Roster is a mess - missed draft picks are part of reason

[PushDaRock]

Those two moves in particular set the team back 10-15 years. It sounds ridiculous, I know, but I believe it's that bad.

The worst part is that I think both were orchestrated by our current and recently extended GM.

I say 100 years.

Not getting situational big Walker Kessler is demoralizing for this franchise. We might never recover.

Sorry, but thats just BS. We have seen franchises recover within two years and they were in worse situations.

Our problem right now is not the players we have, but the way we are playing. Against the Cavs it was a step forward, but all in all, we are bad because we play stupid. Its honestly the first time i think its Darko's fault.

lol you must have missed the sarcasm

[ATLTimekeeper]

Gradey needs the ball to score, so if he gets frozen out than there's no much for him to prove.

CMB is not a centre, let alone a starting C in the NBA. Darko is making him look much worse by throwing him to the wolves.

JaKobe is stuck behind Agbaji, but will eventually take that spot once they ship him out.

The team is a mess because of the starting line-up. They can't get their act together. The young players aren't in the pecking order at all.

[Rodrickle]

Our defense is always a mess without a large presence in the middle with at least adequate defensive presence. We're a totally different team with one. Our front office ignores this far too often. Get a competent backup for Poeltl that's actually 7 feet. Kalkbrenner or someone like that would have been perfect. Stretching the floor would be a nice bonus

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[Los_29]

To this day I am surprised they didn't take Keyshawn George. He seemed like a very Raptory pick. Tall, long arms, can shoot. The Canadian ties were a bonus.

Other than that (BTW, I like Jakobe), I am just frustrated that they didn't target more bigs.

Gradey Dick they should have stayed away from.

And for thoae of you saying "you named a bunch of guys that ptobably don't make this team any better at this moment". It comes down to more than that. You want assets. If you have a young guy who is showing promise in his 3rd year, you can utilize that player as a desired young asset in a trade package.

Nobody is lining up to take Gradey Dick off of our hands at this point. He is overpaid & doesn't fit the culture most teams are looking for. Maybe a team out there is desperate enough for shooting.......maybe.

You have a guy like Mamu making less than half of what Gradey is making & is a much more useful player. These are the types of contracts & players the Raptors need right now.

They need to trim some excess fat.

We are 5-6 games into the season. Numbers will start to come back down to earth. The guys drafted after Gradey have not been good. Some of them are also older than Gradey.

I hope he can turn it around as much as anyone, but lets be real here. It isn't about just this season. There has been a pretty big sample size.

He has had a couple if 13 game Bargnani type stretches since his rookie season, but here we are in his 3rd year & I am seeing the same horrific defense & unreliable offense. There has been no significant jump.

Oh no doubt to be concerned. My point is the guys we missed out on aren’t moving the needle for us.

[Shakril]

I say 100 years.

Not getting situational big Walker Kessler is demoralizing for this franchise. We might never recover.

Sorry, but thats just BS. We have seen franchises recover within two years and they were in worse situations.

Our problem right now is not the players we have, but the way we are playing. Against the Cavs it was a step forward, but all in all, we are bad because we play stupid. Its honestly the first time i think its Darko's fault.

lol you must have missed the sarcasm

I was not reacting to the post before that, the 10-15 years post. Not the 100.

[Basketball_Jones]

I don’t think Jakobe or Gradey are misses given the players selected after. Missi or Jaquez would certainly help us but those weren’t home run swings. CMB too early to tell but I felt him and Coward were the more safer picks and we went with another PF but he was BPA but all metrics.

[DelAbbot]

Trading for Thad and Jakob and throwing away picks set the team back for years

Those two moves in particular set the team back 10-15 years. It sounds ridiculous, I know, but I believe it's that bad.

The worst part is that I think both were orchestrated by our current and recently extended GM.

I want to really point out that the bad decisions are due to one organizational philosophy - always operate above the cap (below the luxury tax line) even during a rebuild.

It was all Bobby's idea to operate above the cap even after the teardown during Covid season. The justification was, slight overpay is fine, because Bobby believes it's good to have salary ballast ("slightly" negative value contracts) to enable them make that consolidation trade (young assets + ballast for 1 max-contract superstar), which never came. This attitude is the reason we outbid ourselves in giving Khem Birch 6.5M per for 3 years, which along with the Lowry for Goran Dragic sign & trade, pushed our 2021/2022 salary to just below the luxury tax - when GTJ's performance bonuses kicked in and threatening to push us over the luxury tax, Bobby was forced into a position to shed salary by trading Dragic for Thad - giving up a FRP that could have been Walker Kessler (who would be a vast upgrade over Poeltl today) or Andrew Nembhard (upgrade over IQ considering cost).

[YogurtProducer]

Trading for Thad and Jakob and throwing away picks set the team back for years

Those two moves in particular set the team back 10-15 years. It sounds ridiculous, I know, but I believe it's that bad.

The worst part is that I think both were orchestrated by our current and recently extended GM.

Come on man, nothing sets a franchise back 10-15 outside having 20 year old MJ and cutting him

[Harcore Fenton Mun]

Trading for Thad and Jakob and throwing away picks set the team back for years

Those two moves in particular set the team back 10-15 years. It sounds ridiculous, I know, but I believe it's that bad.

The worst part is that I think both were orchestrated by our current and recently extended GM.

I want to really point out that the bad decisions are due to one organizational philosophy - always operate above the cap (below the luxury tax line) even during a rebuild.

It was all Bobby's idea to operate above the cap even after the teardown during Covid season. The justification was, slight overpay is fine, because Bobby believes it's good to have salary ballast ("slightly" negative value contracts) to enable them make that consolidation trade (young assets + ballast for 1 max-contract superstar), which never came. This attitude is the reason we outbid ourselves in giving Khem Birch 6.5M per for 3 years, which along with the Lowry for Goran Dragic sign & trade, pushed our 2021/2022 salary to just below the luxury tax - when GTJ's performance bonuses kicked in and threatening to push us over the luxury tax, Bobby was forced into a position to shed salary by trading Dragic for Thad - giving up a FRP that could have been Walker Kessler (who would be a vast upgrade over Poeltl today) or Andrew Nembhard (upgrade over IQ considering cost).

I'm starting to think it's Bobby who's been giving out these bloated contracts. Why we fired one, but not the other...makes no sense.

[PushDaRock]

Trading for Thad and Jakob and throwing away picks set the team back for years

Those two moves in particular set the team back 10-15 years. It sounds ridiculous, I know, but I believe it's that bad.

The worst part is that I think both were orchestrated by our current and recently extended GM.

I want to really point out that the bad decisions are due to one organizational philosophy - always operate above the cap (below the luxury tax line) even during a rebuild.

It was all Bobby's idea to operate above the cap even after the teardown during Covid season. The justification was, slight overpay is fine, because Bobby believes it's good to have salary ballast ("slightly" negative value contracts) to enable them make that consolidation trade (young assets + ballast for 1 max-contract superstar), which never came. This attitude is the reason we outbid ourselves in giving Khem Birch 6.5M per for 3 years, which along with the Lowry for Goran Dragic sign & trade, pushed our 2021/2022 salary to just below the luxury tax - when GTJ's performance bonuses kicked in and threatening to push us over the luxury tax, Bobby was forced into a position to shed salary by trading Dragic for Thad - giving up a FRP that could have been Walker Kessler (who would be a vast upgrade over Poeltl today) or Andrew Nembhard (upgrade over IQ considering cost).

They clearly valued Thad Young who they saw as a vet who could also be a playoff rotation piece on a team lacking wing depth. They re-signed him as well, so it wasn't just a pure salary dump move in their minds. Obviously it didn't work out, but that's a different than it just being a pure salary dump.

Who's to say Masai didn't have Koloko over those guys anyways? It's a crapshoot after 20 and it's more eye of the beholder.

[DelAbbot]

Gradey Dick pick is an exhibit of multiple organizational failure.

1) Failure to recognize we had more to gain by selling off at the 2023 trade deadline, with a deep lottery record at the time - for a chance at Wemby, and to a lesser extent Miller/Thompson(s) - rather than trading a future FRP for Poeltl to go for a failure of a play-in vs Diar Derozan
2) After that play-in embarrassment vs Diar Derozan, the FO knee-jerk reacted in pivoting from drafting based on length & defense to only based on shooting, by picking Gradey Dick who profiled exactly the opposite of their last 8 years of drafting philosophy (which yielded many successes like PS, OG), passing on Keyonte George.

One bad decision snowballing into another.

[TorontoBarneys]

Sometimes tanking really hard for 2-3 years really is the answer. *shrug*

[DelAbbot]

Those two moves in particular set the team back 10-15 years. It sounds ridiculous, I know, but I believe it's that bad.

The worst part is that I think both were orchestrated by our current and recently extended GM.

I want to really point out that the bad decisions are due to one organizational philosophy - always operate above the cap (below the luxury tax line) even during a rebuild.

It was all Bobby's idea to operate above the cap even after the teardown during Covid season. The justification was, slight overpay is fine, because Bobby believes it's good to have salary ballast ("slightly" negative value contracts) to enable them make that consolidation trade (young assets + ballast for 1 max-contract superstar), which never came. This attitude is the reason we outbid ourselves in giving Khem Birch 6.5M per for 3 years, which along with the Lowry for Goran Dragic sign & trade, pushed our 2021/2022 salary to just below the luxury tax - when GTJ's performance bonuses kicked in and threatening to push us over the luxury tax, Bobby was forced into a position to shed salary by trading Dragic for Thad - giving up a FRP that could have been Walker Kessler (who would be a vast upgrade over Poeltl today) or Andrew Nembhard (upgrade over IQ considering cost).

They clearly valued Thad Young who they saw as a vet who could also be a playoff rotation piece on a team lacking wing depth. They re-signed him as well, so it wasn't just a pure salary dump move in their minds. Obviously it didn't work out, but that's a different than it just being a pure salary dump.

Who's to say Masai didn't have Koloko over those guys anyways? It's a crapshoot after 20 and it's more eye of the beholder.

There is 0 chance Masai was so focused on Koloko that he would have picked Koloko at 20th in the first round. There were strong rumors of them targetting Andrew Nembhard in the same group as Koloko - so dropping from 20th to 2nd round was detrimental to their choices

[DelAbbot]

Sometimes tanking really hard for 2-3 years really is the answer. *shrug*

This approach has seen success in recent history. Without talking about OKC, HOU demonstrated this is a very fruitful approach to building a contender

[Harcore Fenton Mun]

Sometimes tanking really hard for 2-3 years really is the answer. *shrug*

This approach has seen success in recent history. Without talking about OKC, the HOU demonstrated this is a very fruitful approach to building a contender

Yeah, but then you lose out on all that sweet, sweet post 2019 seat revenues.

[DelAbbot]

Sometimes tanking really hard for 2-3 years really is the answer. *shrug*

This approach has seen success in recent history. Without talking about OKC, the HOU demonstrated this is a very fruitful approach to building a contender

Yeah, but then you lose out on all that sweet, sweet post 2019 seat revenues.

That pre-2019 roster was very strong / full of value contracts, so strong that you shouldn't tear it down. After Kawhi left for nothing, we did run it back for 2019/2020, then (after Gasol became washed and Lowry aging) we should have tore it all down immediately instead of chasing a dream of Giannis coming here because Masai is his godfather or something.

[Harcore Fenton Mun]

This approach has seen success in recent history. Without talking about OKC, the HOU demonstrated this is a very fruitful approach to building a contender

Yeah, but then you lose out on all that sweet, sweet post 2019 seat revenues.

That pre-2019 roster was very strong / full of value contracts, so strong that you shouldn't tear it down. After Kawhi left for nothing, we did run it back for 2019/2020, then (after Gasol became washed and Lowry aging) we should have tore it all down immediately instead of chasing a dream of Giannis coming here because Masai is his godfather or something.

They sold hope to people who wanted to believe, and got rich.

[Godaddycurse]

Sometimes tanking really hard for 2-3 years really is the answer. *shrug*

This approach has seen success in recent history. Without talking about OKC, the HOU demonstrated this is a very fruitful approach to building a contender

houston is not a contender (yet), jury's still out on if they will get there with how imbalanced their roster is

[DelAbbot]

Sometimes tanking really hard for 2-3 years really is the answer. *shrug*

This approach has seen success in recent history. Without talking about OKC, the HOU demonstrated this is a very fruitful approach to building a contender

houston is not a contender (yet), jury's still out on if they will get there with how imbalanced their roster is

They executed the TWO's plan. Tank for a few years, accumulating several blue chip prospects, and clear cap space to sign vets to complement their blue chip prospects - then consolidate trade for a max-contract star to improve the fit of their roster (KD was a perfect fit, even though has age risk).

[PushDaRock]

I want to really point out that the bad decisions are due to one organizational philosophy - always operate above the cap (below the luxury tax line) even during a rebuild.

It was all Bobby's idea to operate above the cap even after the teardown during Covid season. The justification was, slight overpay is fine, because Bobby believes it's good to have salary ballast ("slightly" negative value contracts) to enable them make that consolidation trade (young assets + ballast for 1 max-contract superstar), which never came. This attitude is the reason we outbid ourselves in giving Khem Birch 6.5M per for 3 years, which along with the Lowry for Goran Dragic sign & trade, pushed our 2021/2022 salary to just below the luxury tax - when GTJ's performance bonuses kicked in and threatening to push us over the luxury tax, Bobby was forced into a position to shed salary by trading Dragic for Thad - giving up a FRP that could have been Walker Kessler (who would be a vast upgrade over Poeltl today) or Andrew Nembhard (upgrade over IQ considering cost).

They clearly valued Thad Young who they saw as a vet who could also be a playoff rotation piece on a team lacking wing depth. They re-signed him as well, so it wasn't just a pure salary dump move in their minds. Obviously it didn't work out, but that's a different than it just being a pure salary dump.

Who's to say Masai didn't have Koloko over those guys anyways? It's a crapshoot after 20 and it's more eye of the beholder.

There is 0 chance Masai was so focused on Koloko that he would have picked Koloko at 20th in the first round. There were strong rumors of them targetting Andrew Nembhard in the same group as Koloko - so dropping from 20th to 2nd round was detrimental to their choice availability

Again, they got Thad Young as well who they valued at the time.

Zero chance he goes off the board like he did with Caboclo?

They obviously really liked Koloko, not sure why it's so far fetched he still might have been their guy.