It’s that time of year again, and no I’m not talking about the holidays. Drowning out the wafting scents of roast turkey and artisan beeswax candles is the hot, stinking breath of NBA trade whispers. For trade machine sickos, it truly is The Most Wonderful Time of the Year.
Of course, doing its best to ruin the season — which begins in earnest on December 15th as a whole bunch of recently signed contracts officially become legal trade fodder — is the league’s very fun and good new CBA.
What used to be a world where you could whip up all manner of wild fake trades spanning the realism spectrum is now an environment governed by stringent rules, restrictions, aprons, and incentivized cheapness. FEEL THE RUSH!
The league and player association’s perhaps inadvertent dampening of the trade market hasn’t kept some of you freaks from wallowing in the muck, though. Let’s dig into some of your trade-themed questions as the silly season beckons.
Matt T in the Discord asks: Hello Sean. Should the Raptors consider trading for Brandon Ingram if the price is low?
The short answer here is: No. The long answer is a bit more layered, of course. Ingram is a good if imperfect player; the saga around his reported contract demands and the general sense of doom shrouding the Pelicans has probably lowered his rep more than he deserves. There’s always a price-tag low enough that’ll make you say “yes” to adding a guy with his self-creation ability.
I just don’t see how it lines up for the Raptors. RJ Barrett would almost surely have to be the big outgoing salary, and while Ingram is probably the better basketball player in a vacuum, but that’s not the reality in which exist.
I find it hard to believe the Raptors, a year removed from a very Ingram-like saga surrounding Pascal Siakam, would trade for a player worse than Siakam in need of a fresh deal after balking at the chance to pay their beloved self-made star. And that’s before you consider the fit of Ingram, a guy who needs the ball to be at his best, on a team built around Scottie Barnes that also doesn’t suffer ball-holders, especially if said ball-holder doesn’t represent a defensive upgrade over Barrett. Ultimately, the Pelicans have some wings I’d be eager see the Raptors make a godfather for; Ingram is just not one of them.
RJ Island in the Discord asks: Would you like to see the NBA add things like retained salary or deferred salary like MLB to help facilitate team flexibility?
There’s gotta be some sort of CBA amendment to loosen things up, no? Like it or not, the Transaction Industrial Complex helps drive interest in the league. If that economy craters, it’s not a good thing for anyone, really.
I’m by no means smart enough to offer truly substantive ideas here, but some sort of wrinkle that gives teams leeway under the smothering apron system if they’ve built teams with homegrown guys feels like a good step one. Maybe it’s that max deals for in-house players count less against the cap than the paid out salary suggests they should; maybe it’s that the many team-building inhibitors second apron teams face (ie/ frozen draft picks, no outgoing salary aggregation, etc) are lifted if a team is in the second apron because they were just too good at drafting and developing their own excellent players.
The new CBA setup is going to result in cool teams getting prematurely busted up; it’s already started with, say, the Denver Nuggets. It stinks for fans who love their guys, and for armchair GMs who just wanna cook in the trade machine without needing a law degree.
I don’t have the fix. But someone who’s paid to have them can get working on bringing the fun back to trades any time now.
Epic Lankyness in the Discord asks: How does the overall trade viability of the Raptors look moving forward?
It looks pretty promising, to me. No, the Raptors don’t have the perverse stash of draft picks that the Thunder, Nets, Rockets and Jazz do, but there’s still a building case that this is a team in a great spot to make a consolidation trade at some point in the next 6 to 18 months.
They’ve got control of all of their own first-rounders going forward, a juicy Blazers second-round this year, and the Pacers’ first in 2026 that’s looking more plum by the day. There are prospects here, too! Jonathan Mogbo, Ja’Kobe Walter, Gradey Dick and maybe even Jamal Shead are all young guys that might sweeten a deal for a major upgrade if and when one presents itself.
Most important, Toronto’s got tradeable contracts. Apart from Scottie Barnes, the Raps books are free of the gigantic deals that are gonna be near impossible to move within the league’s collectively bargained climate, and their mid-sized deals are all fair to team-friendly.
When it comes to adding more star-level talent, they’re in the rare position where both the draft and trade routes are available to them heading into the offseason. Masai Ujiri and Bobby Webster, forever preaching the power of flexibility, are seemingly right where they wanna be.
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Today on the podcast Katie Heindl joined me to talk about the Raptors’ issues with dunking, life without Scottie Barnes Version 2.0 and some league at large topics. Enjoy the show!
