24/25 Grade Masai/Bobby

[CPT]

Top 20 player for a late 1st and Bruce brown

Top 120?

[DelAbbot]

This year was the first sign of life from those guys since 2019.

I give them an 8/10 for the year. I give them an average of 2/10 for the previous 3 years.

So your math is -1/10, -1/10, 8/10 for the past 3 seasons?

[DelAbbot]

Whi said that was their main objective? TWO? You?

My bet is their main objective was a top 8-10 pick and likely what they had strategically set on.

I know “top” includes numbers 1-7, but aiming for a “top” 8-10 pick is a borderline fireable offense.

This seems like a reverse-engineered justification for a season that wasn’t very good and does not inspire a ton of hope for very good seasons in the future.

If the plan was to get the 9th pick, you don’t get credit for achieving the goal. The plan is bad.

LMAO, I'm going to use this on the usual suspects. So good

[SharoneWright]

IQ way too expensive

[Kingsway_fan]

We are one of the best managed teams in the NBA... Masai and Bobby are top-tier... expecting great things next year and onwards.

[Nature]

This year was the first sign of life from those guys since 2019.

I give them an 8/10 for the year. I give them an average of 2/10 for the previous 3 years.

So your math is -1/10, -1/10, 8/10 for the past 3 seasons?

Previous 3 years aka not this year.

2024/25 - this year

2023/24 - previous year 1
2022/23 - previous year 2
2021/22 - previous year 3

[Indeed]

Top 20 player for a late 1st and Bruce brown

Top 120?

And how certain that is a late 1st? Not a mid 1st?

[kalel123]

Top 20 player for a late 1st and Bruce brown

Top 120?

And how certain that is a late 1st? Not a mid 1st?

Would be disastrous if Pacers implode next year and Ingram proves to be just as injury prone as he has been almost all his career. Certainly don't feel good about chances on the latter if this guy needed some kind of injection this late in the recovery process after being out extra long.

[Tacoma]

My bet is their main objective was a top 8-10 pick and likely what they had strategically set on.

I know “top” includes numbers 1-7, but aiming for a “top” 8-10 pick is a borderline fireable offense.

This seems like a reverse-engineered justification for a season that wasn’t very good and does not inspire a ton of hope for very good seasons in the future.

If the plan was to get the 9th pick, you don’t get credit for achieving the goal. The plan is bad.

LMAO, I'm going to use this on the usual suspects. So good

I don't think there was a specific plan for any particular pick. If there was a plan at all it was to weather the tough schedule to start the season and give BBQ a chance along with player development to try to make the play-in. But injuries from the onset pretty well put that "plan" to bed.

We hit bottom at 8-31 with hope of a Top 5 pick in sight but then proceeded to win 8 of 10 in Jan and the hope faded. The "plan" morphed into tank for highest pick which turned out to be 7th-last odds, and Masai defenders now to say (in a reverse-engineered way!) this was the ~plan all along.

The reality IMO is there was only (to quote Trump) a concept of a plan but no real plan per se. It's pretty well Masai's Mode of Operation these days.

[TRik]

5

After the disaster last year where they tanked and still lost the pick, it was clearly going to be all about the tank this year. Signing BI was good, but going on win streaks during the season was bad…especially when we went 8/10. Could’ve done more to give us better odds of top four IMO.

But like many have said, land that number 1 and my vote changes.

[Parataxis]

I give them an 8.

Got out of McDaniels’ contract.

This is a big one too. Turning McDaniels into Shead, and we have another 2nd coming back from moving Mitchell?

[Appostis]

High 7 or 8.

A good draft pick and some on the edges move and I can see this team being top 6 in the east.

[Appostis]

IQ way too expensive

Flat contract.

[SharoneWright]

IQ way too expensive

Flat contract.

Flat stat lines.

[Appostis]

IQ way too expensive

Flat contract.

Flat stat lines.

Injury plagued season.
Contract is in line with most starting PGs presently and will be value soon enough.

[tecumseh18]

ESPN isn't impressed

Toronto Raptors
Grade: D+

No team finished closer than four games in the standings to the Raptors (30-52), symbolic of their aimless position between the group competing for the play-in and those prioritizing lottery positioning. Toronto couldn't avoid going 12-12 in March and April against a historically weak schedule and will enter the lottery in the seventh spot. And while there were some development success stories, including Ochai Agbaji and undrafted rookie Jamison Battle, the most important Raptors (Scottie Barnes and Immanuel Quickley) saw their progress stalled by injuries.

https://www.espn.com/nba/insider/story/_/id/44687567/grades-all-30-nba-teams-2024-25-regular-season

Eh, switching Pascal for Ingram + Ochai is pretty good in my books.

[Pointgod]

ESPN isn't impressed

Toronto Raptors
Grade: D+

No team finished closer than four games in the standings to the Raptors (30-52), symbolic of their aimless position between the group competing for the play-in and those prioritizing lottery positioning. Toronto couldn't avoid going 12-12 in March and April against a historically weak schedule and will enter the lottery in the seventh spot. And while there were some development success stories, including Ochai Agbaji and undrafted rookie Jamison Battle, the most important Raptors (Scottie Barnes and Immanuel Quickley) saw their progress stalled by injuries.

https://www.espn.com/nba/insider/story/_/id/44687567/grades-all-30-nba-teams-2024-25-regular-season

Eh, switching Pascal for Ingram + Ochai is pretty good in my books.

D+ seems about right

[CPT]

ESPN isn't impressed

Toronto Raptors
Grade: D+

No team finished closer than four games in the standings to the Raptors (30-52), symbolic of their aimless position between the group competing for the play-in and those prioritizing lottery positioning. Toronto couldn't avoid going 12-12 in March and April against a historically weak schedule and will enter the lottery in the seventh spot. And while there were some development success stories, including Ochai Agbaji and undrafted rookie Jamison Battle, the most important Raptors (Scottie Barnes and Immanuel Quickley) saw their progress stalled by injuries.

https://www.espn.com/nba/insider/story/_/id/44687567/grades-all-30-nba-teams-2024-25-regular-season

Eh, switching Pascal for Ingram + Ochai is pretty good in my books.

That first sentence is a **** bar.

They nailed it, yet people here think this was:
1) the plan
2) a good plan

[mdenny]

It's really all about the Ingram trade. Everything else is kinda blah.

Concerns about the scotty and iQ contracts are kinda ho-hum imo. Toronto has to over-pay. Scotty was gonna get the max just like every other successful pick from his draft year. Was IQ overpaid? Perhaps by 5 milly per year or so. I bet it will turn out fine. It would be unrealistic to get him for say 10 milly less per year.

Bad contracts are not bad contracts because someone is paid 5 milly per year more than their worth. Bad contracts are when someone is paid 20 to 40 million more than their worth.

The Ingram trade plus the wildly successful 2024 draft are the REAL issues.

We added 4 prospects into the team that all probably land in the 30 rookie list league wide. That is an absolute BOON. Might go down as the second or third best draft in franchise history. Remember when everyone was saying the season was wasted when we conveyed to the Spurs?

Tankers are in love with draft picks as an abstract concept. If you get an undrafted player who's in the top 30 rookies....they don't count that as a FRP in retrospect. But that's exactly what it is.

We essentially had 4 late FRPs last summer. Why aren't the tankers happy about that? Everyone ready to gobble Presti's nuts because he has 3 late FRPs this summer.

If he ends up with equivalents to Shead/mogbo/battle/Walter from having 4 FRPs and we ended up having them because we drafted well....WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE?

So that draft last summer is a potentially franchise altering moment.

Ingram is the big move. The same cynics who spent an entire year hating on the siakam trade were told time and time again about the FLEXIBILITY we got in return. And they made a million posts about how it was all bullcrap.

Well it wasn't bullcrap. We got Ingram with that flexibility.

So we have 5 solid starters. 5 solid prospects. A variety of contract sizes (that can be mixed and matched in multiple ways for matching salaries for a trade). All of our future draft picks. And a top 10 pick coming our way.

We don't have any bad contracts. The WORST contract we have MIGHT be a slight overpay (no more than 5 milly per year).

I've said it multiple times....if we hit on this upcoming pick....we are gonna be amongst the top 5 teams in the league poised to make a consolidation trade.

Yes we're not OKC or Houston. Those two teams are in the best positions for the consolidation trade. But we're top 5.

I'd rather be us than the NYK right now. They blew their build on a very underwhelming final product and now they've got nowhere to go. 2 or 3 inefficient long-term contracts. A non-winning star in KAT. A usage dependent Brunson. No more picks to trade. Lost their roster depth. Maxed out. It's looking like the Bridges trade was where they really dropped the ball. The OG trade was where they really stopped dribbling the ball (had to).

In retrospect....they would've been way better off getting Ingram instead of bridges. And they wouldn't have had to give up all their picks to do it. We got Ingram for next to nothing. The knicks paid an absurd return for Bridges.

They got like 2 to 3 seasons of being stuck as the 3 seed in the east. So their only hope is to hit on some good fortune for a playoff run the next 3 springs before things start falling apart.

[raptoradical]

I’ve more or less become more of a lurker on this board over the last couple years, but I see things from a different angle with Masai. IMO I think what Masai is trying to build is going to be ridiculous, but it’s far from done… I see the vision though. It might not be done in the way that people expect or want, and to say this teams future doesn’t look more talented than ever for this generation in the NBA is a straight misconception, he definitely shut MLSE up with any talks of getting rid of him. The dude brought in BI out of nowhere, who would’ve anticipated that. To me it looks like Masai is board lined obsessed with making this team great.

I think he loves the fans but at this same time he has nothing to prove to them, but just to himself. You have to take in what he says. He said outside of his family the raptors is the most important thing to him.

In terms of the whole tanking thing, I believe for what he wants to accomplish you can’t fully tank if your goal is to also develop and allow your team to be prepared for the next season ahead, specially if you take your team serious in real time. His eye is STILL on another championship, can’t forget that. Seems like people thinks he just talks just to talk. Never underestimate somebody that came from nothing.