While I think most folks appreciate the corner of Raptors coverage I’ve carved out for myself, I still get accused of being too much of a happy-go-lucky peddler of optimism when hard times fall upon the team. And hey, maybe that’s fair. When you write a blog and do a podcast about a really bad team everyday, you have to search for flecks of light in the dark as a means of self care.
But one area of rampant, blind hopefulness I rarely wade into is Draft Hopium. I’m scarred by the Andrea Bargnani pick in 2006 deeply enough that I should probably talk to someone about it. As a result, I’m something of a draft skeptic. Obviously, the draft is real important as a means of player acquisition; I just think draft success is way more about luck than skill, and largely out of anyone’s control. Those who disagree, to me, are the real toxic positivity merchants.
Projecting your hopes and dreams of franchise salvation onto speculative teenagers is a strange, silly exercise. You can throw around “can’t miss,” “generational” and all manner of other hyperbolic adjectives to describe incoming prospects, but the reality is that most guys don’t hit their high-end outcomes, because it’s extremely hard to do. Every draft class is the best class ever until it’s not. The league’s sadder franchises perpetuate this annual cycle of hope and disappointment until luck strikes, sometimes after years in the wilderness. It’s awesome that the Orlando Magic have Paolo Banchero and Franz Wagner now. But those fans ain’t getting the entirety of the 2010s back, a stretch where lottery night was the best and worst night of the year for 10 years on the trot.
All that said, let me give this draft optimism thing a spin. The Raptors are 8-30, and while they’re inching back towards respectability, they’re close to locking down Top-5 lottery odds and we’re not even at the halfway point. Maybe it’ll be nice to look forward to something.
The Raptors are winning the draft lottery, and Cooper Flagg is gonna kick f***ing ass for this team for a decade to come. He, or should I say HIM™, and Scottie Barnes will be the NBA’s most daunting duo of event-creating wing defenders, powering Toronto to another extended run of 50-plus win title contention. No, Masai Ujiri and Bobby Webster’s Vision 6'9 model wasn’t doomed to fail, it was just ahead of its time. That time, as it happens, is June 2025.
Flagg is the too-good-to-fail prospect who was promised, a hyper-athlete who’s issues with halfcourt self-creation at Duke so far can be chalked up to janky college spacing and “being 17 years old.” For a Raptors team that has idyllic second and third creator types in Barnes and Immanuel Quickley, giving Flagg the keys to the offense is going to tie the whole operation together. And who better than Flagg to fill in the defensive gaps RJ Barrett and Gradey Dick open up?
Now you may be saying, “Sean! Slow your roll, man! Even if the Raptors hold strong as one of the league’s three worst teams, they only have a 14% chance at the number one pick!”
Pft. Ever heard of karma? After a month of blowouts fueled by unfortunate injury and illness, your fightin’ Toronto Raptors are back to ethically tanking, Thursday’s narrow loss to the best team in the league marking the official return to being the fun kind of bad. As the Lotto Gods looked fairly upon Toronto’s trials in Tampa Bay, so will they favour a team going down with a competitor’s spirit. The Wizards? The Hornets? The Jazz? These are shameless, depraved franchises doomed to drop, Pistons-style. You might worry about the Pelicans, whose 7-31 record is largely fueled by injury, too, but I doubt the powers above will be duped by their promise to safely shepherd yet another high-flying Duke star to perennial contention. Fool them twice, etc.
The Flagg era in Toronto may as well start now. It’s been written in the stars. Toronto’s rebuild will be as swift as the borne fruits will be delicious. All we’ve left to do to is wait out a few more months of morally upright losing before the end of the rebuild is officially rung in as Adam Silver steps up to that dais and declares Flagg a Toronto mans. There is no way this can possibly go wrong.
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Today on the podcast I broke down a thrilling loss to the league-leading Cavaliers. Enjoy the show, and have a great weekend!
