Siakam trade for basically nothing is now showing its effect

[Chandan]

“You’ve got to have some type of foresight and vision,” the now Houston Rockets guard said here Wednesday night. “You can feel it. You could see it. You’ve got to be able to kind of look ahead and think ahead.

“It’s not like I absolutely knew, but you could sense it. Up to the point where it was like, ‘Okay, do I just sign the (new Toronto) deal knowing that I’m not going to make it through this deal to come back or do I have another situation?’



the writing was on the wall. They were going to hand the franchise to Scottie and I doubt Fred wanted any part of that. Should have seen it coming and just traded him the year prior if that's the route they were going towards.

Of course they were handing the reins to Scottie. What do you want Fred to say? “I wasn’t going to get my touches and they didn’t bring back the coach I wanted.” That’s the real reason IMO. And the $$ obviously.

He has not one bad thing to say about his time here or the FO. He just chose the money and someplace new. He said this after signing with them, not before.

you talked as if Fred leaving came out of the left field. Something which Fred directly contradicted. In fact it sounded like he was looking for a reason to leave and all it took was an alternative.

[ruckus]

This seems a common issue for contending teams right? Under the newest CBA rules? Every team that's good has to juggle paying veteran stars with the upcoming and of rookie contracts looming. No one can keep a great team together for too long, even Denver had to let Brown go and count on Braun and Watson stepping up. And only one team can win every year.

Draft picks, minimum contracts, and UDFA going to be more important than ever

Finding players in the margins, which we have been atrocious at for years, is where the real moves will be made.

Certain teams do it well. Miami and the aforementioned Denver come to mind immediately. I thought Raps had a stretch there where they were finding gems left and right but then you run into the problem of not being able to afford to keep them.

They need to reach a happy medium of having a select group of guys to develop and having a group of guys that just fit into the system you're running. They haven't had the right mix for a few years now.

[YogurtProducer]

And the same team was 48-34 the year prior.

The goalposts just move whenever this guy posts man, its insane. Everything is pure hyperbole and simply stating the direction of the team would be different means I think they would be a powerhouse and that we messed up not maxing FVV and Siakam

Stop beating around the bush.

Should this team have kept FVV at the max, yes or no?
Would this team have won anywhere close to 48 games with FVV instead of Schroder, yes or no?

You keep making random objections that lead absolutely nowhere. Obviously keeping FVV would have meant a different direction - it means so by definition since that choice precludes the selection of other choices. I mean, DUH. I very clearly did not dispute that very obvious, logically circular and entirely useless statement. Instead, I pointed out that such a direction would have been a massive disaster because the team still wouldn't have been good enough and the rebuild would have been delayed even longer.

No they shouldn’t have given FVV the max.

It’s why from my very first post I said he’s overpaid.

My god man stop moving goalposts

[YogurtProducer]

This seems a common issue for contending teams right? Under the newest CBA rules? Every team that's good has to juggle paying veteran stars with the upcoming and of rookie contracts looming. No one can keep a great team together for too long, even Denver had to let Brown go and count on Braun and Watson stepping up. And only one team can win every year.

Draft picks, minimum contracts, and UDFA going to be more important than ever

Finding players in the margins, which we have been atrocious at for years, is where the real moves will be made.

lol **** off with this.

The Raptors up until 24 months ago were the kings of “finding players in the margins”.

We miss on Flynn, don’t have a first for a year, and end up with an unfortunate Koloko situations and suddenly we’re been “atrocious for years”

Impossible to take you with stuff like this seriously

[Scase]

Of course they were handing the reins to Scottie. What do you want Fred to say? “I wasn’t going to get my touches and they didn’t bring back the coach I wanted.” That’s the real reason IMO. And the $$ obviously.

He has not one bad thing to say about his time here or the FO. He just chose the money and someplace new. He said this after signing with them, not before.

I think the point is less about FVV openly admitting that stuff, and more that if he was able to "feel it and see it", then it was pretty obvious what the FO was planning on doing, and that they could have handled it better by making moves sooner. It's like what happened with Siakam, he got jerked around a whole bunch and then we shipped him out with 2 months left on a contract, they knew what they were doing and that was the result.

Maybe they were waiting to see if Scottie was "it", which is a fair approach, but that ROTY year should've been enough to get the idea. So maybe they fumbled the FVV situation and they get a bit of a pass based on the above, but not the Siakam one. They should have learned from their mistakes.

Or it could have been the FO knew the team had to make changes and didn’t want to spend 7+ year max money on Siakam.

He was in trade talks for years but Siakam didn’t have the offers or trade value the FO, and many fans like me, felt was appropriate or necessary to pull the trigger.

In the end they doubled down with the Poeltl trade (a mistake) rather than take what they felt were lowball offers before they had to. This year was when they had to accept reality and take the perceived lowball (ie market) offer.

You could be right, the end result was sadly the same. We should've moved away sooner, and it seems like the FO already knew that, but they tried to get the best deal they could and it burned them.

The Jak trade is just still so very baffling with all this stuff becoming more obvious by the day. And if the ultimate goal was to re-sign FVV, get Jak, and sign Siakam to a max, man, that REALLY calls their judgment into question.

[Scase]

Draft picks, minimum contracts, and UDFA going to be more important than ever

Finding players in the margins, which we have been atrocious at for years, is where the real moves will be made.

Certain teams do it well. Miami and the aforementioned Denver come to mind immediately. I thought Raps had a stretch there where they were finding gems left and right but then you run into the problem of not being able to afford to keep them.

They need to reach a happy medium of having a select group of guys to develop and having a group of guys that just fit into the system you're running. They haven't had the right mix for a few years now.

Yeah, it's been a lack of finding these undrafted guys, or general cast aways, and draft picks. It's been really bad for years too. The issue hasn't been cost, so much as it has been just not finding them overall, and really we haven't hit on much besides Scottie (Gradey TBD) since Weltman went to the Magic.

So the question is, can we even do it again?

[ruckus]

I think the point is less about FVV openly admitting that stuff, and more that if he was able to "feel it and see it", then it was pretty obvious what the FO was planning on doing, and that they could have handled it better by making moves sooner. It's like what happened with Siakam, he got jerked around a whole bunch and then we shipped him out with 2 months left on a contract, they knew what they were doing and that was the result.

Maybe they were waiting to see if Scottie was "it", which is a fair approach, but that ROTY year should've been enough to get the idea. So maybe they fumbled the FVV situation and they get a bit of a pass based on the above, but not the Siakam one. They should have learned from their mistakes.

Or it could have been the FO knew the team had to make changes and didn’t want to spend 7+ year max money on Siakam.

He was in trade talks for years but Siakam didn’t have the offers or trade value the FO, and many fans like me, felt was appropriate or necessary to pull the trigger.

In the end they doubled down with the Poeltl trade (a mistake) rather than take what they felt were lowball offers before they had to. This year was when they had to accept reality and take the perceived lowball (ie market) offer.

You could be right, the end result was sadly the same. We should've moved away sooner, and it seems like the FO already knew that, but they tried to get the best deal they could and it burned them.

The Jak trade is just still so very baffling with all this stuff becoming more obvious by the day. And if the ultimate goal was to re-sign FVV, get Jak, and sign Siakam to a max, man, that REALLY calls their judgment into question.

Who knows whether the same OG trade would have been available or whether they would've traded OG if Fred stayed but, a lineup of Poeltl, Siakam, Barnes, RJ, IQ and Fred wouldn't have been a bad lineup to have for the next few years. Not championship worthy but better than play-in fodder.

[brownbobcat]

Draft picks, minimum contracts, and UDFA going to be more important than ever

Finding players in the margins, which we have been atrocious at for years, is where the real moves will be made.

lol **** off with this.

The Raptors up until 24 months ago were the kings of “finding players in the margins”.

We miss on Flynn, don’t have a first for a year, and end up with an unfortunate Koloko situations and suddenly we’re been “atrocious for years”

Impossible to take you with stuff like this seriously

The "margins" are not just non-lottery picks, but also include undrafted players, minimum UFAs and the like. Apart from Barnes & Gradey (who were drafted in the lottery), name a single rotation player which fits that description since OG was drafted in 2017. Boucher? That's it.

[Duffman100]

Finding players in the margins, which we have been atrocious at for years, is where the real moves will be made.

lol **** off with this.

The Raptors up until 24 months ago were the kings of “finding players in the margins”.

We miss on Flynn, don’t have a first for a year, and end up with an unfortunate Koloko situations and suddenly we’re been “atrocious for years”

Impossible to take you with stuff like this seriously

The "margins" are not just non-lottery picks, but also include undrafted players, minimum UFAs and the like. Apart from Barnes & Gradey (who were drafted in the lottery), name a single rotation player which fits that description since OG was drafted in 2017. Boucher? That's it.

I think we'd need to do a league average on hitting on the 'fringes' with salary <7 million or 2nd rounders to understand whether we are atrocious or not.

You can point to how the Heat have found rotation players and maybe another team. But how successful have teams been on average with those conditions.

[brownbobcat]

lol **** off with this.

The Raptors up until 24 months ago were the kings of “finding players in the margins”.

We miss on Flynn, don’t have a first for a year, and end up with an unfortunate Koloko situations and suddenly we’re been “atrocious for years”

Impossible to take you with stuff like this seriously

The "margins" are not just non-lottery picks, but also include undrafted players, minimum UFAs and the like. Apart from Barnes & Gradey (who were drafted in the lottery), name a single rotation player which fits that description since OG was drafted in 2017. Boucher? That's it.

I think we'd need to do a league average on hitting on the 'fringes' with salary <7 million or 2nd rounders to understand whether we are atrocious or not.

You can point to how the Heat have found rotation players and maybe another team. But how successful have teams been on average with those conditions.

Of course it's hard to find players on the fringes - there's a reason they're on the fringes.

But it's also hard to win in the NBA. So if we're evaluating the team by that criteria, the "average" success rate doesn't matter. Doing average in everything results in an average .500 team.

[Scase]

Or it could have been the FO knew the team had to make changes and didn’t want to spend 7+ year max money on Siakam.

He was in trade talks for years but Siakam didn’t have the offers or trade value the FO, and many fans like me, felt was appropriate or necessary to pull the trigger.

In the end they doubled down with the Poeltl trade (a mistake) rather than take what they felt were lowball offers before they had to. This year was when they had to accept reality and take the perceived lowball (ie market) offer.

You could be right, the end result was sadly the same. We should've moved away sooner, and it seems like the FO already knew that, but they tried to get the best deal they could and it burned them.

The Jak trade is just still so very baffling with all this stuff becoming more obvious by the day. And if the ultimate goal was to re-sign FVV, get Jak, and sign Siakam to a max, man, that REALLY calls their judgment into question.

Who knows whether the same OG trade would have been available or whether they would've traded OG if Fred stayed but, a lineup of Poeltl, Siakam, Barnes, RJ, IQ and Fred wouldn't have been a bad lineup to have for the next few years. Not championship worthy but better than play-in fodder.

On paper not so much, but in reality that would be a first round exit at best I think. Siakam/RJ/Scottie/Jak basically play in the exact same space, our spacing would be even worse than before, while also taking a noticeable step down defensively.

lol **** off with this.

The Raptors up until 24 months ago were the kings of “finding players in the margins”.

We miss on Flynn, don’t have a first for a year, and end up with an unfortunate Koloko situations and suddenly we’re been “atrocious for years”

Impossible to take you with stuff like this seriously

The "margins" are not just non-lottery picks, but also include undrafted players, minimum UFAs and the like. Apart from Barnes & Gradey (who were drafted in the lottery), name a single rotation player which fits that description since OG was drafted in 2017. Boucher? That's it.

I think we'd need to do a league average on hitting on the 'fringes' with salary <7 million or 2nd rounders to understand whether we are atrocious or not.

You can point to how the Heat have found rotation players and maybe another team. But how successful have teams been on average with those conditions.

I have a sneaking suspicion that 0 over 6-7 years doesn't need a league wide, team by team, deep dive. It would just provide additional context as to how bad we've been at it. But all we ever hear is how great of an eye for talent our FO has, so I wouldn't expect people to hold them to the league average either.

The better you are, the higher standards become. So even if we are only "below average", that's unacceptable for an FO that is lauded for their ability to draft smart and find diamonds in the rough. There is just as much evidence to show they got lucky in the past, as there is showing it to have been skillfull drafting/finding undrafted players.

[Duffman100]

The "margins" are not just non-lottery picks, but also include undrafted players, minimum UFAs and the like. Apart from Barnes & Gradey (who were drafted in the lottery), name a single rotation player which fits that description since OG was drafted in 2017. Boucher? That's it.

I think we'd need to do a league average on hitting on the 'fringes' with salary <7 million or 2nd rounders to understand whether we are atrocious or not.

You can point to how the Heat have found rotation players and maybe another team. But how successful have teams been on average with those conditions.

Of course it's hard to find players on the fringes - there's a reason they're on the fringes.

But it's also hard to win in the NBA. So if we're evaluating the team by that criteria, the "average" success rate doesn't matter. Doing average in everything results in an average .500 team.

Of course the average success rate matters. If you're going to make a comparative comment like "atrocious". Atrocious is a relative term that relies a comparison. That comparison has to have a field of values. The field of values would have an average.

That average then dictates if you're atrocious or not.

[Duffman100]

I have a sneaking suspicion that 0 over 6-7 years doesn't need a league wide, team by team, deep dive. It would just provide additional context as to how bad we've been at it. But all we ever hear is how great of an eye for talent our FO has, so I wouldn't expect people to hold them to the league average either.

The better you are, the higher standards become. So even if we are only "below average", that's unacceptable for an FO that is lauded for their ability to draft smart and find diamonds in the rough. There is just as much evidence to show they got lucky in the past, as there is showing it to have been skillfull drafting/finding undrafted players.

It MAY. Or it MAY not. Not sure really...

It could be luck. It could be skill and they've run into a string of bad luck.

But that's why comparisons come into play so the evaluation can then be unbiased.

[srhcan]

This seems a common issue for contending teams right? Under the newest CBA rules? Every team that's good has to juggle paying veteran stars with the upcoming and of rookie contracts looming. No one can keep a great team together for too long, even Denver had to let Brown go and count on Braun and Watson stepping up. And only one team can win every year.

IT just further shows the stupidity of the NBA max contracts.

You shouldn't "need" top 5 players to win. I wish teams could be savvy and create a well balanced but lower top end talent teams and experience success.

It is crazy that the Pacers (or former Raptors) who were low-mid 40 win teams are even possible to cap themselves out without really having any bad deals on their books.

Ideally they would make the supermax criteria harder to reach. For example, nobody in their right mind thinks Jaylen Brown is worth 60M per season. Some nights he doesn't even look like a 30M player. But he met the (easy) criteria and given the Celtics current situation of being a legit contender, they had to pay him. If they don't pull off a title soon, they are going to be in a cap hell that reverberates for many years afterwards.

Haliburton has played all of 260 career games, and 1 career playoff game, and he currently has a shot at a 260M max contract. That's nuts.

I don't have an issue with their annual salaries at all (I'm a capitalist and this is what the market will bear). My issue is how insanely easy and quickly some of these guys can qualify for these deals without having accomplished any team success in some cases. And bam, just like that, Indy is going to be capped out soon when they haven't even done anything wrong lol.

Max also needs to be assigned carefully. Now teams FO will screw up on max and supermax time to time, so I think League should set some restrictions in place for example 1 team can have only 1 supermax and 2 max players, something like that.

[brownbobcat]

Of course the average success rate matters. If you're going to make a comparative comment like "atrocious". Atrocious is a relative term that relies a comparison. That comparison has to have a field of values. The field of values would have an average.

That average then dictates if you're atrocious or not.

Expectations matter. Be honest, would you consider the 2022-23 season closer to "atrocious" or "acceptable"?
If Barnes had turned out to be exactly like the average 4th pick, would you be satisfied with that?

[YogurtProducer]

Finding players in the margins, which we have been atrocious at for years, is where the real moves will be made.

lol **** off with this.

The Raptors up until 24 months ago were the kings of “finding players in the margins”.

We miss on Flynn, don’t have a first for a year, and end up with an unfortunate Koloko situations and suddenly we’re been “atrocious for years”

Impossible to take you with stuff like this seriously

The "margins" are not just non-lottery picks, but also include undrafted players, minimum UFAs and the like. Apart from Barnes & Gradey (who were drafted in the lottery), name a single rotation player which fits that description since OG was drafted in 2017. Boucher? That's it.

2018 - Boucher
2019 - Terence Davis - he just was a weirdo when it came to COVID
2023 - Koloko (IMO - he was on his way to being a good bench big, cant really blame the guy for having what happened, happen)

And then this season Jontay is another guy I think who showed he was on his way to being a potential rotational player.

We have had some really bad luck for reasons outside of actual basketball talent. No one could have predicted Koloko/Porter would have ended up how they did.

Buit you say "since OG" but ignore that since OG was picked at 23 in 2017, we have only had 4 meaningful picks since as to win a championship we made moves. (and by meaningful, I mean 1sts or 2nds in the top half as the bottom half of the 2nd round is almost always a wasteland)

2018 - no picks
2019 - Hernandez at 59 (aka - like a 1% or lower chance he stayed in the league)
2020 - Flynn - a miss
2021 - Barnes at 4 - hard to "hit on the margins" when you draft top 5
2022 - Koloko
2023 - Dick

So really, we are complaining that we have not hit on the margins is essentially a complaint that Flynn was a bust, and that Toronto is not finding UDFAs or bottom barrel free agents which generally speaking there is a handful of guys every year even worth mentioning.

Reality is that we are one of the best organizations in the NBA at finding gems in the draft as well as picking up guys you have never heard of. I think JFL looked decent to end the year and has a chance at development, and guys like Porter/Koloko also looked good before their careers ended suddenly.

[NotMyKawhi]

Gonna be a reality check for lots of you if MU even hits a starter at 19!

It will be the pacers, stuck in cap hell locked into a 50 million per contract for an old man while not being good enough

While we have all the cap flexibility, tradeable contracts and a future 1st way down the road when Pascal is even older and Turner is gone.

[Duffman100]

Of course the average success rate matters. If you're going to make a comparative comment like "atrocious". Atrocious is a relative term that relies a comparison. That comparison has to have a field of values. The field of values would have an average.

That average then dictates if you're atrocious or not.

Expectations matter. Be honest, would you consider the 2022-23 season closer to "atrocious" or "acceptable"?
If Barnes had turned out to be exactly like the average 4th pick, would you be satisfied with that?

It all matters, I'm not debating that.

Expectations matters.
Average hit rate matters.

If the average hit rate on 2nd rounders for >1 WAR is like 1% and you're at %.8. It's not atrocious, even if you have high expectations.

I'm not saying they've been atrocious or not atrocious. But you need to have some concept of the constraints that are being referred to and understand how other teams have succeeded or not within those constrains to have an idea of what is or is not atrocious.

[YogurtProducer]

I have a sneaking suspicion that 0 over 6-7 years doesn't need a league wide, team by team, deep dive. It would just provide additional context as to how bad we've been at it. But all we ever hear is how great of an eye for talent our FO has, so I wouldn't expect people to hold them to the league average either.

Except OG was drafted less than 7 years ago so automatically it is not 0, it is at least 1.

AND - over that 7 year span we had exactly one first rounder (at 29) between OG and Scottie. So again, hard to hit on the margins when we don't even have the ammo to do that. Anyone picked up in the last 1-2 years needs more time to evaluate.

At the beginning of the 2016-17 season Masai was in charge going into his 4th year. Who was "hit on in the margins" in those years coming into that season?

We had:

Bruno - bust
Bebe - never played
Norm - decent rookie year in 2015-16 but far from a huge hit (yet)
Delon - did not play in year 1 or 2
FVV - looked horrible as a rookie
Siakam - was a G-League caliber player outside a decent starting stretch to begin the year
Poeltl - looked okay, not great, as a rookie

Those were all the guys taken over a 4 year span. At that time you could have said "Masai has not found anything in the draft in 4 years as an exec" Obviously, we know how that all turned out.

So why now are we saying "we have not hit on anything" when you don't even know how Dick, JFL, Agbaji, our 3 2024 picks, etc. are going to pan out? 2023-24 was the first year in like 7 years where we actually even were able to bring in any young talent.

[Dalek]

I don't see IQ being the same type of leader. He just seems like a nice go-with-the-flow kinda dude. FVV is more like a coach on the floor who will call guys out. That type of leadership is really missed. IQ can probably average the same amount of points and assists easily, but he hasn't shown he can lead.

Also, I was not impressed with his defense. FVV is nearly a NBA Defensive Second Team, and IQ just doesn't look like that type of player. It is why a lot of people say we need a point of attack defender with IQ because he just can't guard guys like Brunson well. He seems to thrive more as an off-ball defender where he can use his length and speed to get deflections/steals.

I think that’s more so to do with Darko’s coaching rather than IQ. That being said, I doubt IQ will ever be as good as prime FVV in regards to on ball defence.

Even OG, Poeltl and Siakam looked pretty mediocre on defence during that first half of the season. I think whatever defensive system that we have makes our guys look much worse on that end.

I think it is because guys mailed it in

OG and Siakam had one foot out the door and their play showed it

Poeltl woke up after the trades…then was injured.

That is all fair, system or tanking, the effort wasn't there. I don't think IQ projects as a plus defender, but hopefully it improves.