Merit wrote:
I feel you’re leaning into our missing on Wemby when he handed it to us yesterday. Okay, to a certain extent. I’m fairly certain our plan at the time was to re-sign Fred and run it back with a full season of Fred/OG/Scottie/Pascal/Poeltl. That fell apart and we pivoted.
If that was the plan it was a bad one because:
1) A starting lineup with 3 non or poor 3 point shooters doesn't work in the NBA in the 2020s.
2) The amount of money it was going to take to keep all those players meant paying the luxury tax, not something MLSE does outside the Kawhi season.
3) None of those players are tier 1 stars, Siakam is at best a top 15 guy (being extremely charitable to Pascal). MLSE is REALLY not paying the tax for that kind of team.
Merit wrote:As you say, it’s the worst draft in decades. One thing I feel comfortable with is the FO’s ability to draft and find talent. If they deem Agbaji better than what we would pick up with the 29th pick, AND we get Kelly Olynyk - a hometown player and floor spacing Centre along with him, I’d call that a win. Consider we also have the 31st pick and the 18th as well and I’m comfy with the options.
With respect to the Agbaji/Olynyk trade there are many good reasons Utah is dumping them on us: Agbaji has shown absolutely nothing in a year and a half, he's an older player because he was a 4 year college player (24 by the end of the season), and he is owed significant money for both of the next two seasons, much more than a fringe prospect like him should be making.
To be blunt, this was a bad move and simply reinforces that Masai is extremely biased when it comes to his Africa guys (he was recently in tears on live camera talking about how important it was to him to win a title specifically with multiple players from Africa). He has blinders when it comes to players from his home country, evidence is Precious Achiuwa and Christian Koloko, probably Jordan Nwora too, though that is TBD, Agbaji is just another example of him being desperate to build a team around African players.
Olynyk is also a pointless move, we will have cap space in the offseason and easily could have signed him that way, it doesn't make sense to sign him at all if we're trying to bottom out because he's in his 30s at the end of his career, this team won't be good before Kelly is out of the league (next season is his year 33 season for a career journeyman, he's already a fringe NBA player at his age).
Merit wrote:I could be wrong, but I don’t think our rebuild window is more than two years. Consider Scottie’s salary is set to rise shortly.
Consider also that if we’re as bad as you say we are, we’ll get a top 5 pick in a draft next year that should be a fair bit better than this year. And if we’re crappy again we only give up two seconds. So - worst case scenario, if we suck, we get better picks and even better players.
If you really think our rebuild is only 2 years, you're going to be disappointed, the only way that happens is if we luck out in the draft the next 2 years and get a future star who develops extremely quickly. Realistically most stars take 3+ years of development, we won't get one this year because we'll likely lose the pick and even if we don't it's a weak draft. Next year even if we luck out the player we draft probably won't be ready to win until 2027-28 at the earliest. DeMar Derozan took until year 5 of his career to be an All-Star so it might take until 2029-30, all this assumes we actually find a star level player in either 2024 or 2025, which is not guaranteed. Many bottom feeder teams go half a decade or more without finding a surefire top level talent in the draft and that's with additional picks and perennial top 5 selections.
Merit wrote:Like yeah, we’re supposed to be crappy this year. It’s by design and gives the kids time to grow.
This level of failure wasn't by design, if it was they would never have signed a veteran like Dennis Schroder to a 2 year deal, then dumped his salary in just half a season by taking back Spencer Dinwiddie and waiving him. It's clear they thought the same thing many on this board thought: Fred and Nick are the problems and replacing them and sharing the ball is going to solve everything.
Now Masai has trapped us in this weird place where our team isn't quite bad enough to have a good chance to land a top 5 pick every year going forward, but also not good enough to even push for the play-in. Literally the worst place to be, all us Raptor fans have to hold on to is the hope that we miraculously keep the 2024, 2025, and 2026 picks and we land a future star against all odds.
