The Raptors aren’t built to tank, but they’re playing a risky game. The plan is now clear as day. They want to contend again within a few years around Scottie Barnes. Apparently all those trade offers didn’t fit with that goal. Opinion by bruce_arthur
And all the Raptors did was bring back Poeltl for a top-six-protected 2024 first-rounder, and he fills a need as a genuine rim-protecting centre, good passer, good guy. The team tabbed as the league’s biggest seller added instead.So what does it mean? You can argue the deadline was a missed opportunity, sure, but that implies there were deals that fit the plan, which is now clear as day: Don’t be bad next season, even as you contemplate major changes.
That means identifying, drafting, developing, retaining or trading for high-end players to play with him.So if you’re moving one of them, you want draft capital and young players that fit the above scenario.Indiana offered three first-round picks and a Houston second-rounder for Anunoby, but they own a 2023 Boston first and a 2023 Cleveland first, which are both late in the round and early in the process. Picks this year aren’t as helpful if, say, Toronto wanted to amass assets for a future star-style trade, and it’s safe to assume those were part of that offer. The report that Memphis offered three first-round picks was apparently incomplete; they never went beyond a guaranteed two.
Meanwhile, one report said the Clippers would not part with Terance Mann for VanVleet, and that pattern surely repeated. The best young players or the best draft picks on the market weren’t offered up. Toronto would have needed Jonathan Kuminga andand more from Golden State for Anunoby, but would that have been a clear upgrade, now or ever?
You can argue whether this means the Raptors overvalued their own players, and whether they outsmarted themselves, and whether they should have moved their pending free agents, VanVleet andBut if you want to be good as soon as next season, it’s not clear this trade deadline was the leverage point you’d like it to have been.
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