Raptors’ patience to be tested again ahead of trade deadline

TORONTO – A couple days later, the Raptors remain in awe of the mega trade that sent shockwaves around the NBA and throughout professional sports over the weekend.

They aren’t alone, to be sure. It’s not often that you see two all-league talents and future Hall of Famers – including a perennial MVP candidate in his prime – exchanged for one another. But what fascinated Toronto’s primary decision-makers most, even more than the sheer magnitude of the Luka Doncic-for-Anthony Davis swap, was that nobody saw it coming.

For more than a decade, the Masai Ujiri-led front office has prided itself on operating in the shadows. They’re routinely one of the only teams to keep their draft selection under wraps until it’s announced – remember when they stunned the basketball world by making an obscure prospect from Brazil the 20th-overall pick in 2014? They rarely leak information and like to keep their cards close to the chest, so they know how difficult that can be.

In this modern era, with social media, agents, insiders and a 24-hour news cycle, there are almost no secrets. Even before they pulled off the Kawhi Leonard gambit in 2018 there were whispers.

The list of people that knew the Dallas Mavericks and Los Angeles Lakers were cooking up something historic was limited to the parties involved and didn’t even include all the parties involved. Multiple clubs with room under the luxury tax, including the Raptors, received a call to gauge their interest in being the third team in a mysterious trade, according to league sources. The Utah Jazz obliged but all they were told is what they needed to know: they would be absorbing Jalen Hood-Schifino’s contract and getting a couple of middling second-round picks back for their trouble. They had no idea they were helping to facilitate one of the biggest and most shocking trades ever until moments before it went down.

Stealthy game recognizes stealthy game, and the Raptors tipped their proverbial hats in respect as they worked to determine whether they would make any big splashes of their own ahead of this Thursday’s 3:00 p.m. ET trade deadline.

The safe bet is that deadline day will be relatively quiet in Toronto, at least compared to last year when the team was driving the market with a couple of the league’s most coveted assets. This year, they’re unlikely to be the ones making the big move, but with roughly $10 million in space under the tax, their full mid-level exception untouched and more than $40 million in expiring salary at their disposal, they’re well positioned to assist somebody else’s big move, like Utah did on Sunday.

Ujiri has preached patience in the early stages of the rebuild, and if they opt to stay the course that is what it could look like. They could wait out the Jimmy Butler saga and try to get in on it as the facilitating third or fourth team, consolidating a few of their veteran reserves, collecting draft capital and freeing up more late-season playing time for their young guys.

That is believed to be their plan less than 72 hours out from the deadline, but the Raptors have defied expectations before. As usual, they appear to be considering all their options – sell, hold or maybe even buy, as inexplicable as that would be.

According to venerable NBA insider Marc Stein, Toronto has been linked to New Orleans Pelicans forward Brandon Ingram. Don’t read too much into that, in and of itself. The Raptors are known to do their due diligence whenever a star player becomes available. They’ll make a call or two to see how serious the team is about moving that player and what they might be looking for in return. It’s what smart organizations do, regardless of their level of interest in that player. They checked in on De’Aaron Fox before Sacramento ultimately sent him to San Antonio, his preferred destination, in a three-team deal on Sunday night. They were one of the first teams to call Miami about Butler. Often, especially at this time of year, the other team will leak the names of clubs they’ve spoken to as a leverage play. The sense is that’s what happened here.

That’s not to say they’re out on Ingram. As is always the case, it comes down to how much it would cost to get the player and how much it might cost to keep him – he’s on a $36 million expiring contract and figures to be seeking a maximum extension worth north of $50 million annually. With Scottie Barnes’ max extension kicking in next season, the Raptors have more than $150 million committed to 10 guys, with their four-most expensive players – Barnes, Immanuel Quickley, RJ Barrett and Jakob Poeltl – making up nearly 80 per cent of that figure. Adding Ingram to that core would push them into the tax, a tough and restrictive position to be in for a team that still wouldn’t be good enough to contend. It’s hard to imagine, especially given his questionable fit next to Barnes and ongoing durability concerns – he’s currently out with an ankle injury and hasn’t played more than 64 games since his rookie season.

Ingram is an all-star calibre player when healthy; one of the best and purest scorers in the game, especially from mid-range (where Barnes does a lot of his work these days). But mostly, the Raptors are far from being ready to push their chips in or feel like they’re one player away. They’re certainly not in a position to be giving up future first-round picks for anything other than a surefire franchise cornerstone. If Dallas had called them about Doncic, sure, but those guys don’t generally fall into your lap (unless you’re the Lakers, evidently). For now, the best path forward is continued development and building through the draft.

Rushing that process could be detrimental. Consider Bryan Colangelo’s last big move as Toronto’s general manager: the trade for Rudy Gay, which froze an otherwise young team in mediocrity until Ujiri came along and cleaned house a few months later.

Ujiri isn’t on the hot seat in the same way Colangelo was back in 2013, but after missing the playoffs in three of the last four seasons and with the impending ownership change at MLSE, this is the most pressure he’s faced or scrutiny he’s been under since taking the job atop Toronto’s front office.

On one hand, making a shortsighted move to try and expedite the process would seem out of character for an executive who has mostly exercised patience, at times to a fault. On the other hand, the last time his team had the chance to sell off assets at the deadline and chase a generational talent in the draft (Victor Wembanyama), as many expected they would, they were a surprise buyer and traded a first-round pick for Poeltl.

Ujiri had his reasons, and while they weren’t universally popular at the time, they also weren’t inexcusable. He looked at an underperforming team coming off a 48-win season, one with a veteran core and reigning Rookie of the Year, and believed they deserved a chance to show what they could do next to a real centre. He also believed that their 15-10 finish to that season – prior to their disappointing play-in tournament elimination – was enough to justify keeping that group together over the summer.

This time around, the danger would be in overreacting to a 10-game sample in which they’ve won eight times and boasted the league’s best defensive rating. Not to say that it’s been fool’s gold, necessarily. They’re getting healthier and making significant progress, especially on defence, but it’s also coincided with their friendliest stretch of the schedule to this point. Six of their last seven games came against teams that are currently below .500. For context, only seven of their first 42 opponents have losing records.

Evaluating this current group has been tricky. Due to a myriad of injuries, the regular starters – Quickley, Barnes, Barrett, Poeltl and Gradey Dick – have only played six games together. They’re not as bad as they looked when they lost 16 of 17 games, one of the worst stretches in the franchise’s 30-year history, and they probably aren’t as good as they’ve looked recently.

Their goal over the final couple months of the season should be to see what they’ve got in those guys, as well as rookies Ja’Kobe Walter, Jamal Shead and Jonathan Mogbo, and position themselves to have a realistic shot at landing Duke star Cooper Flagg or one of the other potentially franchise-altering talents at the top of this summer’s draft. The goal for these next few days should be to try turning vets Bruce Brown, Kelly Olynyk and Chris Boucher into some combination of draft capital and fringe prospects and to at least test the market on Poeltl, who they’ve been reluctant to make available, according to sources.

Renting out cap space for a second-rounder or two won’t make headlines or blow any minds like the Mavs and Lakers did over the weekend, but that’s fine. They don’t need to swing for a home run when a bunt single will do. They don’t need to be bold, daring or unpredictable when a small, subtle move can help nudge the rebuild forward.