Masai Ujiri goes out on a limb to give his Raptors core one more chance Via Mike_Ganter
The Spurs came dangling the one thing Ujiri and his front office coveted — a reliable centre. And when the Spurs were agreeable to a first-round draft pick in a weak 2024 draft, a couple of second-round picks and the remainder of Khem Birch’s contract in exchange for 7-foot-1 former Raptor Jakob Poeltl, Ujiri and his front office group said ‘yes’ for the one and only time this trade deadline.
“The way I look at the deadline it’s really not a great place to make long-term decisions,” Ujiri said. “That’s one of the ways we looked at it in terms of some of the things we were getting.”Asked why he prefers to deal in the summer, Ujiri replied: “At the end of the day, in the summer there are 29 losers and one winner. There are 29 teams looking to do more.”Article content
On Thursday, Ujiri made it sound as if the deal he did make was, at least in part, a concession to the core he had put together, the same group that has failed to coalesce into the winning unit he and, quite frankly, most of us thought it would.Article content “I think we needed a big like Jak to protect the rim, who these guys have confidence in. A really good passer, a big body, one of our own, which I think really fits. I think I look at it like we needed to at least give them some chance with a big rim protector there and see what this team does.
That isn’t likely to recur. Even if you could create a plausible scenario where Barnes would be shut down for a few weeks, you would be taking the risk of stunting his growth by taking the game away from him.Article content
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