WOJ BOMB: Pascal Traded to Indiana

[YogurtProducer]

Siakim looked very ordinary tonight and him at $50 million for 5 years is going to be a disaster. We'll see what he actually gets offered.

It was his first game in a new system. All things considered, he played well (21 points on 14 shots while going an uncharacteristic 2/6 from the line; ended up a team-high +17).

Yeah I wish we had more ordinary guys if ordinary meant that offensive output

[pingpongrac]

Pacers will be fine once Pascal gets adjusted, but a good team at full strength losing to the Blazers is weird

They were missing a few rotation players (Nembhard, who has been starting the last month, and Jackson) and on the second night of a B2B after beating Sacramento while it was Haliburton's first game back in a couple weeks and Siakam's first game with a new team in 8 years. They should have beat the Blazers, but it's at least understandable that they lost considering the aforementioned reasons as well as the bench being terrible for one night. They've got a really tough upcoming schedule though, so they might continue to drop a lot of games leading up to the all-star break.

[TheGeneral99]

Pacers will be fine once Pascal gets adjusted, but a good team at full strength losing to the Blazers is weird

Is it as weird as our team demolishing a healthy Heat team a few nights ago by 30 without Siakam, OG, Poeltl, Brown etc.?

It's the NBA...the Pistons took the Celtics to overtime a few weeks ago.

[ImaBeatDatAzz]

looking at the pacers game, and man why wasn’t obi toppin included, they don’t even need him anymore.

We really need forwards now

[links135]

What's confusing is there's NO VIDEO on NBA youtube channel from any of the games last night. Also no tracking, so no seeing video of each shot on NBA.com, or things like matchups or defence stats. So hard to dig into this game too much cause I couldn't watch it live.

[Bruin]

lol Masai couldn’t even get this pick unprotected?

Read on Twitter

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[brownbobcat]

lol Masai couldn’t even get this pick unprotected?

Read on Twitter

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A 24-18 team trading for an All Star somehow has more sense about downside risk than a 26-31 team trading for a role player. Unbelievable.

[LarSiN]

Indy is NOT finishing bottom 3, who cares about the protection

[tecumseh18]

lol Masai couldn’t even get this pick unprotected?

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Eh, look at it positively. If Pacers end up in the lottery (by losing both play-in games), they have a 0.7% chance of jumping to 4th overall. And ... that's still our pick. 4th overall!

BTW, now in 7th, Raptors have a 31.9% chance of getting into the top 4.

[JB7]

Was listening to the Lowe Post Podcast with Bill Simmons on as a guest. Zach Lowe compared the Pascal deal to the Bulls deal to acquire Vucevic. Now to qualify, he said it wasn’t exactly like that deal (Raps didn’t get all the quality assets the Magic got), but when thinking about a comparable deal, that was the one he thought about.

So Pacers (like the Bulls) traded draft capital for a player that was thought of as being more impactful than he actually is, and the team might not perform up to expectations, and end up giving away higher picks than expected.

[TimeForChange]

Was listening to the Lowe Post Podcast with Bill Simmons on as a guest. Zach Lowe compared the Pascal deal to the Bulls deal to acquire Vucevic. Now to qualify, he said it wasn’t exactly like that deal (Raps didn’t get all the quality assets the Magic got), but when thinking about a comparable deal, that was the one he thought about.

So Pacers (like the Bulls) traded draft capital for a player that was thought of as being more impactful than he actually is, and the team might not perform up to expectations, and end up giving away higher picks than expected.

Vuc is a terrible player though, and everyone but the Bulls, knew that.

[StopitLeo]

lol Masai couldn’t even get this pick unprotected?

Read on Twitter

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That’s the “let’s not have a Jaylen Brown or Jayson Tatum scenario” protection.

[ArthurVandelay]

lol Masai couldn’t even get this pick unprotected?

Read on Twitter

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That’s the “let’s not have a Jaylen Brown or Jayson Tatum scenario” protection.

aka the Bobby Marks clause

[JB7]

Was listening to the Lowe Post Podcast with Bill Simmons on as a guest. Zach Lowe compared the Pascal deal to the Bulls deal to acquire Vucevic. Now to qualify, he said it wasn’t exactly like that deal (Raps didn’t get all the quality assets the Magic got), but when thinking about a comparable deal, that was the one he thought about.

So Pacers (like the Bulls) traded draft capital for a player that was thought of as being more impactful than he actually is, and the team might not perform up to expectations, and end up giving away higher picks than expected.

Vuc is a terrible player though, and everyone but the Bulls, knew that.

Are we as Raptor fans though just seeing Pascal from a tainted viewpoint?

I was not expecting that take, and I just found it interesting. Is someone from the outside looking at this deal and seeing a player whose value/numbers were probably inflated on a mid to poor team, and now that he is on a team with actual expectations, that it might not work out as great as the team trading for him is expecting.

[djsunyc]

if lowe compared him to the vuc deal, then that's a horrible comparison. pascal was 2 time all nba and still putting up all star numbers. not even in the same league in terms of player.

[Zeno]

Lowe was talking about his first impression of the return the Raptors received but when looking at it again he realized they got less than Vuc did. He was not comparing Pascal to Vuc as players at all

[JB7]

if lowe compared him to the vuc deal, then that's a horrible comparison. pascal was 2 time all nba and still putting up all star numbers. not even in the same league in terms of player.

Vuc was putting up great numbers (scoring) at the time of the trade. The season he was traded, Vuc was averaging 24.5pts a game, and shooting over 40% from 3 on 6.5 attempts per game. He was averaging almost 12 rebounds a game. He was also 30 at the time of the trade.

[CazOnReal]

Lowe was talking about his first impression of the return the Raptors received but when looking at it again he realized they got less than Vuc did. He was not comparing Pascal to Vuc as players at all

The Bulls being badly run enough to trade what they did for Nikola isn't the indictment on the trade that Lowe thinks it is.

And I do not like this trade.

[Zeno]

Lowe was talking about his first impression of the return the Raptors received but when looking at it again he realized they got less than Vuc did. He was not comparing Pascal to Vuc as players at all

The Bulls being badly run enough to trade what they did for Nikola isn't the indictment on the trade that Lowe thinks it is.

And I do not like this trade.

That wasn’t his angle either. He was just saying he thought initially pacers made a mistake on that level but realized they hadn’t boxed themselves in like Bulls did. It wasn’t a comparison of Pascal and Vuc and it wasn’t an evaluation of the trade from the Raptors perspective either. It was basically him commenting on a previous trade where a fringe playoff team invested too much and that this wasn’t that though he initially thought it was.

[CazOnReal]

That wasn’t his angle either. He was just saying he thought initially pacers made a mistake on that level but realized they hadn’t boxed themselves in like Bulls did. It wasn’t a comparison of Pascal and Vuc and it wasn’t an evaluation of the trade from the Raptors perspective either. It was basically him commenting on a previous trade where a fringe playoff team invested too much and that this wasn’t that though he initially thought it was.

That's fair. It does make me wonder what the eventual Siakam tree will look like in comparison to the Vucevic tree because Vuc turned in to...
Wendell Carter Jr.
Franz Wagner
Jett Howard

Howard's TBD but Franz is a borderline All-Star and Wendell, despite health issues, it arguably better now than Vucevic has been for the entirety of his Bulls tenure.

In comparison, the Raptors have turned Siakam in to...

Bruce Brown (to be traded, probably)
Jordan Nwora
Kira Lewis Jr. (tank replacement for Schroder when he's traded)
2024 IND 1st (Top 3 protected)
2024 worst of OKC/Clippers 1st
2026 IND 1st (Top 4 protected)
$10.2M trade exception