Raptors Discussion: v97 Raptor's 2024-2025 - Training camp begins Oct. 1
- Thread starter The Nemesis
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phillipmike
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Scotianhab
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saska sault
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trellaine201
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LaPlante94
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So the Bucks only had to give up Jrue Holliday and a 1st round pick and we apparently had to give up Dick and OG? That's kind of BS if you ask me.
Eyedea
The Legend Continues
Grayson Allen and two pick swaps 4-6 years from now aren’t nothing though.
Tbh now I’m wondering what Jrue’s going for. Raps should be in on him
There's a reason that Jimmy is claiming tampering and that's probably part of it (Dame refusing to play for teams that would have offered more).
LaPlante94
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Something is definitely up if we were reported to have to give up OG and Dick just for him to get traded for that. It is weird why Jimmy said that and even Herro when Lillard was pretty open about wanting to go to Miami.
LaPlante94
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Milwaukee has like 3 or 4 picks total for the rest of the 2020s atm I believe. They better hope they win another championship or 2 because life after Giannis is gonna be bad unless they trade him efor a huge package.
Nylanderthal
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LaPlante94
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yeah idk why they keep wanting us to move OG for much older players who don't really want to be here and are at the end of their careers. If we were moving Siakim to get Lillard then ok, but if we're trading OG I'd like to get a PG who is around the same age or younger like a Shai for example.
saska sault
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I'm OK keeping OG, even with a 30 mil/season extension. He should see a higher usage rate going forward. If he can be near 20ppg and another all NBA defensive team, that's a great player to have long term. Still think he could be a trade chip down the road for another big name.. makes me wonder if they keep Siakim and Trent around on extensions also. Losing Fred for nothing hurt, but he was always a hard guy to move via trade because of style and size. The rest of the roster can easily be packaged if another star comes up, or if they decide to build around them. They should not be ok playing the season out and seeing where the chips fall again during free agency, losing the rest of the core for nothing will bring us right back to the dark ages and without control of our draft potentially.
Lots of fans will be unhappy if we run the basic same team back but they played near .600 after the Poeltl trade so I do get the logic. Swapped out Fred for Schroder and added some bench pieces.
What are the options for the Raptors with Damian Lillard trade dream dead?
The Portland Trail Blazers are trading star guard Damian Lillard to the Milwaukee Bucks.
torontosun.com
The Damian Lillard to the Raptors dream is once again dead.
Years after the team won a meaningless game to end the regular season, denying them a chance to draft Lillard, the Milwaukee Bucks swooped in and denied Toronto, Miami, or any other suitor a shot at adding the superstar point guard on Wednesday.
As we said in the initial version of this column, before Lillard was dealt, though trade rumours create immense buzz — and it’s easy to imagine the Raptors fielding a strong group following a blockbuster deal — the vast majority of scuttlebutt doesn’t come to fruition and it’s far more likely that the future hall of famer wouldn’t head north of the border.
That ended up being the case. League sources mused Toronto simply would not dangle OG Anunoby for Lillard. So, where does this leave Toronto? The Raptors enter Season 29 far from being considered any kind of a threat to make a deep playoff run, let alone win a second NBA title. Milwaukee has powered up and has to be the co-title favourite, with defending champion Denver.
Three potential Toronto starters, including the club’s best player, Pascal Siakam, will become unrestricted free agents after this season. Starting point guard and team leader Fred VanVleet now plays in Houston. The team owes a protected first round pick to San Antonio.
Though ticket sales remain robust, the buzz around the franchise has lessened in recent years as players have departed and playoff success has become fleeting.
The Nemesis
Semper Tyrannus
From what I can piece together of the trade structure:
Bucks give: Jrue Holiday (POR), Grayson Allen (PHX), 2029 1st (POR), TBA Pick Swap(s) (POR)
Bucks get: Damian Lillard (POR)
Blazers give: Lillard (MIL), Jusuf Nurkic (POR), Nassir Little (PHX), Keon Johnson (PHX)
Blazers get: Holiday (MIL), Deandre Ayton (PHX), Toumani Camara (PHX), 2029 1st (MIL), TBA Pick Swap(s) (MIL)
Suns give: Ayton (POR), Camara (POR)
Suns get: Nurkic (POR), Little (POR), Allen (MIL), Johnson (POR)
Portland trades away their centerpiece and gets a flippable asset (Holiday) a young starting C they can try to rebuild and integrate into their young core (Ayton), and futures.
Phoenix appears to mostly be here for salary redistribution purposes, but turns that into transforming a guy they had soured on (Ayton) into a whole whack of depth pieces to work around their win-now setup of Booker/Durant/Beal. They didn't need splashy names, they needed quality role players and Nurkic, Allen, and Little could be those.
Bucks give up Holiday, Allen, 1st that's 5 drafts away and a pick swap that presumably comes within the next 4 years or so for Lillard on the gamble that he won't immediately revolt and whinge his way into a re-routing trade to Miami because he has to get his way or nothing.
Yeah from a pure talent perspective that's probably worse for the Blazers than OG, Dick, 1st(s) and swap(s) but the advantage for the Blazers is that by factoring the Suns into the trade they aren't taking any salary ballast like they would've had to with the Raptors (and the stuff the Raps would've had that they could trade off would likely not have fit onto Phoenix if they're the facilitators in this deal) and Holiday is a good high-demand type player in his prime(ish) on a contract that has a player option for next season, making him an attractive trade deadline flip piece.
Jimmy can claim tampering all he wants, but it's not tampering for the Blazers to choose not to trade him to Miami even if that's where he wants to go and even if the offer is "worse" (it's not really worse than the Heat offering Herro, picks, and scraps). Portland is free to make whatever trade they want and unless Lillard had an NTC then he just has to suck it up and either play out the couple of years left on his deal, work with Milwaukee to sort out another trade if they'd abide, or pitch a fit and refuse to report and look like a jackass.
Also while people are dreaming of Lillard, I don't think that would've been a trade that helps the Raptors. Let's say the hypothetical deal, based on just getting Lillard and matching salaries in a 2-team deal, would've been:
Raps get Lillard
Blazers get OG, Dick, Chris Boucher, Thaddeus Young, assorted futures
Now the Raptor lineup is:
PG: Lillard, Schroeder, Flynn
SG: Trent, ???
SF: Barnes, Porter
PF: Siakam, Achiuwa, McDaniels
C: Poeltl, Koloko
That's... not really that good. Instead of being a 7-12th place team they maybe move up to 5th-8th but are still not deep playoff threats. Alternatively you could take Young and Boucher out of the trade and give up Gary Trent instead, but then you've got no SG depth at all, Boucher slots back in at the still-jammed 4/5, and Young is just a dude at the end of the bench. And while Lillard hasn't voiced intent to stick it to Milwaukee like those rumors suggested he might in non-Heat trades, I can't imagine he'd be happier coming to the Raptors in that shape than he would be going to the Bucks.
Eric Koreen wrote about this on the Athletic and I agree that the Raptors were really not in a position to capitalize on Lillard. People have acted like this is a Kawhi situation but the Raptors added Leonard to a team that had stupid good depth, had just won nearly 60 games, and really only subtracted Poeltl out of the rotation once you consider that Kawhi replaced DeRozan and they added Danny Green. This current Raptors team was pretty much .500 and with VanVleet gone they have junk depth that would be stretched even thinner thanks to the trade. That's not a recipe for success.
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saska sault
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The rumored deal was Trent, Dick, Boucher, salary filler, maybe 2 1sts. Perhaps Portland preferred the later 1sts with bigger upside.
When McCollum & Powell were trade trade deadline 2022 and Sharpe was drafted few months later, the rebuild was confirmed. Dame signed his extension one month later. The entire narrative is BS.
Dame's agent steered away from Toronto.
When McCollum & Powell were trade trade deadline 2022 and Sharpe was drafted few months later, the rebuild was confirmed. Dame signed his extension one month later. The entire narrative is BS.
Dame's agent steered away from Toronto.
The tampering isn't about Dame ending up in Milwaukee versus Miami. It is that Dame's agent clearly told Toronto that he wouldn't report to Toronto (which is against the CBA), causing Portland to have to pivot to Milwaukee.
saska sault
Registered User
In the grand scheme of things, as much as I wanted Dame it may have been a blessing in disguise. This team will either gel and make some noise or will be a nobody in the East and sell. Most of our pieces individually would bring back pretty good assets, if that path happens to be the direction they could pull a mini OKC and stockpile picks.
Suntouchable13
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I don’t get what’s wrong with Toronto or the Toronto Raptors as a team and why they can’t get more respect in the NBA after all these years.
Its NBA thing. Players view it as 2nd class franchise that's not on national TV and hurts your endorsements.
It also happens in MLB.
Basically, Americans don't want to play in Canada and have to deal with customs and living in another country. There are exceptions to that, but most NBA players would prefer the US (that being said, Americans usually love it after they have actually played in Toronto).
