wants 4 then it's 12 per.

Getting Lowry to take less to stay then go out and sign Derozan to be the 6th man off the bench the scorer maybe get him on a discount to come back to play with Lowry. Find a rim protector for the 1st unit and you have a starting point of a competitive team

PG - Lowry
SG - FVV
SF - OG
PF - Siakim
C - rim protector

Bench Gary Trent Jr, Derozan, Boucher, Flynn then the rest of the bench fillers.

That team can compete in the East be a top 4 team for sure.

DeRozan is still an all star caliber player, and arguably better than he was when he left. I think he’ll get 25M+ to start somewhere. Doubt he comes back on a cheap contract to come off the bench.

Their free agent dollars need to go to Jarrett Allen or Richaun Holmes... then add someone like Alec Burks to provide some wing scoring off the bench.

 

[BigBlu]

Rob Perez live stream; Houston screwed the Raptors offers because both teams had them on the other line desperate to get rid of Oladipo for a lesser package than Lowry.

Most interesting tidbit in this entire thread.

Everyone was wondering if they were on the line even past the official deadline... the fact that it was a 3-way call and Houston basically gave Dipo away for free hurts bad. You can just imaging the blood boiling on the Raptors end as Houston undercut us and there was nothing we could do about it. Maybe you chalk it up to bad luck or maybe you wonder how Masai/Bobby let it get to a point like that where we had lost control of the deal.

 

[ryno23]

DeRozan is still an all star caliber player, and arguably better than he was when he left. I think he’ll get 25M+ to start somewhere. Doubt he comes back on a cheap contract to come off the bench.

Their free agent dollars need to go to Jarrett Allen or Richaun Holmes... then add someone like Alec Burks to provide some wing scoring off the bench.

True but maybe you can convince him to come back home. Allen is top target for sure

 

[donghabs98]

True but maybe you can convince him to come back home. Allen is top target for sure

I wouldn't expect Demar to come home for a bench role until he is past his prime. If the Raps bring him back now I'd be for a starting 5 role because that is what other teams will give him. But as mentioned, the 5 position is a priority as the Raps can be competitive with a good center as seen in 19-20.

 

[BlueForever75]

As potential deals start to be leaked I am happy that the Raps stood pat with Lowry. They still will either resign him or sign-and-trade him. Lowry will not walk from the Raptors with them gaining nothing. I dont see it happening. With the amount of cap room they will have next season, anything is possible.

As of right now, I will argue the Raps are better for this 20 game stretch run then they were prior to deadline. I do not want to diminish what Powell meant to this team, but when you factor in Trent's defense which is better then Powell's. We arent taking that much of a hit on the overall outcome of games. Trent can hit the 3 as well with better D. Add in that we still get Hood in the deal, it improves our bench.

The Thomas and Davis deals are nothing more then acquiring draft capital that we have lost in previous deals and opens roster spots for players that can potentially be added for the stretch run that will only better the team.

Put aside the 9 game losing streak that was mostly due to team being decimated by COVID. The team being forced to play without 3 regulars when other teams just had their games postponed. This team should be in the top 5 in the East. It took time for them to gain their legs back, but if the game against Denver showed anything, they can and will compete for a playoff spot.

These subtractions and additions will not hinder their chances this year. If anything it made it better with more draft capital to boot.

 

[Suntouchable13]

I don't understand the plan, though. They are not tanking, they are not going for it, so what is the plan? Are they going to ride this season out and find some big men for next season? They think they can still contend?

A side note: it's very tough in the NBA to be excited about the race for 7-8 seeds as very few 7-8 seeds do anything of note in the playoffs. As a Raps fan, I don't know how I can get excited for the race to get into to at least a play in.

 

[Clark4Ever]

If Lowry leaves as a UFA via a sign and trade, we'll recoup assets and have a ton of cap space to build around our existing core that is still relatively young.