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Not since the early Lowry and DD days have I been this excited going forward. Return from FVV and Pascal wasn’t great but we’re no longer weighed down by the idea of having expensive contracts, except for Jakob. And I think he’s a good player to help transition into this new Raptors era.

Feels like if we add some more gritty defenders and improve shooting we could make it back to the Eastern Conference in a few years. I don’t even think another star is needed, just a better bench.

Thoughts?

I'm going to need to see what we come into next season with before leaning one way or another. We have some decent pieces. Everything hinges on their development. We need a big piece for this to really go anywhere.

Lukewarm. I'm not really convinced about a Scottie, RJ, and IQ core. I do think they will take steps towards their game. I'd be more encouraged if they added another lottery pick or 2 to this core.

I'm fine with losing, but losing with bad habits such as the Pistons historic streak and Scott Henderson -50 plus/minus is something I never want to see. I don't see Darko as a longterm coach, but it terms of development, I think hes fine. I hope he lets the young guys play through their mistakes.

Hard not to be a bit excited when arguably your 3 best players are 22, 23, and 24 years old and actually fit pretty nicely together.

A Scottie jump to consistent all-nba, and one of IQ/RJ making an all-star jump immediately puts this team back in the thick of the playoff hunt in the east. Contenders? No. But you should enter every season with the expectations that HCA is obtainable.

Funnily enough - I think we need to find another wing now to replace the departure of OG and Siakam. The best teams in the league all have the versatility to play big and small - and we really lost our small ball ability now as 5 of our best 7 are guards in IQ / Schroder / Brown / GTJ / RJ.

For the first time in my nearly 30 years of Raptor fandom, I found myself as a TEam Negative guy.. more so as this year continued to unfold... I'm always positive! My wife, boys, anyone in my BBall circles didn't know how to react with me, they all found it soo funny how condescending I would be towards the team.... just soo out of nature for me.

I'm happy to report I'm back on the Team Positive side of things. For all the belly aching thats gone on, I like where we are.. I like our core 4 of Scotty / IQ / RJ / Dick.. we have cap flexibility and picks to work with.. I like Jak and Brown as our pseudo vets to either keep or trade.... and I still trust Masai. I'm back in a good place.. and thank god, being team negative sucks! Don't know how some of you do it for soo long.

Definitely alot higher now after the trades.

Watching Raptors basketball for the past year and a half was approaching Kevin O'Neill levels of pain. At least now there's many things to look forward to with IQ, Star J, draft picks and I'm drinking the kool aid with Jontay

Some people will look at the fact that we have half a dozen or so vets (that are mostly 30+ years old) and say we're not a young team, but we're clearly in a transitional period right now. Scottie, Quickley and Barrett at 24 or younger with other pieces like Gradey (20) and the two-way players (Porter especially at 24 is a potential piece moving forward) as well as a bunch of draft picks and some salary cap wiggle room in our back pocket bodes well for the future. Schroder, Boucher, OPJ and Poeltl are all candidates to be moved to playoff teams at the deadline in exchange for even more assets while someone like GTJ still has potential with this core or as a trade piece.

It hurts to see all of the old guard slowly but surely leaving Toronto leading to us now having no real link to the We the North / Championship days, but I think the future is bright. I don't anticipate us making a playoff push this season (though I'd be thrilled if we turned things around and got some more experience), but I fully expect us to be winning ~50 games by 24/25 or 25/26.

F22_Raptor wrote:

wtf lol

is the last one finding water on the moon level of excitement?

I am glad they chose a direction and made the moves needed. I am excited to see young guys develop, so to See RJ and IQ join Scottie is awesome. RJ has been great. Scottie will now take on more responsibility and so far he is doing well. They need to make a few more moves and will before end of Jan so it makes it exciting to see the next steps and if they can score some more talent.
Just hope that Dick can keep up. He shown flashes but hopefully he get more consistent

Highest since 2019.

After the OG trade my interest in watching the games increased a lot to see the new guys. After the Pascal trade I feel like I do not want to miss a minute of the games as I want to see how Scottie plays as the clear #1 guy, and also to see how IQ and RJ fair as 2a and 2b.

To be honest, just before the OG trade I was almost never watching full games anymore. I was usually fast forwarding past the minutes where Scottie was on the bench.

We have a core of 3 young players (22,23,24) who each could become All Stars.

Scottie becoming an all star is inevitable. I think RJ is gonna get there too. IQ is less likely than the other two but solid chance he becomes a borderline all star

Watching these 3 grow and develop together over the next several years is cause for excitement alone. Then you consider the prospects of flexibility for adding more young talent around them and things are looking good moving forward

There will be growing pains but that’s to be expected with a young team.

At the moment i am rather stoic. I am not convinced that the core will make the growth many seem to believe, at the same time, i would like to see this team in full force for a few games, meaning;

Poeltl
Barnes
RJ
IQ
Brown

Trent
Schroeder
Jontay
Dick

from the bench

The rest of the roster are irrelevant.

At the same time, i hope they try to win each and every game. they will only benefit from that for their growth. Reaching the Play-In is still a realistic goal and having achieved something - even if its just the play-in, is a good confidence boost.

very excited to see what comes next, both in terms of deals we make, but also how these guys figure it out on the court and build chemistry and consistency. I feel like since Tampa, we've been spinning our wheels in a way where you felt like the team had a pretty limited ceiling even if they were to make the playoffs. It was time to try something new, and while there is clearly much more work to do, and no guarantee of success, it seems like the front office is finally fully invested in building a new exciting product here. We have talented young players, multiple picks to work with, good cap flexibility, tradeable vets, and no terrible longterm contracts.

I just posted this in another thread, to summarize it, we can't compare to the Lowry/DeRozan days because the East was horrible back then and it was very easy to make the playoffs. Needed almost 50 wins every season to make the playoffs in the West and teams well below .500 were getting in in the Eastern Conference.

Now the East is tough, there are lots of good teams and just having one star like Scottie isn't going to guarantee you anything. Just look at the Cavs, everyone thought they were stacked with multiple stars and they went out in the first round last season.

I'm happy theres a direction.

I want to trade Jakob, Brown, Boucher, Thad, Porter then sim the rest of the season haha

Team sports are defined by eras and we're embarking on a new one. This is what we've been clamoring for for years now. There's always something hopeful and magical about the unknown promise of what's potentially to come. New stars, new legends, new memories being made.

And of course it hurts to say goodbye to what was the best era of our franchise's history but it was the right move. Scottie, RJ and IQ are all in their early 20s, who knows what Gradey will turn into 3/4 years from now and what will emerge from the drafts in the next few years. We may well have more help coming in the next few weeks pre-deadline.

There will be ups and downs but that's part of the journey.

It wasn't working, so better than before. Maybe now we look functional going forward.

Either way, I was tired of the fence sitting.