RealGM

scenario...raptors have a deal in place for a good player.

the team gives you an option of giving them the 2025 #9 pick or a future top 5 protected pick.

what would you do?

Keep 9 and trade any pick except for 2026.

its a no brainer, keep 9 trade future pick.

djsunyc wrote:scenario...raptors have a deal in place for a good player.

the team gives you an option of giving them the 2025 #9 pick or a future top 5 protected pick.

what would you do?

It's always trade the future top 5, cause the whole point is that if things go well, it wont even be a top 15 pick.

Question doesn't make sense because depending on how good the player is, the team trading the good player will want the #9 pick because the Raps will presumably be better than bottom 10 in future years

T-d0t wrote:Question doesn't make sense because depending on how good the player is, the team trading the good player will want the #9 pick because the Raps will presumably be better than bottom 10 in future years

not unless you dont love any of the players at 9

This would be a no brainer even if it was an unprotected future pick given up. It would make no sense to give up #9 considering you need cheap young talent on the roster if you trade for a good player who is presumably making a lot of money.

Excellent question.

On one side : it’s likely our pick 2026 going to be worse than 9 especially if we do a win now move

On the other side : I always prefer to pay our debt while knowing exactly the value of the pick that I am giving away. Also if next year , the season is derailed, we can always tank (even if technically this should not happens if we do a win now move but we never know how the season can go)

Conclusion : trade pick 9 and keep our 2026 pick

I would trade 9 in this scenario. Trading future picks hurts your ability to make moves into the future until the pick conveys and selecting a player at 9 adds an additional cost to the cap for the current year. I assume that if you are trading a pick, you are attempting to win now, so having the ability to use the full MLE for an established rotation piece is probably more valuable.

Grew wrote:Keep 9 and trade any pick except for 2026.

This.

They can have the mystery box of a pick in the future especially as our younger players only get better and better.

This year was an anomaly with the injuries and likely the highest pick we’ll have in years so we absolutely should NOT trade it unless it’s for a YOUNGER star that actually lines up with our core and isn’t an overnight rental like KD.

I really hate the idea of trading this pick plus Yak for KD.