RAPS FORCED TO KEEP UP WITH THEIR EAST RIVALS
Trade for 34-year-old former all-star Gasol leaves no doubt Toronto’s in win-now mode
For a fevered few minutes there Thursday, it looked like the NBA trade deadline music would stop and Masai Ujiri would still be looking for a chair.
The Philadelphia 76ers had already added Tobias Harris earlier in the week, giving them a terrific starting five, if not much of a bench at all. Then a little after midday, the Milwaukee Bucks jumped in, pilfering sweetshooting big man Nikola Mirotic from the New Orleans Pelicans for roster flotsam and draft picks, an addition that will make the Eastern Conference-leading Bucks even more of a handful than the Toronto Raptors have already found them to be.
It was flop-sweats time for Raptors fans and, even if they might not admit it, for Ujiri, general manager Bobby Webster and everyone else in the Toronto front office. They had built a team that at the start of this season looked very much like an Eastern Conference contender, perhaps even a title contender if things broke correctly, and now here they were stuck watching everyone else around them getting better. When so much of the sales pitch to pending free-agent Kawhi Leonard relied on the Raptors having a long playoff run this spring — well, that and the extra US$50 million they can offer him — it was starting to look like the team might have a hell of a time trying to get out of the second round again.
They still might. But the Raptors’ own prospects were also significantly improved Thursday with the trade with Memphis for centre Marc Gasol, a move that sent centre Jonas Valanciunas, guards Delon Wright and C.J. Miles and a 2024 second-round draft pick to the Grizzlies.
It was, at a stroke, a trade that signalled a couple of things: that the Raptors are in win-now mode as much as they have ever been, but also that Ujiri and company aren’t so desperate to load up for this coming playoff run that they were willing to part with assets that they know they need to keep if things don’t work out as they hope over the next four months or so. They retained their two prized young forwards, Pascal Siakam and OG Anunoby, both of whom would be expected to be the centrepieces of a rebuild effort should the Raptors’ fortunes go pear-shaped sometime between April and July.
In parting ways with Valanciunas, the Raptors lose a genuinely likable big man, a guy who had become a franchise great somewhat by virtue of having been a long-serving member of the team during the best era in its history. But he was never an all-star and as much as he improved his game over the years, he was rarely on the court in crunch time. They also lose Wright and Miles, the former a talented guy who does all the little things right but struggled to find a defined role on a deep team and the latter a mercenary shooter who has unfortunately struggled this season to shoot. Oh, and that 2024 draft pick, by which time we could all be knee deep in rising seas, so whatever.
All of which is to say the Raptors lost two guys who hadn’t been key pieces all season and one in Valanciunas, who was replaced by someone significantly better at the same position. Gasol, 34, is eight years older than the big Lithuanian, is a three-time all-star, two-time all-NBA nominee and a former defensive player of the year. He scores, he rebounds, he passes, he even shoots threes. He’s the best centre the Raptors have ever had, just like that. In landing him, Toronto went from a team that was being passed as it stood still to striding aggressively back into the Eastern Conference race, otherwise known as the fight to be pantsed by the Golden State Warriors in the final.
After the Raptors were eliminated by the Cleveland Cavaliers in the playoffs last season, there was a point this summer in which it appeared a new coach would be the only significant change to the group that kept getting punched right in the face by LeBron James and his Infinity Gauntlet in the post-season. But three of the four Raptors who played the most minutes against the Cavs last season — DeMar DeRozan, Miles and Valanciunas — are now gone. Four more players from that 13-man roster are also now former Raptors: Wright, Jakob Poeltl, Lorenzo Brown and Lucas Nogueira.
While everyone wondered what Ujiri would do after another embarrassing playoff exit, we now have our answer: he blew it up. It may have taken a little time, but he has turned over more than half the roster, plus the coaching staff, of the best Raptors team that its fans had ever known.
The Raptors are doing all they can to get to the NBA Finals this season, but you already knew that.