Grange: Former Raptors' success a reminder of the road not taken

[ConSarnit]

OG, Pascal, and Fred where not the problem. Infact in 2023, a line up of Fred-OG-Barnes-Siakam-Poeltl had a net rating of +8.6 and kept up with other starting line ups just fine... it was the bench which was the issue. We legit got killed whenever our bench came in.

Hard to build a bench after youve paid all of your top guys. Wouldve been even more difficult after giving raises to all of them, including Barnes. FO was right to trade them but dumb not to forsee the problems. They took too long and got worse deals than they should have

I mean, did they? Something to consider. Our team went 15-11 after acquiring Poeltl. Looks good on the surface but we played some terrible competition. Here are our 15 wins during that period:

DET x3 (17-65)
CHA x2 (27-55)
WAS x2 (35-47, Beal played in 1 of those games)
CHI (40-42)
NOP (42-40, no Zion)
ORL (34-48)
OKC (40-42)
MIN (42-40, no Towns or Edwards)
MIL (58-24, no Giannis, Middleton, Jrue or Lopez)
MIA (44-38, no Butler)
DEN (53-29)

So we beat one .500 level team during that stretch? (NOP was below .500 on the season without Zion). Even if we shored up the bench our team had a limited ceiling.

My post may seem nitpicky but after we acquired Poeltl all that we did was ramp up Nurse-ball. We offensive rebounded more, forced more turnovers and controlled the possession game even more so than earlier that season. Our half-court offense still sucked. None of it was actually sustainable for long term success. To be a good team post-2023 we probably would have had to made significant roster changes that weren't just bench related if we wanted to be a successful playoff team.

[YogurtProducer]

When you strip all the narrative away you’ve got the 2 former Raptors of this matchup both playing PF, and the rookie we kept also plays… PF. Sometimes the Xs and Os just don’t work.

OG of course could have worked as a wing here but he didn’t want to, and that I think is the main shame of the thing. He wasn’t that far from Scottie’s timeline.

Real question is heading into next season if you could pick one of Siakam/OG/Barnes which one would you actually want.

Siakam is to old, but I feel like OG might slowly become the actual answer. Paying that much for a supporting player is kind of gross, but OG's defence and fit next to Ingram/Poeltl in the front court is probably the best basketball wise. Unless Barnes takes a leap of course.

Barnes' defense is also very highly rated, even if it's not DPOY level like OG's is, and Barnes is still a better offensive player than OG and brings more overall to the table.

Preferring OG over him is wild. OG works in NYC because all the other pieces are already in place. Barnes is a superior foundational piece even if he's been disappointing.

IDK if Barnes is the foundational piece anymore. In terms of offensive importance I view him below Ingram, and possibly even IQ at this point. Whoever we draft at #9 could also surpass him offensively.

Agree defensively though, although I dont think he is quite OG level yet. OG's shooting is pretty massive to an offense however.

If Barnes takes a leap to be a true offensive option this all changes, but if Barnes gets relegated to a defense first player it does make you wonder on OG.

[YogurtProducer]

OG, Pascal, and Fred where not the problem. Infact in 2023, a line up of Fred-OG-Barnes-Siakam-Poeltl had a net rating of +8.6 and kept up with other starting line ups just fine... it was the bench which was the issue. We legit got killed whenever our bench came in.

Hard to build a bench after youve paid all of your top guys. Wouldve been even more difficult after giving raises to all of them, including Barnes. FO was right to trade them but dumb not to forsee the problems. They took too long and got worse deals than they should have

I mean, did they? Something to consider. Our team went 15-11 after acquiring Poeltl. Looks good on the surface but we played some terrible competition. Here are our 15 wins during that period:

We also added a new prett key cog to a team 3/4's of a way through a season and still went from a 38 win pace to a 47 win pace. Quality of competition matters, but that was still the same core of a team that won 48 games the year prior. Realistically if we managed to re-sign FVV you go into 2023-24 with expectations to win high 40s / low 50s games.

So we beat one .500 level team during that stretch? (NOP was below .500 on the season without Zion). Even if we shored up the bench our team had a limited ceiling.

Sure, you play who is in front of you. We also lost close road games with contenders in DEN/LAC/LAL on a road trip, hung around with a healthy MIL, played a healthy PHI close, etc. (and had bad losses vs the Celtics C team lol). But in 26 games it honestly is hard to get any sort of good grasp on a team. During that stretch we mostly played bottom 5-10 and top 5-10 teams. We pretty much performed as one would expect in most games.

My post may seem nitpicky but after we acquired Poeltl all that we did was ramp up Nurse-ball. We offensive rebounded more, forced more turnovers and controlled the possession game even more so than earlier that season. Our half-court offense still sucked. None of it was actually sustainable for long term success.

Nurse-ball kind of works though is the whole point. You can be untalented offensively but controlling the possession game means you are going to have a high floor and be in a prime position to add that scorer who can take you over the top.

To be a good team post-2023 we probably would have had to made significant roster changes that weren't just bench related if we wanted to be a successful playoff team.

Yeah, sure, any team who is not an immediate contender needs to make significant roster changes. The bench would have been a great start to get us to a perennial playoff team floor, and then you can use these higher salaried players and picks to try and grab a true start.

Maybe you still trade OG for IQ/RJ in 2023/24, retain GTJ, and move FVV + picks for an upgrade (to start IQ). Completely hypothetical obviously but it is not like we were locked 100% into those 5-6 guys forever.

[ConSarnit]

Hard to build a bench after youve paid all of your top guys. Wouldve been even more difficult after giving raises to all of them, including Barnes. FO was right to trade them but dumb not to forsee the problems. They took too long and got worse deals than they should have

I mean, did they? Something to consider. Our team went 15-11 after acquiring Poeltl. Looks good on the surface but we played some terrible competition. Here are our 15 wins during that period:

We also added a new prett key cog to a team 3/4's of a way through a season and still went from a 38 win pace to a 47 win pace. Quality of competition matters, but that was still the same core of a team that won 48 games the year prior. Realistically if we managed to re-sign FVV you go into 2023-24 with expectations to win high 40s / low 50s games.

So we beat one .500 level team during that stretch? (NOP was below .500 on the season without Zion). Even if we shored up the bench our team had a limited ceiling.

Sure, you play who is in front of you. We also lost close road games with contenders in DEN/LAC/LAL on a road trip, hung around with a healthy MIL, played a healthy PHI close, etc. (and had bad losses vs the Celtics C team lol). But in 26 games it honestly is hard to get any sort of good grasp on a team. During that stretch we mostly played bottom 5-10 and top 5-10 teams. We pretty much performed as one would expect in most games.

My post may seem nitpicky but after we acquired Poeltl all that we did was ramp up Nurse-ball. We offensive rebounded more, forced more turnovers and controlled the possession game even more so than earlier that season. Our half-court offense still sucked. None of it was actually sustainable for long term success.

Nurse-ball kind of works though is the whole point. You can be untalented offensively but controlling the possession game means you are going to have a high floor and be in a prime position to add that scorer who can take you over the top.

To be a good team post-2023 we probably would have had to made significant roster changes that weren't just bench related if we wanted to be a successful playoff team.

Yeah, sure, any team who is not an immediate contender needs to make significant roster changes. The bench would have been a great start to get us to a perennial playoff team floor, and then you can use these higher salaried players and picks to try and grab a true start.

Maybe you still trade OG for IQ/RJ in 2023/24, retain GTJ, and move FVV + picks for an upgrade (to start IQ). Completely hypothetical obviously but it is not like we were locked 100% into those 5-6 guys forever.

What's the point of building that team if we are just flipping most of them anyways? We couldn't have afforded all of the core. How do we move FVV when he literally walked that off-season as a UFA? He wasn't under contract anymore and clearly we weren't interested in matching HOU's offer. Your FVV plan doesn't work so all you're basically doing is adding Siakam back to the current roster in place of Ingram and we all know the Barnes/Siakam/Poeltl front line is suboptimal.

We built a team that was in too much flux (I said this at the time) because of the status of our free agents. Of the core 6 we had 4 players facing UFA over a 2 year period. We were never going to be able to afford all of them and it was easily foreseeable that high demand, plug and play guys like FVV and OG were prime candidates to get overpaid. This doesn't even touch on the questionable fit of a Barnes/Siakam/Poeltl front court. FVV, OG and Siakam were/are good players but it was easy to see a crunch coming from a salary and ceiling standpoint and we should have pivoted earlier.

[ciueli]

Raptors 2021-22 Season players listed as guards:
Fred VanVleet
Gary Trent Jr.
Dalano Banton
Armoni Brooks
Goran Dragic
Malachi Flynn
David Johnson
Tremont Waters

Raptors 2022-23 Season players listed as guards:
Fred VanVleet
Gary Trent Jr.
Dalano Banton
Will Barton
Jeff Dowtin
Malachi Flynn

Just looking at those lists explains everything about why this team failed for years, Fred was literally the only decent guard on the entire team, Masai built a team in a guard-driven league with one quality guard.

Was there a way to solve this problem while keeping Fred + OG + Pascal + Jak as the core? Maybe, but it almost certainly would have involved trading Scottie for a guard and young players as good as Scottie are rarely traded, it's a disaster if that player blows up into a superstar, very few teams ever risk it (see the endless talk about the Clippers giving up on SGA too soon).

[junot111]

Our reporters are such hacks, I have no idea why Grange titled his article this way to insinuate that we missed out on something. Most people aren't going to read it and see that he actually mostly talks about why they didn't work. Now we have 5 pages of the same tired discussion about why this core from 3 years ago didn't work

[YogurtProducer]

What's the point of building that team if we are just flipping most of them anyways?

Because that is how team building works? What was the point of keeping Demar for 5 straight years just to flip him?

We couldn't have afforded all of the core. How do we move FVV when he literally walked that off-season as a UFA? He wasn't under contract anymore and clearly we weren't interested in matching HOU's offer.

We very much had obvious plans to retain FVV for a lower $ point than what HOU ended up offering.

Your FVV plan doesn't work so all you're basically doing is adding Siakam back to the current roster in place of Ingram and we all know the Barnes/Siakam/Poeltl front line is suboptimal.

It definitely works. In theory, we could have kept FVV (at a reasonable $ amount we obviously had assumed we could do), still done a OG trade, or traded FVV later on. Re-signing FVV did not mean we were just gonna toss our hands up and say we are done making moves.

We built a team that was in too much flux (I said this at the time) because of the status of our free agents. Of the core 6 we had 4 players facing UFA over a 2 year period. We were never going to be able to afford all of them and it was easily foreseeable that high demand, plug and play guys like FVV and OG were prime candidates to get overpaid. This doesn't even touch on the questionable fit of a Barnes/Siakam/Poeltl front court. FVV, OG and Siakam were/are good players but it was easy to see a crunch coming from a salary and ceiling standpoint and we should have pivoted earlier.

Sure, and again if we kept FVV there is no telling what would have happened. Maybe we lock up Siakam immediately and still move Anunoby.

Besides, you can go look at any teams "core 6" and you will find they all have players facing UFA over a 2-year period. That is not uncommon, and it is exactly what any team that is not actively tanking or rebuilding (or an extreme outlier) will experience.

[djsunyc]

Raptors 2021-22 Season players listed as guards:
Fred VanVleet
Gary Trent Jr.
Dalano Banton
Armoni Brooks
Goran Dragic
Malachi Flynn
David Johnson
Tremont Waters

Raptors 2022-23 Season players listed as guards:
Fred VanVleet
Gary Trent Jr.
Dalano Banton
Will Barton
Jeff Dowtin
Malachi Flynn

Just looking at those lists explains everything about why this team failed for years, Fred was literally the only decent guard on the entire team, Masai built a team in a guard-driven league with one quality guard.

Was there a way to solve this problem while keeping Fred + OG + Pascal + Jak as the core? Maybe, but it almost certainly would have involved trading Scottie for a guard and young players as good as Scottie are rarely traded, it's a disaster if that player blows up into a superstar, very few teams ever risk it (see the endless talk about the Clippers giving up on SGA too soon).

if i remember rigtht, he had a deal for lillard that portland was ok with. they asked lillard if he wanted milwaukee or toronto and he picked milwaukee.

[ciueli]

Raptors 2021-22 Season players listed as guards:
Fred VanVleet
Gary Trent Jr.
Dalano Banton
Armoni Brooks
Goran Dragic
Malachi Flynn
David Johnson
Tremont Waters

Raptors 2022-23 Season players listed as guards:
Fred VanVleet
Gary Trent Jr.
Dalano Banton
Will Barton
Jeff Dowtin
Malachi Flynn

Just looking at those lists explains everything about why this team failed for years, Fred was literally the only decent guard on the entire team, Masai built a team in a guard-driven league with one quality guard.

Was there a way to solve this problem while keeping Fred + OG + Pascal + Jak as the core? Maybe, but it almost certainly would have involved trading Scottie for a guard and young players as good as Scottie are rarely traded, it's a disaster if that player blows up into a superstar, very few teams ever risk it (see the endless talk about the Clippers giving up on SGA too soon).

if i remember rigtht, he had a deal for lillard that portland was ok with. they asked lillard if he wanted milwaukee or toronto and he picked milwaukee.

Even if that deal goes through it would have put us in a difficult position with respect to the luxury tax given Lillard’s supermax contract and Scottie’s max extension., even just Lillard + Pascal + OG + Jak would have been cost prohibitive so I don’t see that as a solution. Looking at the Bucks it hasn’t worked for them and they have Giannis, we’re probably very lucky that deal didn’t go through, it still wouldn’t have addressed the lack of depth at the guard spots.

[Scase]

Our reporters are such hacks, I have no idea why Grange titled his article this way to insinuate that we missed out on something. Most people aren't going to read it and see that he actually mostly talks about why they didn't work. Now we have 5 pages of the same tired discussion about why this core from 3 years ago didn't work

Grange is just filling the void to justify his job IMO. He was one of the few to call out Masai that we should've tanked, and then releases this. Makes no damn sense lol.

[basketballto]

When do you reset that team? After 2019, the bubble, once we got Scotty, that summer, before/after that 2022 meeting?

I would have never made Van Fleet a point guard and moved him on earlier. Siakam as primary didn't work, Siakam as secondary with a worse primary didn't work.

None of these guys are on value contracts. I think Fred will be the first to drop in salary followed by OG.

[Brinbe]

Maybe things would've been different if they could've recruited Dame or another superstar to come play here to be the necessary leading man, but since they couldn't there was no point continuing on. It turned out for the best as that core was playoff fodder at best and no real threat to win anything.

We're a lot younger now and have more optionality in future years in terms of roster construction versus paying into the luxury tax for a Pascal/OG/FVV/Yak/'mystery vet Scottie gets traded for' core, which is disgusting.

[Dr Positivity]

Sounds like Nurse was not the problem, Masai firing him may have been dumb.

[duppyy]

Their kryptonite was a screaming child.

[aj174]

I wouldn't say that OG and Siakam are "cornerstone" pieces for their teams. Brunson and Haliburton are their cornerstone pieces. OG and Siakam are complementary pieces, but neither of them good enough to carry the offensive load.

We tried with Siakam as the number 1 option and our ceiling was a 1st round team, and then not even winning a play in game after that.

FVV, OG, Siakam are all pieces you need when you have your superstar. We already know that from 2019.

[binjumper]

This is telling. We'll never know the extent to which that locker room was broken. But man, it sounds rough. Also lol at Precious being there.

Who made the note? They ran it back and did nothing until Fred forced their hand.

Right? So they recognized an obvious issue, and then proceeded to trade for Jak and double down on this mess? Just more evidence that Masai hung onto these players longer than he should have.

The broken record never fails to play

[dTox]

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[ConSarnit]

When do you reset that team? After 2019, the bubble, once we got Scotty, that summer, before/after that 2022 meeting?

I would have never made Van Fleet a point guard and moved him on earlier. Siakam as primary didn't work, Siakam as secondary with a worse primary didn't work.

None of these guys are on value contracts. I think Fred will be the first to drop in salary followed by OG.

We should have reset right before the Poeltl trade. We were 5 games under .500 well over half way through the season. The Barnes/Siakam fit was proving to be less than ideal. Our offense relied on unsustainable principles. Within 15 months we were looking at 4 of our top 5 guys entering unrestricted free agency. FVV and OG were prime overpay targets because they fit anywhere. Way too many things were lining up against us by that point. We had a young (in theory) star who needed more time (before total salary got out of hand). We should have pulled the plug at that point. If Barnes had come out guns blazing (looking like a real #1) in ‘22/23 it may have made sense to keep things together but he didn’t and the rest of the team had too many uncertainties.

[Scase]

Who made the note? They ran it back and did nothing until Fred forced their hand.

Right? So they recognized an obvious issue, and then proceeded to trade for Jak and double down on this mess? Just more evidence that Masai hung onto these players longer than he should have.

The broken record never fails to play

Yeah, imagine talking about the literal topic of the thread, crazy idea.

[Jeremy Lin 7]

This core lost a Play-in to the Zach Lavine / DeRozan era Chicago Bulls

Stop holding onto the past. We've seen what the old core (Siakam, FVV, OG) was capable of. Why is this board so fixated on past relationships with their ex. Move on already.