My Review of FO moves - 20/20 Armchair GM Hindsight

[wegotthabeet]

Nurse was fired because he didn’t want to be here. Simple as that. He was angling for another gig before even entering the final year of his contract.

[WaltFrazier]

Hang on. MU did not trade the 7th pick for Poeltl. He calculated he was trading something like the 17-19th pick which is defensible. In his mind there's no way we were not a playoff team. The sad sack of individuals we had playing "together" couldn't hold their end of the bargain, and that's on them and the previous coach. Never was so little accomplished by so much of a Raptor's team. They've all (but one) gone on and played splendidly elsewhere where they pressure was off of them to live up to their faux championship pedigrees. Masai got burned. He's lucky he wasn't burned before by both Lowry and DeMar. In large part we can thank Dwayne Casey for that. What kept the Raptors going strong for many years was a strong culture.

It's true, the culture was set by Casey. It sustained through 2020 but it's gone now

[binjumper]

His approach to rebuild is off, then in end of season remarks he says, paraphrasing, gee I've never done this before I'm talking to Weltman every other day about his experience.

Not exactly confidence inspiring.

I took that to mean the Norm, Siakam picks were under the watch of Weltman. Masai needs Weltman back to re-live the glory years

Siakam:

-African
-started playing basketball at a late age
-participated in Basketball without Borders

Hmm, who is more likely to have scouted him? Masai or Weltman?

Masai literally talks about finding him in Basketball without borders camp in Africa.

[2019nbachamps]

Hang on. MU did not trade the 7th pick for Poeltl. He calculated he was trading something like the 17-19th pick which is defensible. In his mind there's no way we were not a playoff team. The sad sack of individuals we had playing "together" couldn't hold their end of the bargain, and that's on them and the previous coach. Never was so little accomplished by so much of a Raptor's team. They've all (but one) gone on and played splendidly elsewhere where they pressure was off of them to live up to their faux championship pedigrees. Masai got burned. He's lucky he wasn't burned before by both Lowry and DeMar. In large part we can thank Dwayne Casey for that. What kept the Raptors going strong for many years was a strong culture.

Masai overvalued a crappy roster. Even if we made the playoffs we were losing in round one guaranteed. And the first round this year. And next year. You can't win in the NBA without a superstar and a 10-man roster. We had neither and Masai thought Poeltl would unlock our potential. The failure is on him, and there is nothing to debate here. Masai conceded in his recent press conferences perhaps he made a mistake overvaluing the roster but he felt he owed it to them to give them a chance to make it work by adding a starting C (who he called top 10 in the NBA). BTW, that Masai thinks Poeltl is top 10 just goes to show you his blind faith in his players.

The NBA is a different beast now. It's way more athletic and there's more talent than ever. You can't compete without rolling 10 deep. Our cupboard has been bare since the Tampa season. Now our FO is looking to restock. We're going into next season with 6-7 serviceable NBA players. The jury is out on the rest, or they have no future with the team (e.g., Bruce Brown, Chris Boucher, etc).

Let's see if Masai is capable of righting the ship. But let's stop blaming Nurse and the players. Masai has been the one constant in our 5-year stretch of mediocrity.

[mrdressup]

Hang on. MU did not trade the 7th pick for Poeltl. He calculated he was trading something like the 17-19th pick which is defensible. In his mind there's no way we were not a playoff team. The sad sack of individuals we had playing "together" couldn't hold their end of the bargain, and that's on them and the previous coach. Never was so little accomplished by so much of a Raptor's team. They've all (but one) gone on and played splendidly elsewhere where they pressure was off of them to live up to their faux championship pedigrees. Masai got burned. He's lucky he wasn't burned before by both Lowry and DeMar. In large part we can thank Dwayne Casey for that. What kept the Raptors going strong for many years was a strong culture.

Masai overvalued a crappy roster. Even if we made the playoffs we were losing in round one guaranteed. And the first round this year. And next year. You can't win in the NBA without a superstar and a 10-man roster. We had neither and Masai thought Poeltl would unlock our potential. The failure is on him, and there is nothing to debate here. Masai conceded in his recent press conferences perhaps he made a mistake overvaluing the roster but he felt he owed it to them to give them a chance to make it work by adding a starting C (who he called top 10 in the NBA). BTW, that Masai thinks Poeltl is top 10 just goes to show you his blind faith in his players.

The NBA is a different beast now. It's way more athletic and there's more talent than ever. You can't compete without rolling 10 deep. Our cupboard has been bare since the Tampa season. Now our FO is looking to restock. We're going into next season with 6-7 serviceable NBA players. The jury is out on the rest, or they have no future with the team (e.g., Bruce Brown, Chris Boucher, etc).

Let's see if Masai is capable of righting the ship. But let's stop blaming Nurse and the players. Masai has been the one constant in our 5-year stretch of mediocrity.

History shows we won plenty without a superstar. He only made the modest prediction that what we had was at least a playoff team and that the value of the pick wasn't going to be top 6. All the excuse makers around the team could easily point to a lack of a center to justify the team performance that was well below league-wide expectations. He tackled that shortcoming. It did look like it was going to do enough to get us into the top 8 when it first happened. Our team was horribly coached if you ask me. We hade zero offensive structure. Things like pecking order and merit was being spoken about and guys were offended when they weren't padding the box score to fit their all-star aspirations. Defensively, we played outside of the league trends. We kept packing the paint trying to get strips and left the corner 3 point unguarded. The league went off against us from 3 all year is a time when 3 point efficiency and number of 3 point shooters per team was climbing. Someone saw fit to do that. Masai has one major reproach from me, and that is to not have acted to recognize the incompetence which was being shown. That's where the 2019 season bought some people some time. The Tampa year did the same It was an excuse to forgive. I think we gave away 2 years there, and that is too much to overcome in the short term. Getting back to Poeltl, I don't think his assessment was far off. We should have been a playoff team with a functional center. He got burned by Fred. He should have seen that coming. Fred was always ahead of the team with his betting on himself. Once the dominoes started to fall it all unraveled pretty quickly. Only in hindsight does it look like he traded Poeltl for the #7 pick. We could have avoided all of that by blowing it up the year we acquired Scottie and saw his potential. He would have been chastised for giving up on great players had he done so. The safe bet was probably to think Fred would bolt. Nurse is another story. He completely wrecked our culture, and we instantly gave up on developing players in hose years by not playing them to the point of allowing things to not reveal themselves more clearly to us. We ended up sinking years into guys we needed to decided quickly on. Anyway, I'm not mad with where we are. We are in a good place now and that is all that matters. I'm hoping for one more year of being really bad. It would be a mistake to try and push us more towards being mediocre. Anywhere around 30 wins (or less) next year would satisfy me.

[bluerap23]

Secure a good coach
Darko has not proven anything other than increasing our ball movement and keeping us a top transition offense team. This team won a title built on defense, and drafted Scottie as a strong defensive wing, and brought guys over from the tough Knick's system. I say we pitch Coach Bud or look at the coaching market this season again. Let's not be afraid to pivot.

I hated a lot of what I saw from Darko, BUT he did a great job with player development, which is what he is here for. We aren't trying to win for real right now so I am good with bringing Darko back. It will likely be another 2 seasons before we consider bringing in a Bud-type. I also legit think there is a chance that the next HC of the Raptors will be Kyle Lowry.

[Pointgod]

Hang on. MU did not trade the 7th pick for Poeltl. He calculated he was trading something like the 17-19th pick which is defensible. In his mind there's no way we were not a playoff team. The sad sack of individuals we had playing "together" couldn't hold their end of the bargain, and that's on them and the previous coach. Never was so little accomplished by so much of a Raptor's team. They've all (but one) gone on and played splendidly elsewhere where they pressure was off of them to live up to their faux championship pedigrees. Masai got burned. He's lucky he wasn't burned before by both Lowry and DeMar. In large part we can thank Dwayne Casey for that. What kept the Raptors going strong for many years was a strong culture.

Masai overvalued a crappy roster. Even if we made the playoffs we were losing in round one guaranteed. And the first round this year. And next year. You can't win in the NBA without a superstar and a 10-man roster. We had neither and Masai thought Poeltl would unlock our potential. The failure is on him, and there is nothing to debate here. Masai conceded in his recent press conferences perhaps he made a mistake overvaluing the roster but he felt he owed it to them to give them a chance to make it work by adding a starting C (who he called top 10 in the NBA). BTW, that Masai thinks Poeltl is top 10 just goes to show you his blind faith in his players.

The NBA is a different beast now. It's way more athletic and there's more talent than ever. You can't compete without rolling 10 deep. Our cupboard has been bare since the Tampa season. Now our FO is looking to restock. We're going into next season with 6-7 serviceable NBA players. The jury is out on the rest, or they have no future with the team (e.g., Bruce Brown, Chris Boucher, etc).

Let's see if Masai is capable of righting the ship. But let's stop blaming Nurse and the players. Masai has been the one constant in our 5-year stretch of mediocrity.

Bolded is the most annoying part. Nurse was used as a scapegoat, then Fred, Pascal and OG while the obvious problem was talent and roster construction. Our current team fits much better with each other but no doubt we took a step back in talent. The front office better be active this offseason, they can’t be content with just the draft and using the MLE for a backup.

[ConSarnit]

Hang on. MU did not trade the 7th pick for Poeltl. He calculated he was trading something like the 17-19th pick which is defensible. In his mind there's no way we were not a playoff team. The sad sack of individuals we had playing "together" couldn't hold their end of the bargain, and that's on them and the previous coach. Never was so little accomplished by so much of a Raptor's team. They've all (but one) gone on and played splendidly elsewhere where they pressure was off of them to live up to their faux championship pedigrees. Masai got burned. He's lucky he wasn't burned before by both Lowry and DeMar. In large part we can thank Dwayne Casey for that. What kept the Raptors going strong for many years was a strong culture.

Masai overvalued a crappy roster. Even if we made the playoffs we were losing in round one guaranteed. And the first round this year. And next year. You can't win in the NBA without a superstar and a 10-man roster. We had neither and Masai thought Poeltl would unlock our potential. The failure is on him, and there is nothing to debate here. Masai conceded in his recent press conferences perhaps he made a mistake overvaluing the roster but he felt he owed it to them to give them a chance to make it work by adding a starting C (who he called top 10 in the NBA). BTW, that Masai thinks Poeltl is top 10 just goes to show you his blind faith in his players.

The NBA is a different beast now. It's way more athletic and there's more talent than ever. You can't compete without rolling 10 deep. Our cupboard has been bare since the Tampa season. Now our FO is looking to restock. We're going into next season with 6-7 serviceable NBA players. The jury is out on the rest, or they have no future with the team (e.g., Bruce Brown, Chris Boucher, etc).

Let's see if Masai is capable of righting the ship. But let's stop blaming Nurse and the players. Masai has been the one constant in our 5-year stretch of mediocrity.

History shows we won plenty without a superstar. He only made the modest prediction that what we had was at least a playoff team and that the value of the pick wasn't going to be top 6. All the excuse makers around the team could easily point to a lack of a center to justify the team performance that was well below league-wide expectations. He tackled that shortcoming. It did look like it was going to do enough to get us into the top 8 when it first happened. Our team was horribly coached if you ask me. We hade zero offensive structure. Things like pecking order and merit was being spoken about and guys were offended when they weren't padding the box score to fit their all-star aspirations. Defensively, we played outside of the league trends. We kept packing the paint trying to get strips and left the corner 3 point unguarded. The league went off against us from 3 all year is a time when 3 point efficiency and number of 3 point shooters per team was climbing. Someone saw fit to do that. Masai has one major reproach from me, and that is to not have acted to recognize the incompetence which was being shown. That's where the 2019 season bought some people some time. The Tampa year did the same It was an excuse to forgive. I think we gave away 2 years there, and that is too much to overcome in the short term. Getting back to Poeltl, I don't think his assessment was far off. We should have been a playoff team with a functional center. He got burned by Fred. He should have seen that coming. Fred was always ahead of the team with his betting on himself. Once the dominoes started to fall it all unraveled pretty quickly. Only in hindsight does it look like he traded Poeltl for the #7 pick. We could have avoided all of that by blowing it up the year we acquired Scottie and saw his potential. He would have been chastised for giving up on great players had he done so. The safe bet was probably to think Fred would bolt. Nurse is another story. He completely wrecked our culture, and we instantly gave up on developing players in hose years by not playing them to the point of allowing things to not reveal themselves more clearly to us. We ended up sinking years into guys we needed to decided quickly on. Anyway, I'm not mad with where we are. We are in a good place now and that is all that matters. I'm hoping for one more year of being really bad. It would be a mistake to try and push us more towards being mediocre. Anywhere around 30 wins (or less) next year would satisfy me.

Not from what we know though. By all reports the FVV situation went like this:

-Houston is locked in on Harden throughout the season

-Houston hires Udoka in April 2023 (after the trade deadline)

-Udoka pushes back against signing Harden

-Houston pivots to FVV

By all accounts Houston was not targeting FVV until Udoka came on board, which was well after the trade deadline. At that point it was out of the Raptor hands.

There was always a risk of FVV walking for nothing but the HOU option didn't materialize until very late in the process. There was expected to be competition to sign FVV but not "overpay by $13m/yr" competition.

[ciueli]

History shows we won plenty without a superstar. He only made the modest prediction that what we had was at least a playoff team and that the value of the pick wasn't going to be top 6. All the excuse makers around the team could easily point to a lack of a center to justify the team performance that was well below league-wide expectations. He tackled that shortcoming. It did look like it was going to do enough to get us into the top 8 when it first happened. Our team was horribly coached if you ask me. We hade zero offensive structure. Things like pecking order and merit was being spoken about and guys were offended when they weren't padding the box score to fit their all-star aspirations. Defensively, we played outside of the league trends. We kept packing the paint trying to get strips and left the corner 3 point unguarded. The league went off against us from 3 all year is a time when 3 point efficiency and number of 3 point shooters per team was climbing. Someone saw fit to do that. Masai has one major reproach from me, and that is to not have acted to recognize the incompetence which was being shown. That's where the 2019 season bought some people some time. The Tampa year did the same It was an excuse to forgive. I think we gave away 2 years there, and that is too much to overcome in the short term. Getting back to Poeltl, I don't think his assessment was far off. We should have been a playoff team with a functional center. He got burned by Fred. He should have seen that coming. Fred was always ahead of the team with his betting on himself. Once the dominoes started to fall it all unraveled pretty quickly. Only in hindsight does it look like he traded Poeltl for the #7 pick. We could have avoided all of that by blowing it up the year we acquired Scottie and saw his potential. He would have been chastised for giving up on great players had he done so. The safe bet was probably to think Fred would bolt. Nurse is another story. He completely wrecked our culture, and we instantly gave up on developing players in hose years by not playing them to the point of allowing things to not reveal themselves more clearly to us. We ended up sinking years into guys we needed to decided quickly on. Anyway, I'm not mad with where we are. We are in a good place now and that is all that matters. I'm hoping for one more year of being really bad. It would be a mistake to try and push us more towards being mediocre. Anywhere around 30 wins (or less) next year would satisfy me.

Masai tried to build a team with few to no competent guards and minimal 3 point shooting in the 2020s, it doesn't work in this era, this isn't the 1990s or early 2000s.

You say Fred burned him, but it was Masai who burned Masai by putting himself in the position where if Fred walked there were literally zero competent starting guards to replace his production. Masai further burned himself by being afraid of ever offering a player a 5 year contract, that's why we swapped Norm Powell for Gary Trent Jr. and couldn't get full value for Pascal in trade, it was all down to being too conservative in offering years on contracts and there's a price to be paid for that.

And make no mistake, Masai has a long history of failing to fill certain holes in our roster. During the entirety of the Kyle/DeMar run we had a massive hole at SF, we played Terrence Ross as our starter there for 3.5 years, then Masai threw a big contract at DeMarre Carroll, it was so bad he had to use a first round pick to dump it on the Nets. Maybe in another context this wouldn't have been backbreaking, but with poor defence and no 3 point shooting DeMar DeRozan as our starting SG it meant it was absolutely critical to have a solid 3+D wing next to him, Masai failed to do that for far too long and that's why they kept flaming out in the playoffs every year.

So now we'll see how long it takes Masai to find a competent 3+D wing to go with RJ, if history is anything to go by it could be a very long time.

[ConSarnit]

Hang on. MU did not trade the 7th pick for Poeltl. He calculated he was trading something like the 17-19th pick which is defensible. In his mind there's no way we were not a playoff team. The sad sack of individuals we had playing "together" couldn't hold their end of the bargain, and that's on them and the previous coach. Never was so little accomplished by so much of a Raptor's team. They've all (but one) gone on and played splendidly elsewhere where they pressure was off of them to live up to their faux championship pedigrees. Masai got burned. He's lucky he wasn't burned before by both Lowry and DeMar. In large part we can thank Dwayne Casey for that. What kept the Raptors going strong for many years was a strong culture.

Masai overvalued a crappy roster. Even if we made the playoffs we were losing in round one guaranteed. And the first round this year. And next year. You can't win in the NBA without a superstar and a 10-man roster. We had neither and Masai thought Poeltl would unlock our potential. The failure is on him, and there is nothing to debate here. Masai conceded in his recent press conferences perhaps he made a mistake overvaluing the roster but he felt he owed it to them to give them a chance to make it work by adding a starting C (who he called top 10 in the NBA). BTW, that Masai thinks Poeltl is top 10 just goes to show you his blind faith in his players.

The NBA is a different beast now. It's way more athletic and there's more talent than ever. You can't compete without rolling 10 deep. Our cupboard has been bare since the Tampa season. Now our FO is looking to restock. We're going into next season with 6-7 serviceable NBA players. The jury is out on the rest, or they have no future with the team (e.g., Bruce Brown, Chris Boucher, etc).

Let's see if Masai is capable of righting the ship. But let's stop blaming Nurse and the players. Masai has been the one constant in our 5-year stretch of mediocrity.

Bolded is the most annoying part. Nurse was used as a scapegoat, then Fred, Pascal and OG while the obvious problem was talent and roster construction. Our current team fits much better with each other but no doubt we took a step back in talent. The front office better be active this offseason, they can’t be content with just the draft and using the MLE for a backup.

Active how? We've seen where free agents signings get us: nowhere. We sure as hell better not be trading draft assets for win-now pieces. Let's say we end up keeping the pick this year:

IQ
Barrett
?
Barnes
Poeltl

Dick
Olynyk
#6
#19
MLE

That's 8-9 guys who are going to need minutes (mileage may vary on #19). Then we have wildcards of:

Brown
Agbaji
Boucher
Trent

If even one of those guys stays that's 9-10 guys who need minutes. Add in 19 and 31 as guys on the "Dick" program (see how they do with the big team early in the season, then probably G-leauge, then get called back up).

We are going to have a lot of guys who need minutes, especially if the focus is more on development and we're actually committed to playing the young guys (aka the anti-Nurse strategy). It might not look pretty next year but that might be the price we pay for having a young team with a focus on development.

[2019nbachamps]

Masai overvalued a crappy roster. Even if we made the playoffs we were losing in round one guaranteed. And the first round this year. And next year. You can't win in the NBA without a superstar and a 10-man roster. We had neither and Masai thought Poeltl would unlock our potential. The failure is on him, and there is nothing to debate here. Masai conceded in his recent press conferences perhaps he made a mistake overvaluing the roster but he felt he owed it to them to give them a chance to make it work by adding a starting C (who he called top 10 in the NBA). BTW, that Masai thinks Poeltl is top 10 just goes to show you his blind faith in his players.

The NBA is a different beast now. It's way more athletic and there's more talent than ever. You can't compete without rolling 10 deep. Our cupboard has been bare since the Tampa season. Now our FO is looking to restock. We're going into next season with 6-7 serviceable NBA players. The jury is out on the rest, or they have no future with the team (e.g., Bruce Brown, Chris Boucher, etc).

Let's see if Masai is capable of righting the ship. But let's stop blaming Nurse and the players. Masai has been the one constant in our 5-year stretch of mediocrity.

History shows we won plenty without a superstar. He only made the modest prediction that what we had was at least a playoff team and that the value of the pick wasn't going to be top 6. All the excuse makers around the team could easily point to a lack of a center to justify the team performance that was well below league-wide expectations. He tackled that shortcoming. It did look like it was going to do enough to get us into the top 8 when it first happened. Our team was horribly coached if you ask me. We hade zero offensive structure. Things like pecking order and merit was being spoken about and guys were offended when they weren't padding the box score to fit their all-star aspirations. Defensively, we played outside of the league trends. We kept packing the paint trying to get strips and left the corner 3 point unguarded. The league went off against us from 3 all year is a time when 3 point efficiency and number of 3 point shooters per team was climbing. Someone saw fit to do that. Masai has one major reproach from me, and that is to not have acted to recognize the incompetence which was being shown. That's where the 2019 season bought some people some time. The Tampa year did the same It was an excuse to forgive. I think we gave away 2 years there, and that is too much to overcome in the short term. Getting back to Poeltl, I don't think his assessment was far off. We should have been a playoff team with a functional center. He got burned by Fred. He should have seen that coming. Fred was always ahead of the team with his betting on himself. Once the dominoes started to fall it all unraveled pretty quickly. Only in hindsight does it look like he traded Poeltl for the #7 pick. We could have avoided all of that by blowing it up the year we acquired Scottie and saw his potential. He would have been chastised for giving up on great players had he done so. The safe bet was probably to think Fred would bolt. Nurse is another story. He completely wrecked our culture, and we instantly gave up on developing players in hose years by not playing them to the point of allowing things to not reveal themselves more clearly to us. We ended up sinking years into guys we needed to decided quickly on. Anyway, I'm not mad with where we are. We are in a good place now and that is all that matters. I'm hoping for one more year of being really bad. It would be a mistake to try and push us more towards being mediocre. Anywhere around 30 wins (or less) next year would satisfy me.

Not from what we know though. By all reports the FVV situation went like this:

-Houston is locked in on Harden throughout the season

-Houston hires Udoka in April 2023 (after the trade deadline)

-Udoka pushes back against signing Harden

-Houston pivots to FVV

By all accounts Houston was not targeting FVV until Udoka came on board, which was well after the trade deadline. At that point it was out of the Raptor hands.

There was always a risk of FVV walking for nothing but the HOU option didn't materialize until very late in the process. There was expected to be competition to sign FVV but not "overpay by $13m/yr" competition.

Sorry, you are missing one major piece.

Masai offered FVV an extension at the start of the season. FVV then lied saying no extension was offered. Masai should’ve traded him at the deadline no matter what after that. It was always clear FVV would go to the highest bidder and given he was unwilling to accept our best offer during the season, the risk was too great to go into free agency expecting a different outcome.

[YogurtProducer]

Masai overvalued a crappy roster. Even if we made the playoffs we were losing in round one guaranteed. And the first round this year. And next year. You can't win in the NBA without a superstar and a 10-man roster. We had neither and Masai thought Poeltl would unlock our potential.
.

Man stop with that - just because you make a move for Poeltl does not mean you are done making moves for the next half decade

That is like saying in 2024 we were losing in round one guaranteed because Lowry/Ross/Demar/Amir/JV did not have a superstar in the lineup. Shockingly, within 3 years we were starting Lowry/Demar/Carroll/Ibaka/JV, and then 2 year later Lowry/Danny/Kawhi/Siakam/Gasol

Just because your team is 1 thing now, does not mean it cannot change in the future.

Even now - there is a 0% chance IQ/GTJ/RJ/Barnes/Poeltl is what our lineup looks like in 5 years. Hell - there is a very good chance it does not even look like that in 24 or even 12 months.

[C_Money]

Hang on. MU did not trade the 7th pick for Poeltl. He calculated he was trading something like the 17-19th pick which is defensible. In his mind there's no way we were not a playoff team. The sad sack of individuals we had playing "together" couldn't hold their end of the bargain, and that's on them and the previous coach. Never was so little accomplished by so much of a Raptor's team. They've all (but one) gone on and played splendidly elsewhere where they pressure was off of them to live up to their faux championship pedigrees. Masai got burned. He's lucky he wasn't burned before by both Lowry and DeMar. In large part we can thank Dwayne Casey for that. What kept the Raptors going strong for many years was a strong culture.

Masai overvalued a crappy roster. Even if we made the playoffs we were losing in round one guaranteed. And the first round this year. And next year. You can't win in the NBA without a superstar and a 10-man roster. We had neither and Masai thought Poeltl would unlock our potential. The failure is on him, and there is nothing to debate here. Masai conceded in his recent press conferences perhaps he made a mistake overvaluing the roster but he felt he owed it to them to give them a chance to make it work by adding a starting C (who he called top 10 in the NBA). BTW, that Masai thinks Poeltl is top 10 just goes to show you his blind faith in his players.

The NBA is a different beast now. It's way more athletic and there's more talent than ever. You can't compete without rolling 10 deep. Our cupboard has been bare since the Tampa season. Now our FO is looking to restock. We're going into next season with 6-7 serviceable NBA players. The jury is out on the rest, or they have no future with the team (e.g., Bruce Brown, Chris Boucher, etc).

Let's see if Masai is capable of righting the ship. But let's stop blaming Nurse and the players. Masai has been the one constant in our 5-year stretch of mediocrity.

Bolded is the most annoying part. Nurse was used as a scapegoat, then Fred, Pascal and OG while the obvious problem was talent and roster construction. Our current team fits much better with each other but no doubt we took a step back in talent. The front office better be active this offseason, they can’t be content with just the draft and using the MLE for a backup.

Tbh if we lose the pick I kinda hope we do nothing this summer. We need another tank year unfortunately.

[Scase]

This front office needs to learn that it’s okay to zag when other teams are also zagging.

No reason to neglect shooting for years when other teams were stacking up on shooters. No reason that they had Malachi Flynn as our back up PG for 4 years when anyone could tell he wasn’t NBA caliber. Holding onto our players too long and instead losing them for nothing, putting ourselves in a position that we had to accept worse deals for Siakam and OG (although the OG trade turned out good for both teams) just a lack of clarity in what they’re doing. And for a front office that’s above average drafting I have no idea why we didn’t stack up on draft picks in the previous years instead choosing to play average vets. A lot of posters called out the bad moves and lack of moves when they happened so it doesn’t take hindsight to see obvious mistakes

Have to agree roster construction is on FO

They can turn it around

If we can take some positive things away it's this:

The FO seems to recognize they screwed up and are willing to pivot. Other teams might have doubled down. We are getting back to the things that made us successful in the first place:

drafting (surplus draft picks over the next 3 years)
development (replacing Nurse with Darko)

The FO has proven they can be successful using this method. The big question will be if they can do it again.

I agree with everything but the bolded. They did double down, that's what got us here in the first place. I don't think it's fair to say they realized they screwed up, trading for Jak was the point at which they doubled down on a flawed core.

The only thing I have genuine faith in them still, is their drafting. So hopefully we can find some gems in the next couple of years, but they really need to get better finding NBA quality players outside the draft.

[Scase]

History shows we won plenty without a superstar. He only made the modest prediction that what we had was at least a playoff team and that the value of the pick wasn't going to be top 6. All the excuse makers around the team could easily point to a lack of a center to justify the team performance that was well below league-wide expectations. He tackled that shortcoming. It did look like it was going to do enough to get us into the top 8 when it first happened. Our team was horribly coached if you ask me. We hade zero offensive structure. Things like pecking order and merit was being spoken about and guys were offended when they weren't padding the box score to fit their all-star aspirations. Defensively, we played outside of the league trends. We kept packing the paint trying to get strips and left the corner 3 point unguarded. The league went off against us from 3 all year is a time when 3 point efficiency and number of 3 point shooters per team was climbing. Someone saw fit to do that. Masai has one major reproach from me, and that is to not have acted to recognize the incompetence which was being shown. That's where the 2019 season bought some people some time. The Tampa year did the same It was an excuse to forgive. I think we gave away 2 years there, and that is too much to overcome in the short term. Getting back to Poeltl, I don't think his assessment was far off. We should have been a playoff team with a functional center. He got burned by Fred. He should have seen that coming. Fred was always ahead of the team with his betting on himself. Once the dominoes started to fall it all unraveled pretty quickly. Only in hindsight does it look like he traded Poeltl for the #7 pick. We could have avoided all of that by blowing it up the year we acquired Scottie and saw his potential. He would have been chastised for giving up on great players had he done so. The safe bet was probably to think Fred would bolt. Nurse is another story. He completely wrecked our culture, and we instantly gave up on developing players in hose years by not playing them to the point of allowing things to not reveal themselves more clearly to us. We ended up sinking years into guys we needed to decided quickly on. Anyway, I'm not mad with where we are. We are in a good place now and that is all that matters. I'm hoping for one more year of being really bad. It would be a mistake to try and push us more towards being mediocre. Anywhere around 30 wins (or less) next year would satisfy me.

Masai tried to build a team with few to no competent guards and minimal 3 point shooting in the 2020s, it doesn't work in this era, this isn't the 1990s or early 2000s.

You say Fred burned him, but it was Masai who burned Masai by putting himself in the position where if Fred walked there were literally zero competent starting guards to replace his production. Masai further burned himself by being afraid of ever offering a player a 5 year contract, that's why we swapped Norm Powell for Gary Trent Jr. and couldn't get full value for Pascal in trade, it was all down to being too conservative in offering years on contracts and there's a price to be paid for that.

And make no mistake, Masai has a long history of failing to fill certain holes in our roster. During the entirety of the Kyle/DeMar run we had a massive hole at SF, we played Terrence Ross as our starter there for 3.5 years, then Masai threw a big contract at DeMarre Carroll, it was so bad he had to use a first round pick to dump it on the Nets. Maybe in another context this wouldn't have been backbreaking, but with poor defence and no 3 point shooting DeMar DeRozan as our starting SG it meant it was absolutely critical to have a solid 3+D wing next to him, Masai failed to do that for far too long and that's why they kept flaming out in the playoffs every year.

So now we'll see how long it takes Masai to find a competent 3+D wing to go with RJ, if history is anything to go by it could be a very long time.

This is what blows my mind, some folks will jump through as many hoops as humanly possible to just push the blame elsewhere. The buck has to stop somewhere, and it's gonna be Masai.

He built the teams that failed. We didn't fail because of players drastically underperforming, we failed because we have/had a roster that was not fit to play in the modern 3 ball era of the NBA, period. We STILL lack proper shooting, but I'll be patient as we're evidently rebuilding (pending this summer, it may be re-tooling). But there is no blame possible that can be put on Nurse, or the team as a whole.

The fit was bad, and the roster was and is, missing key skills to win in the NBA at even a .500 level. That is 100% on the guy who acquires the players, and builds the roster. It is beyond me how people still won't point the finger at the only one responsible for actually building the team.

[ConSarnit]

History shows we won plenty without a superstar. He only made the modest prediction that what we had was at least a playoff team and that the value of the pick wasn't going to be top 6. All the excuse makers around the team could easily point to a lack of a center to justify the team performance that was well below league-wide expectations. He tackled that shortcoming. It did look like it was going to do enough to get us into the top 8 when it first happened. Our team was horribly coached if you ask me. We hade zero offensive structure. Things like pecking order and merit was being spoken about and guys were offended when they weren't padding the box score to fit their all-star aspirations. Defensively, we played outside of the league trends. We kept packing the paint trying to get strips and left the corner 3 point unguarded. The league went off against us from 3 all year is a time when 3 point efficiency and number of 3 point shooters per team was climbing. Someone saw fit to do that. Masai has one major reproach from me, and that is to not have acted to recognize the incompetence which was being shown. That's where the 2019 season bought some people some time. The Tampa year did the same It was an excuse to forgive. I think we gave away 2 years there, and that is too much to overcome in the short term. Getting back to Poeltl, I don't think his assessment was far off. We should have been a playoff team with a functional center. He got burned by Fred. He should have seen that coming. Fred was always ahead of the team with his betting on himself. Once the dominoes started to fall it all unraveled pretty quickly. Only in hindsight does it look like he traded Poeltl for the #7 pick. We could have avoided all of that by blowing it up the year we acquired Scottie and saw his potential. He would have been chastised for giving up on great players had he done so. The safe bet was probably to think Fred would bolt. Nurse is another story. He completely wrecked our culture, and we instantly gave up on developing players in hose years by not playing them to the point of allowing things to not reveal themselves more clearly to us. We ended up sinking years into guys we needed to decided quickly on. Anyway, I'm not mad with where we are. We are in a good place now and that is all that matters. I'm hoping for one more year of being really bad. It would be a mistake to try and push us more towards being mediocre. Anywhere around 30 wins (or less) next year would satisfy me.

Not from what we know though. By all reports the FVV situation went like this:

-Houston is locked in on Harden throughout the season

-Houston hires Udoka in April 2023 (after the trade deadline)

-Udoka pushes back against signing Harden

-Houston pivots to FVV

By all accounts Houston was not targeting FVV until Udoka came on board, which was well after the trade deadline. At that point it was out of the Raptor hands.

There was always a risk of FVV walking for nothing but the HOU option didn't materialize until very late in the process. There was expected to be competition to sign FVV but not "overpay by $13m/yr" competition.

Sorry, you are missing one major piece.

Masai offered FVV an extension at the start of the season. FVV then lied saying no extension was offered. Masai should’ve traded him at the deadline no matter what after that. It was always clear FVV would go to the highest bidder and given he was unwilling to accept our best offer during the season, the risk was too great to go into free agency expecting a different outcome.

Even if Fred lied it doesn't change the fact that his max extension was 4/114. If he was looking for ~$30m per season why would he have taken that extension? If Fred (rightfully) thought he could get more money he had to wait until the off-season, even if that money was going to come from us. Him turning down that offer wasn't a "I won't re-sign with you" statement, it was a "under the current extension rules I think I should be paid more so I'll wait" statement.

[ConSarnit]

Have to agree roster construction is on FO

They can turn it around

If we can take some positive things away it's this:

The FO seems to recognize they screwed up and are willing to pivot. Other teams might have doubled down. We are getting back to the things that made us successful in the first place:

drafting (surplus draft picks over the next 3 years)
development (replacing Nurse with Darko)

The FO has proven they can be successful using this method. The big question will be if they can do it again.

I agree with everything but the bolded. They did double down, that's what got us here in the first place. I don't think it's fair to say they realized they screwed up, trading for Jak was the point at which they doubled down on a flawed core.

The only thing I have genuine faith in them still, is their drafting. So hopefully we can find some gems in the next couple of years, but they really need to get better finding NBA quality players outside the draft.

I'm talking about doubling down strictly in the sense that they did not invest any more future assets to chase wins now.

[Scase]

If we can take some positive things away it's this:

The FO seems to recognize they screwed up and are willing to pivot. Other teams might have doubled down. We are getting back to the things that made us successful in the first place:

drafting (surplus draft picks over the next 3 years)
development (replacing Nurse with Darko)

The FO has proven they can be successful using this method. The big question will be if they can do it again.

I agree with everything but the bolded. They did double down, that's what got us here in the first place. I don't think it's fair to say they realized they screwed up, trading for Jak was the point at which they doubled down on a flawed core.

The only thing I have genuine faith in them still, is their drafting. So hopefully we can find some gems in the next couple of years, but they really need to get better finding NBA quality players outside the draft.

I'm talking about doubling down strictly in the sense that they did not invest any more future assets to chase wins now.

You mean beyond Jak? If so, yeah mostly I'll agree, but you could say the Olynyk trade for a pick makes that statement debatable. IMO the Jak trade can't be ignored as that was the screw up they should have avoided by not doubling down. You could also argue they tried to double down with the Dame/KD trade talks.

Either way, while I'm glad they finally pivoted into a rebuild, I can't give them any flowers for starting it late.

[Pointgod]

Masai overvalued a crappy roster. Even if we made the playoffs we were losing in round one guaranteed. And the first round this year. And next year. You can't win in the NBA without a superstar and a 10-man roster. We had neither and Masai thought Poeltl would unlock our potential. The failure is on him, and there is nothing to debate here. Masai conceded in his recent press conferences perhaps he made a mistake overvaluing the roster but he felt he owed it to them to give them a chance to make it work by adding a starting C (who he called top 10 in the NBA). BTW, that Masai thinks Poeltl is top 10 just goes to show you his blind faith in his players.

The NBA is a different beast now. It's way more athletic and there's more talent than ever. You can't compete without rolling 10 deep. Our cupboard has been bare since the Tampa season. Now our FO is looking to restock. We're going into next season with 6-7 serviceable NBA players. The jury is out on the rest, or they have no future with the team (e.g., Bruce Brown, Chris Boucher, etc).

Let's see if Masai is capable of righting the ship. But let's stop blaming Nurse and the players. Masai has been the one constant in our 5-year stretch of mediocrity.

Bolded is the most annoying part. Nurse was used as a scapegoat, then Fred, Pascal and OG while the obvious problem was talent and roster construction. Our current team fits much better with each other but no doubt we took a step back in talent. The front office better be active this offseason, they can’t be content with just the draft and using the MLE for a backup.

Tbh if we lose the pick I kinda hope we do nothing this summer. We need another tank year unfortunately.

We should be focused on asset accumulation the next 2-3 years. I wish they’d trade Poeltl, Brown, Boucher and had never traded for Olynyk but I think the front office is operating on sunk Cost fallacy and will continue to straddle the middle

[2019nbachamps]

Not from what we know though. By all reports the FVV situation went like this:

-Houston is locked in on Harden throughout the season

-Houston hires Udoka in April 2023 (after the trade deadline)

-Udoka pushes back against signing Harden

-Houston pivots to FVV

By all accounts Houston was not targeting FVV until Udoka came on board, which was well after the trade deadline. At that point it was out of the Raptor hands.

There was always a risk of FVV walking for nothing but the HOU option didn't materialize until very late in the process. There was expected to be competition to sign FVV but not "overpay by $13m/yr" competition.

Sorry, you are missing one major piece.

Masai offered FVV an extension at the start of the season. FVV then lied saying no extension was offered. Masai should’ve traded him at the deadline no matter what after that. It was always clear FVV would go to the highest bidder and given he was unwilling to accept our best offer during the season, the risk was too great to go into free agency expecting a different outcome.

Even if Fred lied it doesn't change the fact that his max extension was 4/114. If he was looking for ~$30m per season why would he have taken that extension? If Fred (rightfully) thought he could get more money he had to wait until the off-season, even if that money was going to come from us. Him turning down that offer wasn't a "I won't re-sign with you" statement, it was a "under the current extension rules I think I should be paid more so I'll wait" statement.

From a risk reward perspective it was not a good idea to go into free agency with him. Masai conceded in his preseason press conference it may have been a mistake to go into free agency with him but he cares about his relationships with players and doesn’t like to trade key players without taking their needs into account. In other words, he’s gone soft since the DeRozan trade and he put Fred (and previously Kyle’s) needs ahead of the team. I’m sorry but this does not work for me as a Raptors fan. A