With the 9th Pick, the Raptors select Collin Murray-Boyles!

[grant101]

I'm still waiting to hear who the clear higher upside pick was in this situation?

The only case I can see someone making is Coward or Yang. They’re both fairly niche cases to make though, even though I’m more than willing to entertain the Yang argument

[HumbleRen]

Scottie has CMB beat from a physical profile standpoint, but CMB has Scottie beat in advanced metrics.

At the very least, he'll be a serviceable rotation player. His floor seems higher than a lot of other options at 9.

I think the key difference is functional athleticism.

Scottie beat both Cooper and CMB in standardize athleticism testing but Cooper and CMB are much better functional basketball athletes. They don’t have Scottie’s high hips, they’re able to get much lower to the ground.

CMB will be a better scorer than Scottie, even without the jumpshot.

[Duffman100]

I'm still waiting to hear who the clear higher upside pick was in this situation?

Khaman Maluach obviously at age 18, 7'2 and mobile is the highest upside pick.

Cases can be made for Carter Bryant and Cedric Coward who both project as better shooters and have defensive upside.

CMB has really limited two-way upside mainly because he isn't a crazy athlete and is undersize for his position. He's about a Grant Williams sized PF.

Hes a much more skilled Grant Williams. Size or not, skill matters a ton.

And very debatable on all 3.

Malauch has his warts despite his size
Cedric Coward is already 22.
Carter Bryant had limited playing time and zero self creation tools

I don't see any of the 3 of them having clear higher upside that CMB.

[tsherkin]

I'm not saying it's inherently wrong, but we've not seen a lot of success trying to teach guys to shoot, so I'd like to see us try something different for a while.

I wish the guy success, seems like a good kid, I'm just bothered by how poor of a shooting team we are that's all. If they manage to teach him how to shoot like 36% from the corners, I'll be a happy camper.

I'm with Scase here in terms of pessimism over teaching guys how to shoot. It's not actually that common to be able to take a guy who sucks and turn him into a competent shooter, so that's concerning for various reasons.

I'm still waiting to hear who the clear higher upside pick was in this situation?

That's an interesting question. The counter would be... what if the other option was to move the pick and try to acquire an asset other than a pick?

I guess I'd be a little more sanguine about the pick if we had a clearer plan on offense, and if we didn't have Scottie, you know? Because right now, we're stacked up pretty deep on guys who don't look like much on offense, while still having weak frontcourt depth and a lot of questions basically everywhere else.

That said, we just won 30 games, so we weren't going to fix everything overnight. More moves to come, I should hope. And as you said in a later post, lots of warts on all of the other guys projected around the same spot.

But it's just hard to get excited for another undersized big with a crap J. I think I'd have preferred to take a flier on Maluach, regardless of projections of All-Defensive potential for CMB.

[ConSarnit]

To complain. Which to YP's point is sometimes just not people's cup of tea.

To me, I can't control this. Masai has a fantastic drafting record. Funny that I see a few of the same names that claimed Barnes was a disaster pick.

It's okay to just not know and wait to see what happens.

I don’t have a problem taking BPA. If that’s CMB that’s fine. Here’s the thing with the Barnes draft comp: Barnes had a lot of fit questions and we were told to take a “wait and see” approach. What happened? His fit with our best player (Siakam) didn’t work out, the team slogged along and eventually the team had to be remodeled.

Drafting a non-shooting PF whose game doesn’t fit with our current max salary, face of the franchise PF. We’ve seen this story before. All current signs point to this team not working and that’s not exactly encouraging considering we just put together this version of the roster.

We went BPA. BPA also happens to probably be the worst possible fit with the “face of franchise”. That kills some of the excitement.

I completely disagree that the fit with Siakam and Barnes was much of an issue. They didn't have an ideal roster around them with both a non shooting big and PG, yet that was Barnes best season and he made all star team (and fell off after Siakam left) while Siakams last 30 games was one of the best stretches of his career.

How did it work? It only worked when Siakam played C and that wasn’t sustainable. Barnes couldn’t play the 3 because he doesn’t have the foot speed to guard the wing full-time nor the shooting needed. Did you watch the games where the other teams guarded Barnes with their C and left him wide open at the 3pt line?

Our half-court offense in the “Barnes-Siakam” heyday was terrible and we only won because we played a crazy aggressive defense that forced TO’s and we controlled the possession game. The defense then fell apart because it was unsustainable and the offense doesn’t work at high level. The vast majority of any Barnes-Siakam success was scheme related and everything fell apart once the scheme was no longer tenable. When Poeltl was added we just ramped up the TO and Oreb game to even more extremes. When we switched schemes under Darko the entire thing fell apart.

I also firmly believe Barnes all-star birth was almost solely based on unsustainable shooting and the premature belief he had made the “leap”. He got hot from 3 for 2 months (100 total 3pa) and then fell back to earth (shot 32% on 200+ 3pa in the second half of the season). By the end of the season his shooting at cratered and we saw that carry over to this season.

[dagger]

A couple of random thoughts:

-I thought Chomche was beginning to come around when he got hurt, and his injury seemed like just enough to sideline him but not serious enough to affect his career. By March, the 905 were clearly a better team when he was on the court. We even saw a three pointer. I'm not done with him. He's still just 19 until December, and if the management group likes how he progressed, it may we have influenced their view of Maluach, who would have been a long-term project as well but at a much, much higher risk and financial exposure.

-People talk about Mogbo and CMB playing together, but I think it's one or the other, and unless Mogbo improves a tonne, I think he's trade fodder. The bigger issues for me are 1) is IQ is the type of PG the Raptors need,does he set the table for guys like Scottie, CMB, Poeltl, etc or is he better off as sixth man, and 2) can one of our young wings improve enough to become a serious scoring threat as the team rotates up in the standings and opponents gear up for them.

[NinjaBro]

I'm still waiting to hear who the clear higher upside pick was in this situation?

Cedric Coward

[bartron_44]

With a MUCH bigger need at the 5 than the 3/4, passing on the 18 year old 7 footer seems very odd to me. CMB is another guy people can slack off of on defense unless he has the ball in the paint. So instead if drafting a potential upgrade at the starting 5, they took someone who will never crack the starting 5 unless they change Cs . As you cant have 2+ guys on the floor who cant shoot anymore. And really the only guy that doesn’t cause a problem is your primary ball handler. Just Poeltl alone already hurts them offensively against good teams.

Imo the 5 is where they really need an upgrade to get back go being a 50+ win team again. And another quality 3rd string pg incase of injury.

[Drakeem]

People are taking CMB's reaction the wrong way. He literally smiled right after his f bomb. These kids are having their dreams come true in the moment. I'm sure all of us when our dreams happen will not be thinking about nuances. It's going to be expressing your emotions of disbelief. You're going to curse lol. Either way I'm excited to have a rugged forward on the squad who can dribble, pass and has some shooting touch in the midrange. Yes, stretching his jumpshot to the 3 point line will be important, but I'm not worried about that right now. He's already stated that he's working on his mechanic and building it out. I'm excited to see him and Scottie terrorize on defense though.

Thing is ....No one will ever know what he was truely feeling....Just like you and people reading his reaction was disbelief as if you know that is a fact....Is the same thing you are getting mad at from people who read it that he looked genuinly upset....No one will know but him....And everyone has the right to interpret the way they interpret it....

Alot of people thought his reaction was upset/disappointment, Some think it was shock/disbelief....We will never know the real answer so trying to also say for sure you know his true reaction is just as bad as the people you are saying are taking his reaction the wrong way.

He worked out for us, apparently had dinners with Bobby/Masai about being drafted to Toronto, and everything after the viral moment indicates he's happy to be here. At this point there's not much to question.

[ishoy123]

Couldn't have said it better myself.

A big problem is CMB’s average outcome puts us in a spot where he can’t play with our franchise player (Barnes) if we want to have any semblance of a good offense. Even his “good” outcome (reaching Siakam level shooting) and the fit doesn’t really work (as we’ve seen). Even the Draymond upside has issues. Draymond couldn’t really play small ball C full-time because of the wear and tear. No undersized player has really ever been able to do it effectively full-time.

If we are committed to Barnes then for this to work we pretty much need a 95% outcome from CMB and those odds aren’t great. You can say “BPA” but BPA at 9 is different than at 2. If you rate CMB 86/100 and someone else 84/100 then yeah, you’ve taken the best player but is that 2/100 difference worth it when the fit with your franchise player is bad? It’s not as simple as BPA imo. Some aspect of fit should be considered if we are committed to Barnes.

I think Masai isn't convinced Barnes is the guy, and he's taking as many stabs at finding that key piece as he can within the confines of the possibilities in front of him.

What stood out is the Raptors raving about CMB's court vision/understanding, which can help a lot of the spacing issues.

[HangTime]

This is huge, CMB allows Scottie to balance his energy between offence and defence.

[Stromile12]

I'm rolling with CMB, let's get it

[ConSarnit]

Couldn't have said it better myself.

A big problem is CMB’s average outcome puts us in a spot where he can’t play with our franchise player (Barnes) if we want to have any semblance of a good offense. Even his “good” outcome (reaching Siakam level shooting) and the fit doesn’t really work (as we’ve seen). Even the Draymond upside has issues. Draymond couldn’t really play small ball C full-time because of the wear and tear. No undersized player has really ever been able to do it effectively full-time.

If we are committed to Barnes then for this to work we pretty much need a 95% outcome from CMB and those odds aren’t great. You can say “BPA” but BPA at 9 is different than at 2. If you rate CMB 86/100 and someone else 84/100 then yeah, you’ve taken the best player but is that 2/100 difference worth it when the fit with your franchise player is bad? It’s not as simple as BPA imo. Some aspect of fit should be considered if we are committed to Barnes.

I think Masai isn't convinced Barnes is the guy, and he's taking as many stabs at finding that key piece as he can within the confines of the possibilities in front of him.

If this is true why are we trading for Ingram? If Barnes isn’t the guy why are we building a team around him?

If the FO doesn’t believe Barnes is the guy why are we cobbling together a mediocre team around him? Trade Barnes or tear this thing down. What’s the point of hanging on to him? Getting rid of him doesn’t preclude us from finding someone else and keeping him makes little sense if he’s not “the guy”, especially if you are drafting a similarly flawed new “guy” in CMB.

[ConSarnit]

This is huge, CMB allows Scottie to balance his energy between offence and defence.

Is CMB going to teach Barnes how to shoot? Because that’s what’s holding back his offense right now.

We’ve also never asked Barnes to anchor the defense so I don’t get how he’s using up all his energy at that end.

[Drakeem]

A big problem is CMB’s average outcome puts us in a spot where he can’t play with our franchise player (Barnes) if we want to have any semblance of a good offense. Even his “good” outcome (reaching Siakam level shooting) and the fit doesn’t really work (as we’ve seen). Even the Draymond upside has issues. Draymond couldn’t really play small ball C full-time because of the wear and tear. No undersized player has really ever been able to do it effectively full-time.

If we are committed to Barnes then for this to work we pretty much need a 95% outcome from CMB and those odds aren’t great. You can say “BPA” but BPA at 9 is different than at 2. If you rate CMB 86/100 and someone else 84/100 then yeah, you’ve taken the best player but is that 2/100 difference worth it when the fit with your franchise player is bad? It’s not as simple as BPA imo. Some aspect of fit should be considered if we are committed to Barnes.

I think Masai isn't convinced Barnes is the guy, and he's taking as many stabs at finding that key piece as he can within the confines of the possibilities in front of him.

If this is true why are we trading for Ingram? If Barnes isn’t the guy why are we building a team around him?

If the FO doesn’t believe Barnes is the guy why are we cobbling together a mediocre team around him? Trade Barnes or tear this thing down. What’s the point of hanging on to him? Getting rid of him doesn’t preclude us from finding someone else and keeping him makes little sense if he’s not “the guy”, especially if you are drafting a similarly flawed new “guy” in CMB.

Because tearing it down can lead you down the road where you're just drafting guys like Barnes and Ingram (4th and 2nd pick respectively). Masai has always been in the asset accumulation business and tried to flip players for people who might do better in a new situation before flipping them again. Get as many assets and prospects as possible and hope the road for improvement opens itself up.

[HangTime]

This is huge, CMB allows Scottie to balance his energy between offence and defence.

Is CMB going to teach Barnes how to shoot? Because that’s what’s holding back his offense right now.

We’ve also never asked Barnes to anchor the defense so I don’t get how he’s using up all his energy at that end.

Darko will help CMB with his shooting.

I think Scottie can already shoot, It's the balance that was thrown off when OG was traded, he leaned more of his energy to defence.

I think Energy balance between offence and defence is completely overlooked by people.

[Rapsfan07]

A big problem is CMB’s average outcome puts us in a spot where he can’t play with our franchise player (Barnes) if we want to have any semblance of a good offense. Even his “good” outcome (reaching Siakam level shooting) and the fit doesn’t really work (as we’ve seen). Even the Draymond upside has issues. Draymond couldn’t really play small ball C full-time because of the wear and tear. No undersized player has really ever been able to do it effectively full-time.

If we are committed to Barnes then for this to work we pretty much need a 95% outcome from CMB and those odds aren’t great. You can say “BPA” but BPA at 9 is different than at 2. If you rate CMB 86/100 and someone else 84/100 then yeah, you’ve taken the best player but is that 2/100 difference worth it when the fit with your franchise player is bad? It’s not as simple as BPA imo. Some aspect of fit should be considered if we are committed to Barnes.

I think Masai isn't convinced Barnes is the guy, and he's taking as many stabs at finding that key piece as he can within the confines of the possibilities in front of him.

If this is true why are we trading for Ingram? If Barnes isn’t the guy why are we building a team around him?

If the FO doesn’t believe Barnes is the guy why are we cobbling together a mediocre team around him? Trade Barnes or tear this thing down. What’s the point of hanging on to him? Getting rid of him doesn’t preclude us from finding someone else and keeping him makes little sense if he’s not “the guy”, especially if you are drafting a similarly flawed new “guy” in CMB.

My thoughts exactly.

Not sure how to understand this other than there seems to be some confusion at the top.

Draymond Green is one of the best players of all time but a team with three guys like him isn't going to win anything and this is assuming Barnes, Mogbo and now CMB all get there, which is far from a guarantee.

But then they bring in Ingram and pay him as well.

It just doesn't make any sense. I would take the 84/100 player over the 86/100 player if the 84/100 player fit better with who I believe my core guys are.

[PushDaRock]

I don’t have a problem taking BPA. If that’s CMB that’s fine. Here’s the thing with the Barnes draft comp: Barnes had a lot of fit questions and we were told to take a “wait and see” approach. What happened? His fit with our best player (Siakam) didn’t work out, the team slogged along and eventually the team had to be remodeled.

Drafting a non-shooting PF whose game doesn’t fit with our current max salary, face of the franchise PF. We’ve seen this story before. All current signs point to this team not working and that’s not exactly encouraging considering we just put together this version of the roster.

We went BPA. BPA also happens to probably be the worst possible fit with the “face of franchise”. That kills some of the excitement.

I completely disagree that the fit with Siakam and Barnes was much of an issue. They didn't have an ideal roster around them with both a non shooting big and PG, yet that was Barnes best season and he made all star team (and fell off after Siakam left) while Siakams last 30 games was one of the best stretches of his career.

Siakam was getting better at 3 towards the end of his Raptors tenure too, but I can’t imagine any team doing well with a poo poo platter rotation of Precious, Malachi, Dennis Schroder, GTJr and a revolving rotation of low-end NBA journeymen. Pretty much none of the guys we played are doing anything now..Svi, Yuta, Birch, Dowtin, etc.

Ideally our old core would have all been moved down a peg but we did them no favours surrounding them with the trash we did.

[ConSarnit]

This is huge, CMB allows Scottie to balance his energy between offence and defence.

Is CMB going to teach Barnes how to shoot? Because that’s what’s holding back his offense right now.

We’ve also never asked Barnes to anchor the defense so I don’t get how he’s using up all his energy at that end.

Darko will help CMB with his shooting.

I think Scottie can already shoot, It's the balance that was thrown off when OG was traded, he leaned more of his energy to defence.

I think Energy balance between offence and defence is completely overlooked by people.

Thousands of NBA players have been able to shoot and play defense at the same time. This is some of the worst excuse making for Barnes I’ve ever seen.

[PushDaRock]

I'm not saying it's inherently wrong, but we've not seen a lot of success trying to teach guys to shoot, so I'd like to see us try something different for a while.

I wish the guy success, seems like a good kid, I'm just bothered by how poor of a shooting team we are that's all. If they manage to teach him how to shoot like 36% from the corners, I'll be a happy camper.

I'm with Scase here in terms of pessimism over teaching guys how to shoot. It's not actually that common to be able to take a guy who sucks and turn him into a competent shooter, so that's concerning for various reasons.

I'm still waiting to hear who the clear higher upside pick was in this situation?

That's an interesting question. The counter would be... what if the other option was to move the pick and try to acquire an asset other than a pick?

I guess I'd be a little more sanguine about the pick if we had a clearer plan on offense, and if we didn't have Scottie, you know? Because right now, we're stacked up pretty deep on guys who don't look like much on offense, while still having weak frontcourt depth and a lot of questions basically everywhere else.

That said, we just won 30 games, so we weren't going to fix everything overnight. More moves to come, I should hope. And as you said in a later post, lots of warts on all of the other guys projected around the same spot.

But it's just hard to get excited for another undersized big with a crap J. I think I'd have preferred to take a flier on Maluach, regardless of projections of All-Defensive potential for CMB.

I have the same concerns but Bobby made it pretty clear we are still in the talent acquisition phase and that takes priority over fit. I just assume they were a lot higher on CMB than they were everyone else still available that might have fit the current roster better.