Raptors & the Mid-Level Exception: A Brief History

[brownbobcat]

And again, trying to make a point of how bad a FO is by weighting every transaction equally is the biggest fail of all.

The fact we are in hindsight trying to call thr Norm/GTJ trade a fail is ridiculous. That trade is the epitome of what savvy FOs do (swapping vets for younger players who are higher potential long term). Far from a “fail”.

and trying to call the 29th pick a fail because a stud wen 30 (and was passed 29 times) is frankly, a stupid way of assessing a situation.

I've said before that the Norm/GTJ trade was the right idea, a sensible strategy.

You can take the right shot and miss, but that's still failing. If you end up with nothing usable from a draft, that's still failing, 29th pick or not. You can survive 1 small mistake, or 2 or 3. But opportunities are finite in the NBA. Fail too often and you end up where the Raptors are. Doesn't matter if you agree or not, this team's record and outlook speaks for itself.

[Scase]

No, he's mostly right.

He described the majority of the bigger moves we made, and properly assessed them as a fail or success. He didn't weight them, no, but his overall assessment is correct.

When you take Flynn at 29 and Bane goes 30 - that is a fail. When you trade what's likely to end up the 7th or 8th overall pick for Poetl that's a fail. We all expected to get a 1st for Norm - instead we got an inferior player who got paid the same/year. That's a fail. Lowry for Precious is again a clear fail.

Siakam trade is a clear fail now that we've failed to convert Brown into assets. A few late first picks for an all-star is bad value, that is quite obvious.

And again, trying to make a point of how bad a FO is by weighting every transaction equally is the biggest fail of all.

The fact we are in hindsight trying to call thr Norm/GTJ trade a fail is ridiculous. That trade is the epitome of what savvy FOs do (swapping vets for younger players who are higher potential long term). Far from a “fail”.

and trying to call the 29th pick a fail because a stud wen 30 (and was passed 29 times) is frankly, a stupid way of assessing a situation.

If GTJ turned into a superstar, we'd all be full of praise for Masai, right? If that happened, would you be here saying "no no, we mustn't judge the trade for what GTJ became - we must judge it for what he was at the time of the deal?" Off course not - you'd be celebrating Masai's genius for identifying GTJ's star potential.

Well, then why shouldn't we apply the same reasoning now that we see that Gary is actually a pretty mediocre player? Masai got fooled by GTJ's hot run in the bubble and overestimated him. Colangelo used to do this all the time by trading assets for players who shone in limited sample sizes, or in ideal settings or just when they went off against us. And he's a bad GM.

I don't love the idea of bashing a GM for the players he missed on in a draft, but in Flynn's case...it is an absolute scouting fail. The moment he stepped on the court you could see he was way too small, weak and slow for the league, and he didn't have a single special trait that he could build on. He looked like Matt Thomas without the shooting. At least with a guy like Nowell you could see that he has other-worldly vision and passing ability, you can see some talent and envision ways you can compensate for his deficiencies. Not so with Flynn.

For the first half of his tenure here, Masai just did not miss. Some of it was luck, sure, but there's a reason we were all laughing that GMS should be afraid of trading with the guy. But it's been years since the Barnes pick, every move he's made since has ranged from decent to horrid. It's like two completely different GMs. He's rapidly turning into Joe Dumars.

That's all it ever is with that camp, praise for the hits, excuses for the misses. He can do no wrong, it's why I've put most of them on the foes list. There's no ability to change their opinion, so it's not worth the time.

[Kurtz]

And again, trying to make a point of how bad a FO is by weighting every transaction equally is the biggest fail of all.

The fact we are in hindsight trying to call thr Norm/GTJ trade a fail is ridiculous. That trade is the epitome of what savvy FOs do (swapping vets for younger players who are higher potential long term). Far from a “fail”.

and trying to call the 29th pick a fail because a stud wen 30 (and was passed 29 times) is frankly, a stupid way of assessing a situation.

If GTJ turned into a superstar, we'd all be full of praise for Masai, right? If that happened, would you be here saying "no no, we mustn't judge the trade for what GTJ became - we must judge it for what he was at the time of the deal?" Off course not - you'd be celebrating Masai's genius for identifying GTJ's star potential.

Well, then why shouldn't we apply the same reasoning now that we see that Gary is actually a pretty mediocre player? Masai got fooled by GTJ's hot run in the bubble and overestimated him. Colangelo used to do this all the time by trading assets for players who shone in limited sample sizes, or in ideal settings or just when they went off against us. And he's a bad GM.

I don't love the idea of bashing a GM for the players he missed on in a draft, but in Flynn's case...it is an absolute scouting fail. The moment he stepped on the court you could see he was way too small, weak and slow for the league, and he didn't have a single special trait that he could build on. He looked like Matt Thomas without the shooting. At least with a guy like Nowell you could see that he has other-worldly vision and passing ability, you can see some talent and envision ways you can compensate for his deficiencies. Not so with Flynn.

For the first half of his tenure here, Masai just did not miss. Some of it was luck, sure, but there's a reason we were all laughing that GMS should be afraid of trading with the guy. But it's been years since the Barnes pick, every move he's made since has ranged from decent to horrid. It's like two completely different GMs. He's rapidly turning into Joe Dumars.

That's all it ever is with that camp, praise for the hits, excuses for the misses. He can do no wrong, it's why I've put most of them on the foes list. There's no ability to change their opinion, so it's not worth the time.

It's almost like politics - people go into their camp and then their party can do no wrong while the opponent can do no right.

Why not just assess it objectively? He was a great GM, brought us a chip, but the last few years he's been straight up bad. Maybe he's been distracted with his other pursuits, maybe the luck he got initially (NYK passing on the Lowry trade, SA trading us Kawhi out of spite, the Philly bounce) is now being balanced out by a little bit of bad luck (COVID season, Koloko, Poetl pick being a lot higher than we anticipated, etc), but let's call a spade a spade.

[DelAbbot]

If GTJ turned into a superstar, we'd all be full of praise for Masai, right? If that happened, would you be here saying "no no, we mustn't judge the trade for what GTJ became - we must judge it for what he was at the time of the deal?" Off course not - you'd be celebrating Masai's genius for identifying GTJ's star potential.

Well, then why shouldn't we apply the same reasoning now that we see that Gary is actually a pretty mediocre player? Masai got fooled by GTJ's hot run in the bubble and overestimated him. Colangelo used to do this all the time by trading assets for players who shone in limited sample sizes, or in ideal settings or just when they went off against us. And he's a bad GM.

I don't love the idea of bashing a GM for the players he missed on in a draft, but in Flynn's case...it is an absolute scouting fail. The moment he stepped on the court you could see he was way too small, weak and slow for the league, and he didn't have a single special trait that he could build on. He looked like Matt Thomas without the shooting. At least with a guy like Nowell you could see that he has other-worldly vision and passing ability, you can see some talent and envision ways you can compensate for his deficiencies. Not so with Flynn.

For the first half of his tenure here, Masai just did not miss. Some of it was luck, sure, but there's a reason we were all laughing that GMS should be afraid of trading with the guy. But it's been years since the Barnes pick, every move he's made since has ranged from decent to horrid. It's like two completely different GMs. He's rapidly turning into Joe Dumars.

That's all it ever is with that camp, praise for the hits, excuses for the misses. He can do no wrong, it's why I've put most of them on the foes list. There's no ability to change their opinion, so it's not worth the time.

It's almost like politics - people go into their camp and then their party can do no wrong while the opponent can do no right.

Why not just assess it objectively? He was a great GM, brought us a chip, but the last few years he's been straight up bad. Maybe he's been distracted with his other pursuits, maybe the luck he got initially (NYK passing on the Lowry trade, SA trading us Kawhi out of spite, the Philly bounce) is now being balanced out by a little bit of bad luck (COVID season, Koloko, Poetl pick being a lot higher than we anticipated, etc), but let's call a spade a spade.

It is absolutely identity politics. They are attached to Masai - as I once was - and will find explanations to justify their view of him