Former Raptor discussion thread 3.0

[Dennis 37]

Norm's scoring outbursts are one of the main reasons why the Clippers have stayed afloat (4-4 currently) with Kawhi sitting out indefinitely. While their defense has turned out to be surprisingly good so far, Harden is kind of a shell of himself and no one else on the roster is capable of scoring consistently. All their games have been fairly close, so they need every point he can score.

Norm is still as fun to watch now as he was 4.5 years ago when he finally broke out, and the subtle improvements in his game since getting traded away from the Raptors are impressive. More ways to finish in the paint around defenders, more uncanny three-point plays than you would expect, knows how to sidestep defenders who close out on his threes so he can get wide open again. Somehow he's even improved as a passer, even though he still doesn't pass the ball that much. Easily handles higher volume while continuing to be amazingly efficient, and continuing to play within the offense.

It's still a real shame that Masai botched the Norm trade (and everyone knows it now, even those who still stubbornly refuse to admit it), but it's also awesome to see him still flourishing on another team all these years later. Clippers fans really appreciate him, Raptors fans are now nostalgic for him, and more fans around the league are aware of what he can do. He has to be one of Masai's best draft selections.

There was one here who got continually stomped on for preferring the team invest in Norm's development over Fred. Fred is declining and Norm gets better.

[Duffman100]

Portland got a worse overall impact of the trade and their fans aren't bemoaning it 5 years later lol

[Duffman100]

nah, plenty of people disliked that move at the time. not every trade/situation is the same. context always matters.

that team wasn't rebuilding, they just wanted to save some money. he was 27-years-old when they dealt him, not as if he was ancient.

I'm pretty sure the overwhelming sentiment was "good move, we got a younger player who will likely be cheaper and fits Scotties timeline better".

Sometimes when you trade and count on potential it doesn't work out.

If we trade Bruce Brown now for a younger prospect and that Brown starts contributing and younger prospect flames out, are we going to blast that trade?

What was frustrating about the Norm trade at the time was Zach Lowe said half the league bid on Norm and the return was a disgruntled young player that Portland couldn't come to terms with. To me, though I wanted us to re-sign Norm, I felt like the return was going to be better. The next few contracts was exactly that. Gary, his dad and Rich Paul all demanding more than the market allowed and the team settling on a hedge contract, and then eventually walking away entirely. To say it didn't work out is an understatement. It wasn't that Gary regressed as a player, or was unplayable. It was that he didn't fit the culture of the team, just as he didn't in Portland and was viewed as expendable. It was just bad homework by the Raptors, and a bad call to reject a guy who paid his dues and thrived in their system.

The Blazers got Bledsoe, Winslow, Keon Johnson and a 2nd. I don't think the value for Norm was as high as you think.

A 22 year old shooting 40% from 3 and stuck behind Lillard, McCollum and Simons wasn't bad value.

[ATLTimekeeper]

I'm pretty sure the overwhelming sentiment was "good move, we got a younger player who will likely be cheaper and fits Scotties timeline better".

Sometimes when you trade and count on potential it doesn't work out.

If we trade Bruce Brown now for a younger prospect and that Brown starts contributing and younger prospect flames out, are we going to blast that trade?

Nope. Posted many time then that I thought it was a brutal move... but even worse than I imagined since then.
You don't trade athletic good shooting TALENT THAT WANTS TO STAY IN TORONTO... huge mistake by Masai. Huge.

Right and you were massively against the Ochai deal... saying that was a Huge mistake.

Huge why ? You've said this many times and I've asked you never answer.

Do we win that Philly series if you replace Trent with Norm? Very unlikely.

Does our 41-41 season change? Nope.

We're likely in the exact same spot we're in now.

I think Trent actually got sick and was useless for that series, so maybe?

Flip OG for some bigman help and picks, getting rid of that malcontent and adding the screen setter Fred, Pascal and Scottie needed, and maybe we are in a different place.

We know that Fred, Norm and Pascal loved playing with each other and thought they were going to continue to uphold Raptors championship habits. We know Norm was crestfallen when he was traded. We know OG was unhappy with his role. We already went through what happened with Trent.

Seems like they could have had Fred, Pascal, Norm, Scottie and flipped OG for a C and picks (Myles Turner?). Maybe that's not a standout team but it seems like a competitive team that retained all its picks. If we finished 41-41 still, who cares? We got Gradey Dick from that.

So, let's put a team of

Turner
Pascal
Scottie
Norm
Freddie

And add Gradey Dick to it. And add all our future picks. And even add the first we gave up for Thad Young because now we don't need another vet. Add the pick that we traded for Poeltl. There's still young, Masai drafted talent developing in the pipeline. I think that's better than 2-7 right now.

[Duffman100]

Nope. Posted many time then that I thought it was a brutal move... but even worse than I imagined since then.
You don't trade athletic good shooting TALENT THAT WANTS TO STAY IN TORONTO... huge mistake by Masai. Huge.

Right and you were massively against the Ochai deal... saying that was a Huge mistake.

Huge why ? You've said this many times and I've asked you never answer.

Do we win that Philly series if you replace Trent with Norm? Very unlikely.

Does our 41-41 season change? Nope.

We're likely in the exact same spot we're in now.

I think Trent actually got sick and was useless for that series, so maybe?

Flip OG for some bigman help and picks, getting rid of that malcontent and adding the screen setter Fred, Pascal and Scottie needed, and maybe we are in a different place.

We know that Fred, Norm and Pascal loved playing with each other and thought they were going to continue to uphold Raptors championship habits. We know Norm was crestfallen when he was traded. We know OG was unhappy with his role. We already went through what happened with Trent.

Seems like they could have had Fred, Pascal, Norm, Scottie and flipped OG for a C and picks (Myles Turner?). Maybe that's not a standout team but it seems like a competitive team that retained all its picks. If we finished 41-41 still, who cares? We got Gradey Dick from that.

So, let's put a team of

Turner
Pascal
Scottie
Norm
Freddie

And add Gradey Dick to it. And add all our future picks. And even add the first we gave up for Thad Young because now we don't need another vet. Add the pick that we traded for Poeltl. There's still young, Masai drafted talent developing in the pipeline. I think that's better than 2-7 right now.

It's better than 2-7 but then we're stuck and capped out with massive contracts and a declining FVV?

Thats almost a worse situation than the rebuild we're doing now.

[ATLTimekeeper]

I'm pretty sure the overwhelming sentiment was "good move, we got a younger player who will likely be cheaper and fits Scotties timeline better".

Sometimes when you trade and count on potential it doesn't work out.

If we trade Bruce Brown now for a younger prospect and that Brown starts contributing and younger prospect flames out, are we going to blast that trade?

What was frustrating about the Norm trade at the time was Zach Lowe said half the league bid on Norm and the return was a disgruntled young player that Portland couldn't come to terms with. To me, though I wanted us to re-sign Norm, I felt like the return was going to be better. The next few contracts was exactly that. Gary, his dad and Rich Paul all demanding more than the market allowed and the team settling on a hedge contract, and then eventually walking away entirely. To say it didn't work out is an understatement. It wasn't that Gary regressed as a player, or was unplayable. It was that he didn't fit the culture of the team, just as he didn't in Portland and was viewed as expendable. It was just bad homework by the Raptors, and a bad call to reject a guy who paid his dues and thrived in their system.

The Blazers got Bledsoe, Winslow, Keon Johnson and a 2nd. I don't think the value for Norm was as high as you think.

A 22 year old shooting 40% from 3 and stuck behind Lillard, McCollum and Simons wasn't bad value.

We found out he wasn't stuck behind them, though. If 15 teams were bidding on him with the Blazers and that's all they could get, then their GM deserves to be shot into the sun. I assume that return was in part because he was now long-term money and the Blazers were desperate to clear it to get Dame another version of teammates to build around. Those were the contexts of the trades.

We know what happened. Norm surprised both the Raptors and the Blazers and continued to be as good as he was for the duration of his deal, and Trent is playing for the minimum.

[Duffman100]

What was frustrating about the Norm trade at the time was Zach Lowe said half the league bid on Norm and the return was a disgruntled young player that Portland couldn't come to terms with. To me, though I wanted us to re-sign Norm, I felt like the return was going to be better. The next few contracts was exactly that. Gary, his dad and Rich Paul all demanding more than the market allowed and the team settling on a hedge contract, and then eventually walking away entirely. To say it didn't work out is an understatement. It wasn't that Gary regressed as a player, or was unplayable. It was that he didn't fit the culture of the team, just as he didn't in Portland and was viewed as expendable. It was just bad homework by the Raptors, and a bad call to reject a guy who paid his dues and thrived in their system.

The Blazers got Bledsoe, Winslow, Keon Johnson and a 2nd. I don't think the value for Norm was as high as you think.

A 22 year old shooting 40% from 3 and stuck behind Lillard, McCollum and Simons wasn't bad value.

We found out he wasn't stuck behind them, though. If 15 teams were bidding on him with the Blazers and that's all they could get, then their GM deserves to be shot into the sun. I assume that return was in part because he was now long-term money and the Blazers were desperate to clear it to get Dame another version of teammates to build around. Those were the contexts of the trades.

We know what happened. Norm surprised both the Raptors and the Blazers and continued to be as good as he was for the duration of his deal, and Trent is playing for the minimum.

Sure we found out, after the fact. The entire point is GMs jobs try to find these diamond in the rough players based on their current context. I can see the logic that Trent was 22, had two players in from of him and could be a steal. Obviously it didn't work that way.

There's no way that the friendly deal Norm took was going to impact his value to that degree

[ATLTimekeeper]

It's better than 2-7 but then we're stuck and capped out with massive contracts and a declining FVV?

Thats almost a worse situation than the rebuild we're doing now.

Fred is 30, he's declining?

Either way, he's potentially an expiring, as is Turner. How are they stuck? We're building around Scottie, no? As we always were. His supporting cast is potentially a lot better in this version, and then as he ages that supporting cast is less important.

[Duffman100]

It's better than 2-7 but then we're stuck and capped out with massive contracts and a declining FVV?

Thats almost a worse situation than the rebuild we're doing now.

Fred is 30, he's declining?

Either way, he's potentially an expiring, as is Turner. How are they stuck? We're building around Scottie, no? As we always were. His supporting cast is potentially a lot better in this version, and then as he ages that supporting cast is less important.

I mean he can't hit the broad side of the barn.

All in all this now so hypothetical it's hard to debate. We're talking about a fictitious cap and fictitious trade.

Either way, while the trade clearly wasn't good. I think the fact that we're talking about it 4-5 years later as some sort of big misstep is a little much.

[ATLTimekeeper]

Sure we found out, after the fact. The entire point is GMs jobs try to find these diamond in the rough players based on their current context. I can see the logic that Trent was 22, had two players in from of him and could be a steal. Obviously it didn't work that way.

There's no way that the friendly deal Norm took was going to impact his value to that degree

Long term money is always going to be less appealing. It cuts the market into only competitive teams, and then among those competitive teams the tax becomes a factor.

[ATLTimekeeper]

It's better than 2-7 but then we're stuck and capped out with massive contracts and a declining FVV?

Thats almost a worse situation than the rebuild we're doing now.

Fred is 30, he's declining?

Either way, he's potentially an expiring, as is Turner. How are they stuck? We're building around Scottie, no? As we always were. His supporting cast is potentially a lot better in this version, and then as he ages that supporting cast is less important.

I mean he can't hit the broad side of the barn.

All in all this now so hypothetical it's hard to debate. We're talking about a fictitious cap and fictitious trade.

Either way, while the trade clearly wasn't good. I think the fact that we're talking about it 4-5 years later as some sort of big misstep is a little much.

I mean, we were always a culture over talent team. A team that routinely beat the Vegas odds. A team where it was common for a promising young player or first round pick to get minimal playing time, where staying ready and waiting your time was accepted. My argument is that Norm embodied that culture and Gary, clearly, did not.

We can all have different opinions on paying your dues, but that We The North Raptor era had a lot of guys that had that as a part of their DNA. So when I bring up that trade now, it's because it seems like the exact moment Masai abandoned that culture and officially lost his way. It was immediately after that that we heard of rifts in the locker room between younger players (Trent/OG/Scottie) and older players (Siakam/Fred). It was explained by Boucher that Siakam and Fred specifically took issue with how they were treated as young players on the Raptors v. the next generation of young Raptors. Maybe tipping the scale with Norm instead of Gary and OG getting his wish and being traded changes those dynamics enough?

I'm just glad Gary turned down our offer of 15million a year.

[lebron stopper]

I don't see many people denying the trade didn't work out. But that,

Yeah, so that is pretty much confirming the point I was making. By now, the Norm-Grent trade is too indefensible to defend directly, so for those who want to still want to take a crack at it for whatever reason, they couch it up with all kinds of wonderful excuses like you just did. Of course, all of these are just excuses. Both of the ones you bring up can be thoroughly debunked:

A) the reasoning and logic behind the trade made sense. Acquiring a young player with similar potential who fit Scottie's timeline better.

Scottie wasn't even in the NBA when the trade was made, and the Raptors organization was certainly not thinking about pairing up young players together at that time. It took sustained losing after that trade for all kinds of reasons, dropping games to the worst teams like the Thunder and Rockets, culminating with the loss to the Wizards on May 6, for the Raptors to waive the white flag on the season and settle into the 7th worst record. After that is when they eventually got the 4th overall pick (with odds of 8.5%) and used it to select Scottie.

Nor did the trade appear to be about acquiring an actual blue-chip prospect. Anyone who watched Trent would have seen that he doesn't possess Norm's athleticism or physical tools - red flag. Read through a Blazers writer's assessment of Trent's defense from prior to the trade and you will find that this supposed wing stopper has to be hidden on defense - red flag. Search through Trent's stats, and you will find things like, he had a whopping 3 assists and 5 turnovers in the 5-game LA/Portland playoff series - red flag. Nothing about Trent screamed potential to anyone who bothered to look into him, because red flags popped up with this dude wherever you looked.

B) while the trade didn't work out, it largely made no impact. If you replace Trent with Norm on the 48 and 41 win seasons, we're marginally better and likely end up in the same spot we are now.

I'm just going to sidestep the trap of speculating whether or not Norm would have made our team better over the last few years, as you are doing over here. We can discuss potential outcomes that never happened over here until we're blue in the face, but doing so would dignify the excuse and leave it and its underlying premises unaddressed in the first place. So, instead of hypotheticals, I will just point to two pieces of real and substantial evidence that we do have: (1) what Norm and Trent actually accomplished since that trade, and (2) their actual player profiles and how they fit into the Raptors after 2021.

The first piece of evidence basically speaks for itself by now, so I won't really go over it at this point. Trent peaked at 56 percent TS, while Norm was almost always above 60+ percent TS on similar usage. Right now, the difference between the two could not be more stark. The second piece of evidence gets a lot less discussion, but is important to bring up nonetheless. A quick rundown: Trent's skillset is not nearly as expansive as Norm's, he is a far streakier and more unreliable shooter than Norm, he can't reliably attack the basket like Norm, his creation ability is limited to this one side-step jumper from mid-range or from three, his off-ball game is much more limited than Norm's, and his fake aggressive defense isn't that much better than Norm's (and meanwhile he still suffers from many of the same issues with off-ball defense). So, how exactly would replacing Trent with Norm in all of those seasons result in us being just "marginally better" than what transpired? How can you justify this take, after I laid out all the very real and significant differences between the two?

[tecumseh18]

the Norm-Grent trade is too indefensible to defend

This was obvious to me over a year ago. I know I tried to make the point you're making, and was shouted down by others here (YogurtProducer comes to mind). So I gave up.

Apart from stats, we have to acknowledge that Norm really liked it here, and seemed to fit in with the Pascal-Fred-OG core. Seeing the good vibes dissipate over the following couple of seasons makes one wonder. For the Raps to trade away a talented guy who WANTS to play in Toronto, there's gotta be a higher bar than "the other player might be a younger and cheaper version of Norm". Especially when there was clearly no wink-wink deal in place to ensure that he would in fact be cheaper. And in the end, Gary wasn't cheaper.

Finally, there's a regular season, and then there's the playoffs. Not every good regular season player is good in the playoffs. Norm was an essential cog in the Raptors beating the Pacers in 2016 and (by going hypersonic from 3) the Bucks the following year (IIRC). And he was decent against the Celtics in 2020, especially in Game 6 OT. Let's just forget the failure to box out at the end of Game 7.

[WaltFrazier]

The Trent transaction was a failure. Sometimes mistakes are made and Masai/Bobby definitely screwed this one up. In the end they got nothing.

They wanted a cheaper younger version of Norm but ended up paying something similar and was more inconsistent. I was for trading him for draft capital to get the rebuild started. But if this wasn't the start of a rebuild, I still don't get why they didn't keep him with the rest of the core.

Never overpay SGs, they're in high supply.

That's the thing, they weren't rebuilding then because they kept Fred Pascal and OG. Norm was the same timeline, an important part of the group's chemistry, and a product of the system. He wanted to stay. You don't just trade for younger for the sake of going younger, there needs to be an element of talent evaluation.

[ItsDanger]

Read on Twitter

Dowtin getting a chance.

[WaltFrazier]

Read on Twitter

Dowtin getting a chance.

Thanks I needed a bright spot. I was pushing for Dowtin hard a couple years ago. Nick brought him on board last year but he never got much time. Happy to see him getting a chance. He's hung in there over a long road.

[FrozenLeafz]

0:40 Banton vs Edey, Canada vs Canada

Watch on YouTube

[WaltFrazier]

Demar still producing

Read on Twitter

[TOStateofMind]

Norm playing out of his mind. Crazy how he is getting better compared to GTJ who has stagnated/regressed.

[lebron stopper]

Norm playing out of his mind. Crazy how he is getting better compared to GTJ who has stagnated/regressed.