RAPTORS SCHEDULE 24/25

[C_Money]

Everything is perfectly lined up to gun for a top 5 pick, now let’s trade Yak and ensure we get another young star!

The Raptors are not going to just trade away an asset in Yak for the sake of some more ping pong balls. The Raptors should beat some teams early on that they should not based on weird things happen at the start of every season. The bottom of the East is disgusting. The Raptors are going to be a play-in team. Deal with it!

You’re assuming we’re going to be healthy all year. The depth on this team is terrible and a couple of key injuries will make us a non competitive team. The current betting odds have us at 30.5 wins.

[Tripod]

Everything is perfectly lined up to gun for a top 5 pick, now let’s trade Yak and ensure we get another young star!

The Raptors are not going to just trade away an asset in Yak for the sake of some more ping pong balls. The Raptors should beat some teams early on that they should not based on weird things happen at the start of every season. The bottom of the East is disgusting. The Raptors are going to be a play-in team. Deal with it!

You’re assuming we’re going to be healthy all year. The depth on this team is terrible and a couple of key injuries will make us a non competitive team. The current betting odds have us at 30.5 wins.

And have we not hit the over every time under Masai except for like 2 years?

[WuTang_CMB]

this schedule is even worse than initially reviewed
Even after the brutal first 20 games, you have Indy, Dallas, NY , OKC following it
The first half of the season is incredibly tough for any rebuilding team. we are so lucky we gave up our pick to SA

[HangTime]

Read on Twitter

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Could you make poll, to gauge the excitement or lack of excitement?

1) excited before the schedule came out
2) excited to see what this group can do with a difficult start
3) I won't watch, please tank, I'll see you at the draft lottery
4) I won't watch, I want this to be as bad as Philly's trust the process.

There might be more interesting ones.

Personally, I was excited before the schedule, but even more excited becasue of the difficult start.

[DreamTeam09]

Define trash.
We could flirt with 0.500 if all things break right.

Nah, I think we'll win about 24-28 games. And that's it.

If that's the case, we should be legitimately looking to trade Scottie and IQ while their value is high. These guys wouldn't be needle movers and they are getting paid 33m - max money.

You need to be paying your max money contracts to actual max money players.

33mill isn't max money, it's max money for rookie extensions. There's players making double what they make now, and nearly triple in the case of IQ in 5yrs

[DreamTeam09]

.

[DreamTeam09]

Read on Twitter

This tweet says we have the 15th toughest schedule

[billy_hoyle]

Nah, I think we'll win about 24-28 games. And that's it.

If that's the case, we should be legitimately looking to trade Scottie and IQ while their value is high. These guys wouldn't be needle movers and they are getting paid 33m - max money.

You need to be paying your max money contracts to actual max money players.

33mill isn't max money, it's max money for rookie extensions. There's players making double what they make now, and nearly triple in the case of IQ in 5yrs

The dash is meant to convey a range. 33m for IQ, and max for Scottie.

They get paid a massive portion of our cap. In 6 years when they sign a new contract Masai will pay them an even greater portion (commiserate with what they will be allowed to pay them).

Edit * IQ is make 35m a year. Maxey is at the max for their draft year and will make $40m.

If Scottie and IQ in their 4 and 5th season respectively can't get to 0.500, that's not great.

[C_Money]

The Raptors are not going to just trade away an asset in Yak for the sake of some more ping pong balls. The Raptors should beat some teams early on that they should not based on weird things happen at the start of every season. The bottom of the East is disgusting. The Raptors are going to be a play-in team. Deal with it!

You’re assuming we’re going to be healthy all year. The depth on this team is terrible and a couple of key injuries will make us a non competitive team. The current betting odds have us at 30.5 wins.

And have we not hit the over every time under Masai except for like 2 years?

Definitely not last year because I lost $50 on that lol. We also don’t have Nurse treating every regular season game as if it’s game 7 of the Finals anymore.

[Mattatron]

If that's the case, we should be legitimately looking to trade Scottie and IQ while their value is high. These guys wouldn't be needle movers and they are getting paid 33m - max money.

You need to be paying your max money contracts to actual max money players.

33mill isn't max money, it's max money for rookie extensions. There's players making double what they make now, and nearly triple in the case of IQ in 5yrs

The dash is meant to convey a range. 33m for IQ, and max for Scottie.

They get paid a massive portion of our cap. In 6 years when they sign a new contract Masai will pay them an even greater portion (commiserate with what they will be allowed to pay them).

Edit * IQ is make 35m a year. Maxey is at the max for their draft year and will make $40m.

If Scottie and IQ in their 4 and 5th season respectively can't get to 0.500, that's not great.

That barely has something to do with Scottie's Abilities. The Roster Construction is still at a horrible place after MU broke things up half a year ago. This year is still a gap year.

[billy_hoyle]

33mill isn't max money, it's max money for rookie extensions. There's players making double what they make now, and nearly triple in the case of IQ in 5yrs

The dash is meant to convey a range. 33m for IQ, and max for Scottie.

They get paid a massive portion of our cap. In 6 years when they sign a new contract Masai will pay them an even greater portion (commiserate with what they will be allowed to pay them).

Edit * IQ is make 35m a year. Maxey is at the max for their draft year and will make $40m.

If Scottie and IQ in their 4 and 5th season respectively can't get to 0.500, that's not great.

That barely has something to do with Scottie's Abilities. The Roster Construction is still at a horrible place after MU broke things up half a year ago. This year is still a gap year.

Horrible place?
PG:
IQ (25 yrs old, paid like fringe all star)
Davion (25 yrs old, former top 10 pick, def. specialist)

SG/SF:
RJ (24 yrs old, former top 3 pick, 20/4/4, paid like it), Brown (27 yrs old, championship rotation player, 20+m),
Ochai (24 yrs old, former lottery pick, def. specialist)

PF:
Scottie (23 yrs old, former top 4 pick, Max player)
Boucher (31 yrs old, playoff rotation player, 10+m)

C:
Poeltl (28 yrs old, former top 10 pick, 20m)
KO (33 yrs old, former lottery pick, 10+m)

These are all veteran players. That's 9 vets. An entire rotation.

That doesn't include recent draft picks (Ja'Kobe, Dick, Chomche, Shead, Mogbo). All of which may be rotation players someday. Too early to tell.


If they suck with that rotation of players, it's because these guys are place holders. And we need an actual superstar talent. Which means we should be trading those guys for high picks in the hopes of getting one. Think the Shareef for Pao trade.

[ciueli]

I'm surprised so many are viewing this as a tough schedule, if you look at the season as a whole it's very soft because bad teams are always tanking by the end of the season and the schedule is loaded with bad teams at the back end, there's a lot of free wins there if they're gunning for the play-in late in the season.

Last 12 games are:
San Antonio
Washington
Brooklyn
Charlotte
Philadelphia
Chicago
Portland
Detroit
Brooklyn
Charlotte
Dallas
San Antonio

That's 2 quality teams in the last 12, one of which is built on perpetually injured stars and the other which will likely be comfortably in playoff position and resting their stars in game 81.

Playing good teams early should actually result in more wins against those teams, not fewer wins as they haven't had time to scout properly. A good example of this from last year is the first month of the season when we beat Minnesota, Milwaukee, Dallas, Indiana, and Phoenix, the Raptors had more quality wins in that first month (19 games) than the entire rest of the season (maybe 3 quality wins total).

All this means is that this team has tons of time to get it together and figure it all out before the last few months of the season when good teams are resting players to gear up for the playoffs and bad teams are starting G-League talent and bench players. The only way the Raptors miss the play-in this year is injuries or if Masai decided to make a sell move at the deadline.

[Pointgod]

I could not have asked for a better schedule for a team in tank mode.

The tank Gods have answered our prayers!

[Pointgod]

Everything is perfectly lined up to gun for a top 5 pick, now let’s trade Yak and ensure we get another young star!

Tank tank tank baby!

[deeps6x]

Raptors could easily start 0-9 or 0-11 with that schedule.

Good for the tank. I'll take it.

Tank hard.

Top 5 pick.

Win baby, win. For at least 5 years.

[DKB333]

The Atlantic Division is going to be tough. The Celtics/76ers/Knicks may go 12-0 against the Raptors.

[HangTime]

If I'm Darko, with this difficult start, I would give Chomche at least 10-12 minutes per game, until the 905 season starts.

I don't know when that is (last season it was Nov 10) but just looking at the matchups

Things will probably be difficult for him, but at least he's going up against the best from the start.

If you think he ever feels down after those stretch of you can always say "this is the very best the league has to offer, It'll get easier from here."
Also, let him guard all sorts of players

1) Cavs - Mobley / Allen
2) Sixers - Embiid /George
3) Wolves - Towns / Reid / and ANT (a couple of posesions on the perimeter)
4) Nuggets - Jokic / Gordon / and J.Murray (a couple of possessions on the perimeter)
5) Hornets - M.Williams / B.Miller
6) Lakers - Lebron / Davis
7) Kings - Sabonis / K.Murray
8) Nuggets - Above
9) Kings - Above
10) Clippers - Zubac/ and Kawhi (a couple of possessions on the perimeter)
11) Lakers - Above --- Nov 10
12) Bucks - Giannis / Lopez /Middleton / and Lillard on (a couple of possessions on the perimeter)
13) Pistons - Cunningham / Duren
14) Celtics - Porzingas / Horford / and Tatum & Brown (a couple of possessions on the perimeter)
15) Pacers - Pascal
16) Wolves - Above
17) Cavs - Above
18) Pistons - Above
19) Pelicans - Ingram / Murphy III / Zion (a couple of possessions on the perimeter)
20) Heat - Bam / Butler
21) Heat - Above
22) Pacers - Above


We face 8 teams twice Games (8,9), (11), (14,15,16), (21, 22), in the first 22.
we can send him to the 905 during that time (if they're playing), give him all the minutes he wants to play.

Then you bring him back for
23) OKC
24) Dallas
25) Knicks
26) Nets
27) Rockets
28) Knicks (MSG debut)

Then reassess

This is how I'd look at it.

[mustardtiger]

4-7 through their first 11 is optimistic but if they do that, I think they’ll be a scrappy team all year who hangs in there.

[deeps6x]

I could see us blowing away Charlotte and Detroit twice, and losing every other game in October and November.

And quite frankly, that might be the best outcome to start the season.

Then trade Poeltl and Brown by the trade deadline and do a proper rebuild around Scottie/IQ/RJ/Dick with multiple 2025 draft picks. (hopefully Poeltl would be worth on of those)