WOLSTAT: With NBA trade market in a frenzy Raptors need to act to set up for the future

Article content

Can’t imagine anyone wants to spend too much time going over the end of Toronto’s longest road trip in years (other than Scottie Barnes continuing to flash star potential in the clutch as he did against Memphis). The trip is over, just like this season, and it’s more interesting to ponder what’s coming next.

Article content

After Kyrie Irving was surprisingly rapidly dealt, following his latest trade demand, attention turned to the Raptors. That doesn’t happen too often, from a league-wide perspective. But with more trade chips in play than pretty much any other team and with so many looking to buy, that’s where they stand.

Article content

Article content

It’s not where they wanted to be, this is a franchise that has a singular goal: Bringing a second championship to Toronto. They were hoping for a major step forward, not two steps back.

“I think we made a commitment to grow. We’re a young team, a young growing team,” Masai Ujiri said back at media day. “I think in this organization we’ve always wanted to preach patience. We want to win. We’re expecting to win … in terms of our plan, it’s to grow our young players and continue to develop and see (where) that takes us.”

Article content

Unfortunately, (unless you really love the NBA’s lottery), where it’s taken the Raptors is on a voyage to the bottom of the standings. To the point that weighing doing some selling instead of potentially losing solid assets, players and people (like Fred VanVleet and Gary Trent Jr.) for nothing this summer, or in taking advantage of a salivating market for O.G. Anunoby now, vs. In the off-season. The excellent national NBA writer Marc Stein reported Monday Toronto might not yet be willing to talk either Anunoby or Pascal Siakam deals. They love Anunoby. They have since the day they drafted him, but if the market is as loaded as rumoured, it says here they’d be doing a disservice to the franchise hanging on to him. 

Barnes (for obvious reasons), Siakam (he’s a homegrown All-NBA player, and even if you did decide to change things more substantially, the offers will be better in the summer) and Precious Achiuwa (young, talented, under team control for years) should be sticking around. Beyond that, a number of Raptors hold value ranging from sky-high (Anunoby), to high (VanVleet), to moderate or thereabouts (Gary Trent. Jr., Thaddeus Young, Chris Boucher).

Article content

Again, there’s a bevy of buyers out there. A lot more than in most years. And while I wouldn’t term it desperation, there’s a lot of angst to get something done to power up with so many teams believing they are a piece away from being a championship contender. 

Teams like Memphis, New Orleans and the Clippers need to make a big splash. Brooklyn surely isn’t done dealing. Denver could use an upgrade, despite leading the NBA in wins (with Boston). LeBron James and the Lakers want to do something. So does New York and Sacramento and Phoenix and Golden State and Portland.

Is Oklahoma City ready to start selling off some of its assets?

It’s going to be an interesting week!

THREE STARS

1 Scottie Barnes

2 Desmond Bane

3 Chris Boucher

Honourable mention: Precious Achiuwa, Jaren Jackson Jr., Thaddeus Young, Pascal Siakam