Just another 48 hours and this will all mercifully be over.
Trade deadline season’s fun and all. We love transactions. Always have, always will. It’s the lasting cultural legacy of Franchise Mode in sports video games. But it’s also a great relief the minute that clock hits 3pm each deadline day. The nagging pit of dread in your stomach spawned by fear that your team might screw the pooch, gone at last.
This year’s deadline is admittedly less stressful than the interminable trade season Toronto was the main character of a year ago. But any time there’s a chance for movement, anxiety about what could go wrong seeps in, even if you think the Raptors’ decision-makers have righted course after a few years of going through the motions.
With concern on the brain, here’s my humble wishlist of things I hope the Raptors do or don’t do before Thursday.
Don’t trade Jakob Poeltl for a pick
We’re SO close to the Raptors not making a needless teardown trade before this deadline. But Michael Grange’s reporting about the Lakers’ unsurprising interest in Toronto’s backbone-providing big means I need to restate my firmly held stance on how to handle Poeltl: Don’t trade him, dawg!
All the Lakers have to offer of note is a far-off, 2031 first-rounder — pick that might have been a sexier asset had the Lakers not just traded for a 25-year-old Luka Dončić. Nico Harrison might be shorting his long-term future, but I sure as hell am not.
You’re just not making back the on-court value Poeltl provides to this team with one piddly first-round pick likely to end up in the 20s. Odds are, you’re looking at having to flip that pick or another one to find a Poeltl replacement going into next season.
When player development is your organizational edict, you need a roster to match. And until a better option comes along, Poeltl is the single most important guy for upholding structurally sound, developmentally-friendly basketball on the roster. All the strides made over this past month-plus of startlingly competent basketball? Kiss ‘em goodbye if you ship him out with no succession plan in place.
In any rebuild, there comes a time where the need for real players supersedes the needs for more precious draft capital. Toronto’s past that point, lest they risk spinning their wheels in the basement for more years than they need to.
Take a rain check on Brandon Ingram
I’ve gone back and forth on this one in my head a hundred times since the reports first started pouring in that the Raptors might be hot on the trail of the Pelicans contractually complicated star wing. And while my mind is subject to change many times over between now and Thursday, I think I want the Raptors to sit this one out.
I get the reasoning. A franchise that’s not a free agent hot spot can’t turn its nose up at a chance to buy low and upgrade its talent quotient. But I just can’t square the fit. Not on the court, nor on the books.
Landing Ingram via trade would go one of two ways. Option one would see RJ Barrett outbound along with the requisite matching salary, with Ingram coming back to assume Barrett’s gig as the starting small forward next to Scottie Barnes. It’s an upgrade in a vacuum, but there’s fit and health and money to consider here. The second route would be to take on Ingram in exchange for a bunch of the Raptors’ expiring deals and some sort of pick outlay (a first? a first and a second?). Great, you get the talent infusion for as close to free as you’ll get one. But then you have to pay Ingram this summer, and uh-oh, who are you jettisoning this summer to avoid the punitive apron system?
Ingram, a mid-range merchant who’s always been a reticent three-point shooter, would step all over Barnes’ toes as a guy who’s fast morphing into a middy machine in his own right. Both rank in the top-10% of the league in field-goal tries from the mid-range, and bottom-5% in corner threes. Remember all the misplaced hand-wringing over Barnes’ fit with Pascal Siakam? The Barnes-Ingram duo would actually embody those concerns. What good is adding more initiation if it actively hurts your best player?
I’ve said it before, but the pop quiz question any Raptors transaction needs to pass is: does this optimize Scottie Barnes? I think it’s a hard no with Ingram, no matter how you look at it. This would be arguably the most Colangelo-coded move of the current front office’s tenure.
Capture the magic of their last two trades
A big reason for my optimism with regards to the front office getting itself back on course is the work they did in their last two trades. Toronto owned Day 2 of the draft with its creative swap with Sacramento that saw them pick up a couple seconds (Jamal Shead and the Blazers’ second-rounder this year) and Davion Mitchell, who’s been pretty helpful, in exchange for Jalen McDaniels. Before that, swapping the 29th-pick in last year’s draft for Ochai Agbaji, now a vital rotation piece, and Kelly Olynyk, a good player who could net them more stuff in a trade by Thursday, was an unorthodox yet whip-smart move.
These are the kinds of deals the Raptors should be looking at ahead of the deadline. Can they swoop in and land another second-draft salvage job in exchange for the Blazers pick? Can they use their financial flexibility to take advantage of another team’s money problems and score some picks and/or players in the process? They don’t need to reinvent the wheel here. Small wins on the margins to bolster the build that’s begun to take shape over the last month are all that’s needed this week, barring some team calling them up with a Luka-level star on offer, which is apparently a thing that can happen now.
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Unfortunately no fresh podcast today as I’m dealing with one of the many illnesses going around and need to preserve my pipes for the transactions to come later in the week. Will likely have a pair of shows for you on Thursday to make up the difference. Love you!
