Raptors: Dealing Joseph to Pacers key piece of puzzle

The best Canadian to dress for the Raptors now plays for the Indiana Pacers.

In a deal that had been in place for almost a week, Toronto moved Cory Joseph, the Pickering native who was the first Canadian to be a regular rotation player for the Raptors, to the Indiana Pacers on Friday for the draft rights to Emir Preldzic, a native of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Under NBA trade rules, the Pacers had to give up something to get Joseph. The chance of Preldzic ever setting foot in Toronto on anything other than a vacation is remote. Because of salary cap minutiae, the Joseph deal is a separate transaction from Toronto’s next summer move, which is to sign Pacers forward C.J. Miles as a free agent early next week.

The Raptors have to wait for the 25-year-old Joseph to report to Indiana and pass his physical before they can finalize what is expected to be a three-year deal worth about $25 million with Miles.

Toronto wanted to split the deal into two separate transactions to preserve a $7.6-million trade exception in the Joseph deal while giving Miles almost all of their mid-level cap exception of about $8.5 million (all figures in U.S. dollars).

The trade exception can be used any time in the next 365 days to obtain players without the Raptors having to send any money out. While it’s possible they never use it, having it at their disposal through the 2018 trade deadline, next year’s draft and the 2018 free agency period is a measure of financial flexibility they felt compelled to have. Toronto also has a trade exception worth close to $12 million left over from the DeMarre Carroll-Brooklyn deal.

Joseph was an excellent backup point guard and spot starter — the Raptors went 15-7 with him filling in for Kyle Lowry last season — but the emergence of Delon Wright as a viable backup made president Masai Ujiri and GM Bobby Webster feel comfortable dealing Joseph away.