Risky Gasol trade ignited ride to the top
Three-for-one deal was a turning point in a season Canada will never forget
The Four-Bouncer from Kawhi Leonard — the mystical shot that won a playoff series for the Raptors — was one of the memorable moments of a calendar year full of them, and the tension of Game 6 of the NBA Finals was a true “where were you” moment in franchise and Canadian sports history.
But none of it likely happens without the goings-on in the first week of February, and when it comes down to remembering 2019 for the NBA champions, that’s a time that needs to be appreciated as much as any other moment.
It was late on a Thursday afternoon, after much toing and froing in the front office and around the league, when the team’s hierarchy pulled the trigger on a transformative trade that set up all that was to come.
Three for one — Jonas Valanciunas, Delon Wright and C.J. Miles for Marc Gasol — gets short shrift in the memories of the year, but it was a statement move and turning point in the most memorable of campaigns.
Valanciunas had been a very good player, and remains one, while Wright was on the way to becoming very good and Miles was a respected veteran that opponents needed to be worried about. Giving them up was a decided long-term gamble.
But as general manager Bobby Webster recalls, to not make the move would have been deciding to not give the most promising Raptors team ever assembled a chance to be as good as it could.
“We felt like maybe there was more of a need to go for it last year,” Webster said. “We saw at times how good we could be … We just thought that Marc’s experience was going to put us over the top.”
The calendar year will be remembered as the greatest in Raptors history without question, even if it had its genesis in mid-2018 — when team president Masai Ujiri and Webster cut ties with longtime coach Dwane Casey and then longertime favourite son DeMar DeRozan, sea-change moments in the team’s first quarter-century.
Those set up a year in which the Raptors presented themselves as worthy NBA champions, and ended one of the great dynasties of the era.
Toronto trailed or was tied in each of its four playoff series — down1-0 to Orlando, 2-1to Philadelphia, 2-0 to Milwaukee, 1-1 with Golden State – and managed to win them all. It was breathtaking and history-making and hard to comprehend even after all these months.
“The way to think about it (is) in your life and all of our lives, you have a couple of moments and time periods that you will always remember,” Webster said. “That eight, nine weeks when it happens and you’re living it with people, those are times … we’ll look back on incredibly fondly.
“It’s one of those things you remember forever.”
What the Raptors did in that championship run was disrupt — and ruin — the order of things throughout the NBA. Golden State was playing in its fifth straight NBA Finals and had won three of the first four. Whether it was the cumulative effect of all those intense games or Toronto’s will and talent, the Raptors ended a dynasty.
“I made a comment after we lost to Toronto at the end of last year that we should just go on sabbatical for the year, go to Italy and sip wine,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr said this season. “It did feel like our guys were just wiped out.
“I don’t know that anybody can really fathom what it takes physically and emotionally to go to the Finals five straight years. It’s exhausting. These guys put everything on the line for five straight years. Just an incredible group, amazing competitive desire.”
The Raptors close out 2019 in much the same way they started. They are a very good team, hardened by an intense 10week run through the playoffs, and maybe a piece or two away from being legitimate candidates to repeat as NBA champions.
However, lessons learned this calendar year might prod them to make another magical run.
“Maybe this year we can get the deal again,” Webster said. “We’re always trying.”