We’re officially two weeks from the NBA Trade Deadline, and today’s Michael Grange intel dump over at Sportsnet gives us a perfect excuse to do what the metrics say all you sick freaks want and talk about transactions once again.
If you haven’t read Grange’s latest, do it! It’s good stuff from one of the most plugged-in dudes covering the team. Within, he goes through some of what we’ve already been able to infer from other reporting: Kelly Olynyk, Bruce Brown, Chris Boucher and Davion Mitchell are all prime candidates to be moved before February 6th, with second-rounders likely being the going rate. Grange also outlined the ways in which the Raptors, with some cushion under the luxury tax, a bunch of expiring contracts, and no mandate to win down the stretch, can be a lubricant for all kinds of potential deals around the league.
In addition, Grange notes Scottie Barnes and Gradey Dick as the only two guys the Raptors deem untouchable in their pursuit of a co-star next to Barnes for the long haul. Not terribly surprising, though I don’t think moving Dick should be out of the question if a big time upgrade is out there some time in the next 18 months or so, but we can save a deeper dive on that for another day.
Circling back to the most likely guys to move in the next couple weeks, I want to shout out the resident optimist of the Locked On Raptors Discord, Jeff Xilon, who submitted a mailbag question (which you can do at literally any time, by the way!) that fits nicely into the context of Grange’s piece from today.
Jeff asks: Setting aside money for a moment if you had to keep one, and only one, of Davion, Brown, Olynyk or Boucher for next season based on what they can provide on-court which would it be?
I think this is an important question for the Raptors to be asking themselves routinely as they navigate this rebuild. The idea of trading everyone who isn’t firmly tied down for futures is nice and all, but there’s the question of playing functional basketball to consider at all times when player development is a big part of your calculus. Draft all the interesting prospects you want; if they’re joining a team with no baseline competence, you’re setting them and every other young guy on your team up to fail. Sometimes the drop off in on-court utility isn’t worth the future upside.
You could make cases, some more compelling than others, that each of Brown, Mitchell, Boucher and Olynyk can help next year’s team (though in the case the first three, the money question can’t exactly be set aside since all will be in need of new deals if they are to return). Mitchell as a defense-first 10th or 11th man specialist certainly has some value if the Raptors can find shooting rich lineups to play him in. Boucher brings pops of fun and likable leadership. Brown has a track record helping good teams win basketball games, and at the height of his powers is probably the best player of the bunch. While over the last few years with Utah and Toronto, Olynyk’s proven his worth as a guy who can help young teams look less immature on the floor.
Ultimately, I lean Olynyk here. Shooting is a valuable commodity, especially on this team, and he may be able to fetch you a similar or better return at next year’s deadline when he’s on an expiring contract. Everything the Raptors do at the front office has to be viewed through the lens of “does this help optimize Scottie Barnes?” And while the Barnes-Boucher two-man group (+4.8 NET in 264 minutes) is currently the Raptors’ most successful high-usage duo in terms of on-court impact, the Olynyk-Barnes pairing is also a healthy positive (+2.4 per-100), per NBA.com. Olynyk’s night-to-night output is a little easier to count on than Boucher’s, and his shooting stroke is just flat out better. Olynyk just works for this team right now, and even more so if the team addresses its rim protection deficiencies in the front court over the summer.
End of the day, the Raptors won’t be wrong if they ship out all four of their guys on the block. When you’re a bad team, you need to own it, and part of that is letting go of guys nearing the end of their deals for whatever return you can get. But if the Raptors do opt to hang onto one or more of these guys in the interest preserving some depth and sensibility to how this roster is built, that’s just fine, too.
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The podcast is dropping a little later than usual today, but it’s more transaction talk, as I link up with the hosts of Locked On Suns, Heat and Bucks to try to piece together a Jimmy Butler trade that works for everyone.
