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

[beanbag]

Grange's mom is a road not taken

His existence would seem to preclude that being true.

I meant in regards to me

[The Duke]

Conclusion:
- the core just didn’t work for many reasons
- everyone including players and management knew
- Masai still stupidly traded draft picks for Jak
- Masai wasted more time and eventually got owned in the Siakam, OG trades and general free agency

[ash_k]

Conclusion:
- the core just didn’t work for many reasons
- everyone including players and management knew
- Masai still stupidly traded draft picks for Jak
- Masai wasted more time and eventually got owned in the Siakam, OG trades and general free agency

- The management knew it so much they tried to get KD and thought they had Lillard.
- Had it not been for Darko's decision, the pick doesnt end up in the lottery 8th. But what is that 8th pick doing right now in Minnesota. So who is that player in that draft(8 and up) you would rather have instead of a double-double center in his prime?
-You call it "owned" when your Vice Chairman turns
OG and Pascal into
IQ, RJ, BI, Ja'Kobe, Ochai : You got 3 x 20pts scorers in there and all younger.

[tsherkin]

Grange's mom is a road not taken

His existence would seem to preclude that being true.

I meant in regards to me

Indeed.

[LoveMyRaps]

Conclusion:
- the core just didn’t work for many reasons
- everyone including players and management knew
- Masai still stupidly traded draft picks for Jak
- Masai wasted more time and eventually got owned in the Siakam, OG trades and general free agency

Owned my ass. Don’t be so ignorant.

[LoveMyRaps]

Read on Twitter

?s=46&t=PSy3Ch7pvG4ybe2MpvWFcw

Masai is GOATed for putting together this roster.

He’s done it before and he’ll do it again.

[TheGeneral99]

What people don't mention is how weak the East is right now.

Boston - Tatum injured.
Bucks - Lillard had injury issues and missed most of the playoffs.
Sixers - Embiid was out nearly the entire season.

So arguably the 3 best teams in the East basically dealt with injury issues to their top players.

This is why we see the Knicks and Pacers battling for the finals.

Meanwhile our Raptor squads in 2016-2018 had to go up against prime Lebron, Kyrie, Love etc.

[Anticon]

The only real path was to keep OG and Siakam as the core, maybe keeping Norm. Fred wasn't staying.

That would have required losing Barnes (unlikely they'd be willing to do), paying a ton for Pascal, and hoping you could keep OG (very unlikely).

So the only path was this team, minus Ingram, Ochai and Walter, with Pascal and Norm.

Quickley/Norm/Barrett/Siakam/Scottie/Poeltl/Dick isn't really much to get excited about, but is probably better than the current roster. Still an ugly lack of shooting in the front court.

I think the big issue is that everyone would know the team wasn't going to achieve much without a Kyle Lowry type player or an solid all star like Siakam and OG have now.

The real path not taken was not making the Poeltl trade and seeing what top 10 picks in 23/24 would have gotten them.

[ciueli]

The only real path was to keep OG and Siakam as the core, maybe keeping Norm. Fred wasn't staying.

That would have required losing Barnes (unlikely they'd be willing to do), paying a ton for Pascal, and hoping you could keep OG (very unlikely).

So the real path was this team, minus Ingram, Ochai and Walter, with Pascal and Norm.

Quickley/Norm/Barrett/Siakam/Scottie/Poeltl/Dick isn't really much to get excited about, but is probably better than the current roster. Still an ugly lack of shooting in the front court.

There was a path to keeping Pascal and building around him, but it likely meant drafting Suggs over Scottie. Assuming Masai did that, still did the Jak trade, and did the same OG trade, we'd might have a team that looks something like this:

PG: IQ
SG: Suggs
SF: Barrett
PF: Pascal
C: Jak

We'd probably still have Mogbo from the second round pick we got in the OG trade, but I doubt we'd have Shead because I don't think we would have been able to do the Kings trade. Assume we still take Gradey Dick in the 2023 draft, but we wouldn't have Ochai Agbagi or Ja'Kobe Walter due to keeping Pascal.

The last major variable is the 2022 pick, without ROY Scottie it's likely we miss the playoffs and land a lottery pick, so it's less likely we flip it to the Spurs for 33, there were a lot of good players in the 2022 draft, we could have wound up with any of Jalen Williams or Jalen Duren, possibly even Bennedict Mathurin or Shaedon Sharpe if the team was bad enough. Also possible we just get a player like Ochai Agbaji as Masai was clearly high on him, so the difference may not be as much as we would like to believe, it all depends on what kind of team success we would have been having with Suggs over Scottie and how that would have impacted draft picks and trade decisions on Masai's part.