Anyone else not onboard with the direction of this team? #Treadmill

[Raptorfan2012]

A treadmill team is a team constantly stuck in neutral. They are not good enough to make an impact in the playoffs. But they never suck enough to get a top pick.

We aren't in that situation. We are coming up off an ECF appearance. We have 2 all-stars and good players. We have young controllable assets and all of our first round picks.

At some point you need to try to take a few gambles to bolster your team giving you a chance to win. It may not be enough but you still have to take a shot. If this doesn't work out and it all blows up in our face. We are still in position to retool and rebuild because the one thing Masai has been pretty good at since taking over is asset management.

ECF doesn't mean anything.

Treadmill team- a team that isn't good enough to win it all or have the pieces to get there in the intimidate future.

If you have a young superstar or potential superstar, if you are in the bottom 5 or if you are the Cavs, Warriors or Spurs, you aren't a treadmill team.

ECF means nothing! the twolves aren't treadmill, but we have a way better record than them. Record means nothing, it's are you building towards becoming a championship level contender.


The answer for us, no! We're building for 2nd place

Uh? So basically 22 other NBA teams are treadmill and shouldn't even bother to start the season then. Oh and the Spurs probably won't be in the NBA finals either (barring a crazy Warriors collapse) so they should be classified as treadmill as well

[Tanner]

In 2014 I wanted to tank for Wiggins.

However, what Masai has done, aside from foolishly standing firm with Casey, has been nothing short of amazing. The team is positioned to make its 2nd consecutive ECF while having a bunch of young assets and all their 1sts in tact aside from the extra one they gave up for Ibaka. Yes, they won't beat LeBron, but no one aside from GSW can. That's just the way the league is structured. Putting up a fight against the Cavs and taking the series to a respectable 6 games or so again would be great. Anything short of that would definitely be a disappointment.

The type of treadmill team you don't want to be is the one that finishes 6-8 and is bounced in the first round every year. The one the Raptors have can make deep playoff runs for multiple seasons, with one of the best GM's in the game who could pivot to a different direction if/when things start to go south down the road.

Appreciate it. As long as they make developing talent a priority (start playing Norm/Purtle/Delon more, Casey!), I'm happy with this.

[Harcore Fenton Mun]

From a perennial lotto team to a team that's good enough to make the finals. Maybe get lucky.

What did you want to wait for, a once in a decade player like Lebron, Jordan?

Just be lucky you're not a Leafs fan, go look when the last time they had a shot at a finals... 22 years is nothing.

[[SJJ]]

Think about it this way - the Raps are going "all-in". If this doesn't work I have no doubt there's going to be a full rebuild. Won't have to wait that long until we know what we have with this core.

It's undeniable that Masai is very good at his job. Not a huge fan of DD or the coach but I'm willing to play this out and see how far we can get.

[Double Helix]

There's different levels of success in basketball as there is in life. I can't fault you for only accepting perennial champions as worthy of your time but I also probably wouldn't want to hang around you too long at a party or in a luxury box at a Raptors game because I can imagine nothing would be good enough for you.

Perfectionism is admirable and if you're perfect and can regularly accomplish anything you want in life, regardless of competition around you who also want the same things, it can probably be channeled positively. But most people who demand perfectionism of others are themselves deeply flawed and research has shown many of these types suffer from depression, anxiety, addiction and life paralysis. Who do you really want this perfection for? Is it for you or for you to feel like no one can fault you or your team if they're undeniably the best? If so, that's more about your desire to be admired and respected by others for your choice of this team than it is about watching and enjoying the sport of basketball. It's you wondering why you shouldn't just switch your fandom to the favorite each year so that you generally supported the best of the best. Expecting perfectionism is more often than not going to leave you disappointed though. It's self-abuse of the soul in sport like basketball with the most amount of repeat champions of any North American sport. There are a handful of MVP candidates driving this sport at the Championship level. An inability to enjoy the game without one is going to leave you frustrated with this sport. The reason why many Conference Finals teams are so revered by basketball nuts decades later is because we know that despite not winning it all they were incredible. They were the best teams not to win it all. That means something to those fans and those players and it should. In a league dominated by the handful of HOF talents playing within it during any one era one has to be able to enjoy the journey or you'll just be staring at travel books, imagining what your perfect trip will be like without actually going on any journey.

Do you love the actual sport played at a high level? Or merely the thrill of what it feels like to land a phenom of the sport in a draft? Are you a bigger fan of basketball? Or the draft process? It's okay obviously to love the latter more but just be honest about that to yourself and then you can probably focus more of your energy into draft sites year round and watching college basketball in the pursuit of the next Lebron.


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[phillipmike]

Unlike other sports if you dont have a star or stars then you arent winning the Championship. There have been only 8 different teams to win the NBA championship since 2000 (11 in the NHL, 12 in the MLB and 11 in the NFL). But let's be real, outside of Boston, Dallas, Detroit an NBA team hasnt won a championship without Kobe, Duncan, Lebron or Shaq/Wade. Its the nature of the sport, superstars drive it.

Unless the Raps get 2-3 stud players together or they draft three then this is likely the best we can get. And even if you draft three studs (like OKC in Durant, Westbrook and Harden) then you arent guaranteed anything.

Rebuilding too is one of the biggest crapshoots. I like most wanted to tank for Wiggins and he looks far from becoming a superstar like anyone thought. Minnesota has better players since rebuilding but not better results. Unless Minnesota does something in the next 3-4 years which i doubt with teams like Golden State, San Antonio and Houston in the West then the rebuild might be for nothing because Wiggins and Towns could be free agents.

Only shot the Raps have is a solid lineup 1-12 because we dont have a superstar and superstars arent coming here.

Maybe its a loser mentality in me but i see it more as being realistic. I quite happy with this team being competitive in the ECF; if we win a championship then great but if not then i happy where this team is and where it is going. Im 27, unless the NBA landscape drastically changes then this could possibly be the best basketball i could ever see in my life from the Toronto Raptors so i am happy to let it ride.

That being said unlike other sports big contracts arent that detrimental in basketball vs other sports. So if we are sitting here in 2019 with a non playoff team and 75M tied up in DD, Lowry and Ibaka then it wouldnt be the end of the world as we would only being on the hook for those guys for 2-3 more years. The silver lining is that Masai is smart he wont trade future 1sts so in those 2-3 we can easily still draft and develop. The problem arising if you have a bad team and no picks (Brooklyn). The big anchor contracts dont stop you from rebuilding - trading picks do. As long as we keep our picks we will be fine.

Ill remind everyone that no team is immune to a rebuild. Once stars age you will be heading into a new phase of your franchise that is inevitable. Lakers, Celtics, Heat, 76ers, Mavs, Pistons. Us Raps fans should take the potential bad with the good that we are witnessing because the downfall is inevitable and most importantly this might be the best the Raptors may ever do.

It may seem like a treadmill team but its not. Its unfortunate the Raps were so bad the last two months but they have time to turn it around. This is one of the best Raps lineup the franchise has ever seen - let's give it a shot before writing them off. I am not all that certain we cant beat the Cavs. I like our chances of Lowry, DeRozan, Carroll/Tucker, Iabaka and JV matching up against Irving, Shumpert, LeBron, Frye and Thompson.

[thunderforce]

We are not a treadmill at all . Masai is going all in so for the next few years enjoy the ride because we can only afford to be going into the luxury tax for a few years after that the tankers will rule . Kind of best of both worlds .

[Johnny Bball]

If you actually know what's going on you'd realize wed be in the tax even with just Lowry and PPat.
So you might as well go into the tax with a deeper, less flawed team.

Yeah thanks captain obvious. Please inform yourself on how strictly the current CBA actually charges the deeper u are into tax....Also google the term "repeater tax"

if u think MLSE (aka bell/rogers) is going to pay $4 for every additional dollar for salary (like dan gilbert with the cavs), ur absolutely delusional

Dude what are you talking about? You have to exceed it three of five years to get nailed with the repeater tax. We haven't used it once. So are you saying that never use it at all and pay tax because you might use it four times and have to pay more? That's so nuts. Nothing about what he said is delusional. But your analysis is. It's not about just exceeding the tax line, it's about exceeding the salary cap line and this is the only way to do it.

And if you think Masai made these moves without any indications of a budget of tax spending next year I guarantee you're wrong.

[artsncrafts]

If we traded our 1st I would be with you OP, but we still have a first and assuming we resign Ibaka that was a 1st well spent. IF we dont resign Ibaka then we should revisit this thread.

Also if we fired Casey this team would be a step above where they are now.

[CoachJReturns]

Look, I was in favor of blowing this thing up and starting fresh. I suggested a couple times in the past week or two that if the team doesn't impress in the playoffs and Lowry appears unsure of whether he wants to stick around, that we should trade DeMar for a top 5 pick this year.
However, once the Ibaka trade went through there is no reason to be complaining about the current direction of the team. Masai traded Ross(who we already have a better replacement for in Powell) and a late first that we got for Vazquez for Ibaka. He then followed that up by giving us some toughness at the wing with Tucker for two likely late 2nd round picks.
We have all our prospects still, we have all our own picks, we have two all-stars, an improved defense(on paper) and we're the likely favorites to face the Cavs in the ECF.

If ever there was a time to be content with how things have turned out, this is it.
If this group fails to get out of the 1st round then it's time to look at changing directions, but let's at least get through the rest of the season before we start thinking of tearing down what looks like a very good team.

[Caboclo]

If you actually know what's going on you'd realize wed be in the tax even with just Lowry and PPat.
So you might as well go into the tax with a deeper, less flawed team.

Yeah thanks captain obvious. Please inform yourself on how strictly the current CBA actually charges the deeper u are into tax....Also google the term "repeater tax"

if u think MLSE (aka bell/rogers) is going to pay $4 for every additional dollar for salary (like dan gilbert with the cavs), ur absolutely delusional

Dude what are you talking about? You have to exceed it three of five years to get nailed with the repeater tax. We haven't used it once. So are you saying that never use it at all and pay tax because you might use it four time? And have to pay more? That's so nuts. Nothing about what he said is delusional. But your analysis is. It's not about just exceeding the tax line, it's about exceeding the salary cap line and this is the only way to do it.

bro ur delusional if u think the raptors are gonna pay a penalty of $3.75 on top of every dollar of salary in order to resign all our guys. (which is the threshold we would meet in order to re-sign all the boys back)

[dj-Sequence]

1995-1998: We sucked.
1999-2002: We sucked less. Actually, we were good in 2001. Had VC made that bucket, we probably would've made the finals. So 1 quality year of Raptors basketball total.
2003-2005: Sucked.
2006-2008: Pretty much sucked. Couldn't win a round.
2009-2012: Sucked.
2013-Present: Hey, look - we're good. We actually have a shot of making the finals. This is incredible.

I can understand fretting about the future if you're somewhat of a new fan. But if you're like me and have been a fan since day 1, shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Thank you! I had to hold emotion in just reading this guy's post! He must have just started to watch and follow the Raptors... He clearly has no idea how this team treadmill'd it's way to this point... As much as I would have loved for them to snag Cousins or PG this is the best that we have ever had it as a team!

[Double Helix]

Even the Celtics -- a franchise who for a time enjoyed a ridiculous market advantage over the entire weaker, smaller league because of the winning culture they started -- has only made it as far as we did last year 3 x since the Toronto Raptors became an NBA team. They timed things perfectly and won a title one of those times by going all in around vets just before Lebron hit his prime but once Lebron hit his prime they could never get past him again. Most teams haven't been able to. He's a legend.

The Toronto Raptors -- a team that not too long ago was seen as a laughing stock of the league, an equivalent to the Washington Generals or Charlotte lol cats -- took two fun games from the eventual champions. The greatest player of his generation and one of the GOATs looked up to the rafters on national TV to single out our fans. He said it was unlike anything he's ever seen in his life. We chanted "Let's Go Raptors" all way to the end. That will live on in NBA film for the rest of time.

You don't get memories like that with the greats without trying.


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[Raptorwatcher95]

i hate so called fans that are never happy with the team. im sorry LeBron doesn't play for the raps.

[artsncrafts]

i hate so called fans that are never happy with the team. im sorry LeBron doesn't play for the raps.

I dont want that bum, I would rather cheer for an underdog.

[Caboclo]

People love to redefine the treadmill as anything that's not winning a title.

Some of you need a reality check. We don't have a player of Lebron's caliber to actually take him on and there are very few players in the league that are at that level.

Our cap is a bit of a mess with these moves but it's nothing that can't be addressed. The notion that we're suddenly stuck signing Lowry because of these moves is ridiculous. We were signing him regardless. He's a top 5 PG in the NBA right now. CP is the same age and going to sign the same deal and he's got a lot more wear and tear on his body than Lowry.

Trading for Tucker has little to no impact on the moves we make, we gave up a player we had no shot at re-signing and a couple of second rounders. Now we have a player that can actually help this year and we have his bird rights. Ross had become useless and we traded him to address our PF position (and suggesting he's 37 in the Op is just plain stupid). Again, we have his bird rights.

These moves actually help us be competitive now and gives us a ton of options this summer. We can re-sign Ibaka, let Tucker go, give Lowry his deal. We can let Patterson go or bring him back and we can move out salary like JV and Carroll if we need to fit those guys in.

All this plus we still have Wright, Norm, Siakam, Poeltl, Bebe and a first rounder. It's not going to be easy to manage all the salaries going forward but we have a guy in Masai that has done a fantastic job with asset management while the team has remained competitive and backfilled the roster with youth, I don't see how anyone could be unhappy with this direction.

bird rights and getting guys we can possibly resign dont mean squat if we CANT AFFORD TO RESIGN THEM IN THE LONG-TERM FUTURE!!!!!!

guys like i said in my original post.....Assumming we keep ppat + lowry (thats already luxury tax territory).....then 1) Cojo's def gone to shed salary, along with 1 of either ibaka or JV and finally 1 of either carroll or tucker+bruno.....THIS even if MLSE is EXTREMELY generous with the tax!!!! (BEST CASE SCENARIO)

[Caboclo]

i hate so called fans that are never happy with the team. im sorry LeBron doesn't play for the raps.

I dont want that bum, I would rather cheer for an underdog.

Go watch another sport then thats not totally dictated by a superstar singlehandedly being able to carry his team to the finals 6 years in a row and counting...

[ruckus]

I think most people didn't read the question asked in the poll because it is much different from the question asked in the thread title.

The question is "Are you content with being tier below contender status for next 2-4 years?"

The answer to that for everyone should be a big resounding "NO".

I'm not sure how trading for Ibaka (for TRoss - who we wanted to replace with Powell anyways) and trading for Tucker (for 2nd rounders and a player that wasn't going to get any playing time) locks us into any sort of position.

Yes, some tough decision will have to be made over the offseason. As stated elsewhere one or two of CoJo, Val, Carroll, Patterson and Tucker will be gone. Ibaka may not choose to resign. Lowry may not choose to resign. The team next October may be vastly different from the team preparing to take the court tonight.

I would never try to discourage discussion but, with all of the above taken into account, let's enjoy the next few months of basketball. This may be the apex of the Ujiri-era or it can be a jumping-off point. Let's see where it goes.

[Raptorwatcher95]

I was being sarcastic about LeBron not playing here because anybody who isn't happy with our teams thacause we don't have LeBron or **** Durant.

[MasaiLegs]

Posts like this frustrate the **** out of me. It's always the championship or bust narrative. I'm fine with rolling out a competitive team every year. I'd rather follow a franchise with a winning culture, than one that consistently sucks hoping to win the jackpot in the draft.


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