Yeah but next years pick could be in the high teens for all we know. Giving up a top 10 pick in the middle of a rebuild sucks. This lottery outcome is terrible, this trade is terrible.
There's every reasonable expectation that a pick in the teens of next year's draft is equal in value/talent (or better!) than a 6-10 pick in this draft.
Also I'm not expecting next year's Raptors to be so much better than this year's that they're picking in the "high" teens (ie tail end of the lottery or into the play-in range). I don't think they bottom out in full tank mode but it seems reasonable that short of some crazy acquisitions in the summer that this will again be a team primed to pick in the 5-12 range.
The trade is done and there's no point in litigating it in terms of value proposition when it comes to conveying the draft pick. All that matters is that if I were ranking the preferred outcomes of giving the Spurs what's owed to them my order of preference is:
1) they get 2 seconds (2026 + 2027) because the Raptors bottomed out and were picking top 6 in this year and next year's drafts
2) they get the 2024 1st because this draft sucks.
3) they get the 2025 1st, which is expected to be a much better class than this one.
#1 didn't happen because the Raptors sat 6th and it was pretty much a coin flip that they would move back if anyone jumped the line (which happened). And with whoever they could've drafted this year I figured they would be unlikely to be bad enough next season to sit securely in the top 6 to have the pick protected. So we'd be back to a scenario where the best case is that it's again about 50/50 whether they keep the pick and the more likely scenario is that they probably finish somewhere between missing the play-in and maybe 8th or 9th worst in the league, which would all but assure the Spurs of getting that pick unless they beat the lottery odds. So given the choice between giving up this year's pick and next year's it's no choice at all.
There's also value for the team going forward
knowing that they own their 1sts from this point onward and don't have to worry about conditions and conveyance terms.