Zatzman: This era of the Raptors depends massively on Brandon Ingram

[Tripod]

My God certain people like to bitch about the same thing over and over.

[tsherkin]

My God certain people like to bitch about the same thing over and over.

We're into the toughest part of the off-season, man. There's no new information right now. No new moves to discuss, no games to watch. These are the dog days.

All we can really do is wait until the games start and see what we see when the changes take effect. Until then, though, people want to talk, and there isn't really any new ground over which to tread, unfortunately.

[ATLTimekeeper]

This isn’t the case if you have halfway competent management. OKC didn’t enter a prolonged tank, neither did Houston or San Antonio. What they did do is commit to the tank and gave themselves multiple opportunities in the draft to pick up talent and eventually trade for allstars. So even if Jalen Green doesn’t pan out with the second pick, you draft an allstar with the 16th pick. We should have been trying to draft the next Brandon Ingram and Poeltl, not trade for them.

OKC got Shai, and he blew up into an ATG-level MVP monster. I don't know that their strategy is relevant without mentioning that part, when they acquired a former 11th-overall pick for Miles Bridges and a pair of 2nd rounders...

That matters a lot more than basically anything else.

Ultimately none of it works without Paul George asking for a trade to one specific location, which had a prospect that wasn't good enough at the time and then became an MVP.

[JB7]

This isn’t the case if you have halfway competent management. OKC didn’t enter a prolonged tank, neither did Houston or San Antonio. What they did do is commit to the tank and gave themselves multiple opportunities in the draft to pick up talent and eventually trade for allstars. So even if Jalen Green doesn’t pan out with the second pick, you draft an allstar with the 16th pick. We should have been trying to draft the next Brandon Ingram and Poeltl, not trade for them.

OKC got Shai, and he blew up into an ATG-level MVP monster. I don't know that their strategy is relevant without mentioning that part, when they acquired a former 11th-overall pick for Miles Bridges and a pair of 2nd rounders...

That matters a lot more than basically anything else.

Yes, this, OKC lucked into SGA, and some respects J-Dub.

Houston and SAS also have the added benefit of being in Texas, a no state tax jurisdiction, so in addition to using draft picks to rebuild, they can also rely on signing players. Even still. Let's see how successful their rebuilds are before judging. Houston was the 2nd seed last year, but was then upset in the 1st round. Let's see what the Spurs can do with all of their luck (getting the 1st pick in the Wemby year, and the 2nd pick this past draft).

SAS, the only team to "luck" into the 1st pick overall in 3 drafts with superstar C's available (Robinson, Duncan & Wemby).

[StopitLeo]

If they were tanking on purpose...it makes it worse. That means they're bad at their job. They couldn't even do that right.

Aside from trading away all of their assets for draft picks, which leads to a prolonged and uncertain tank strategy, what else would you have proposed for them doing?

Just sitting their core 4 the whole year? I would imagine the league would punish them for that blatant of a tanking strategy.

This isn’t the case if you have halfway competent management. OKC didn’t enter a prolonged tank, neither did Houston or San Antonio. What they did do is commit to the tank and gave themselves multiple opportunities in the draft to pick up talent and eventually trade for allstars. So even if Jalen Green doesn’t pan out with the second pick, you draft an allstar with the 16th pick. We should have been trying to draft the next Brandon Ingram and Poeltl, not trade for them.

You are overly optimistic about the draft. Per ChatGPT, from 1992 to 2021 (30 drafts) only 37% of 2nd overall picks made an All-Star team in their career. Of non-lottery first round picks, that number drops to 8%.

Even if you hit on multiple draft picks that is no guarantee of success in the playoffs. The Sixers had two #1 and two #3 picks over a four year span ("The Process"); one of those picks made All-Rookie, two made All-NBA and All-Defense teams with one of those guys winning MVP. Their best playoff performance? Losing in the 2nd round.

[tsherkin]

You are overly optimistic about the draft. Per ChatGPT, from 1992 to 2021 (30 drafts) only 37% of 2nd overall picks made an All-Star team in their career. Of non-lottery first round picks, that number drops to 8%.

Even if you hit on multiple draft picks that is no guarantee of success in the playoffs. The Sixers had two #1 and two #3 picks over a four year span ("The Process"); one of those picks made All-Rookie, two made All-NBA and All-Defense teams with one of those guys winning MVP. Their best playoff performance? Losing in the 2nd round.

This is an important mention. The draft doesn't work the way it used to before the one-and-done era, and even then, it was pretty dicey. It's a gamble. You have better odds with higher picks... but we've also seen like a half-dozen years of flattened odds. We had odds not too different from the worst team. But it's worth remembering too that the worst team in the league used to have a 25% chance to win the lottery. And now the top 3 teams all have a 14% chance to win. That totally changes the utility of tanking. The difference between a 7% and 14% chance to win isn't so large that it's worth it to deconstruct all your team's assets and just give up on competence and your fans in order to sell out for that bottom slot.

And even if you DO win a bunch of top-3 picks, well, the return on those isn't the same as it used to be. There hasn't been much generational talent in the draft this past decade and a half in those top selections, and the best players have basically all been taken after the top 10, with only a couple of exceptions.

[ConSarnit]

Aside from trading away all of their assets for draft picks, which leads to a prolonged and uncertain tank strategy, what else would you have proposed for them doing?

Just sitting their core 4 the whole year? I would imagine the league would punish them for that blatant of a tanking strategy.

This isn’t the case if you have halfway competent management. OKC didn’t enter a prolonged tank, neither did Houston or San Antonio. What they did do is commit to the tank and gave themselves multiple opportunities in the draft to pick up talent and eventually trade for allstars. So even if Jalen Green doesn’t pan out with the second pick, you draft an allstar with the 16th pick. We should have been trying to draft the next Brandon Ingram and Poeltl, not trade for them.

You are overly optimistic about the draft. Per ChatGPT, from 1992 to 2021 (30 drafts) only 37% of 2nd overall picks made an All-Star team in their career. Of non-lottery first round picks, that number drops to 8%.

Even if you hit on multiple draft picks that is no guarantee of success in the playoffs. The Sixers had two #1 and two #3 picks over a four year span ("The Process"); one of those picks made All-Rookie, two made All-NBA and All-Defense teams with one of those guys winning MVP. Their best playoff performance? Losing in the 2nd round.

This argument doesn’t hold water because draft picks are not made in a vacuum. Sometimes Sam Presti has the 2nd overall pick. Sometimes David Kahn has the 2nd overall pick. If you have someone like Masai Ujiri drafting 2nd you’d expect well above average results.

The crux of tanking should be this: try and do what OKC did in 2022. Maximize your choices from the draft pool by tanking with your own pick and take chances with surplus picks acquired from your rebuild. It won’t always work out but the goal should be to give your FO (who is hopefully competent) multiple bites at the apple in the hopes of finding all-stars. That (was) the tanking argument for the Raptors: let our front office (who has a strong draft record) have multiple shots to find high level players. They won’t always hit on picks but if you’re tanking for 3 years they’ll have a much higher success rate if they have 5 1sts over that period as opposed to the traditional 3 1sts.

Tanking should equal: competent front office + multiple bites at the apple. It doesn’t work nearly as well if you only have one half of that equation.

Does a high pick guarantee success? No. But it does give a good FO the most choice.

[Harcore Fenton Mun]

The problem is the cap doesn't line up with our projections. If we didn't trade for Poeltl or BI, we'd just be younger and in a better position with more assets.

[JB7]

The problem is the cap doesn't line up with our projections. If we didn't trade for Poeltl or BI, we'd just be younger and in a better position with more assets.

What the hell does it matter about our spending lining up with our projections. Spending is the team using what levers it has to get better. The reason most teams passed up on BI was because they couldn't afford to pay him $40M. Raps could, and therefore got him for a cheap price.

If he performs well, which he is incentivized to do because his deal is 2 + option (clearly he wants to get back into FA), he helps the Raps in terms of the teams performance, and he potentially becomes a better asset to trade, if the right deal comes along.

The team is already mostly young players on their 1st, 2nd or 3rd years. How much younger do you want it to be? If it were any younger, they would be in no position to win.

Also on the amount teams spend. People should focus less on this, because all team are converging around the tax line ($188M for this season). I imagine most teams will probably be if not right near the tax line, they'll be within $10M to $20M of it.

[ConSarnit]

There is no justifying the Poeltl trade. It was clearly a win-now trade that had resulted in zero playoff appearances. The core in which he was meant to bolster is also pretty much completely dissolved.

Expecting a trade for a supporting cast player to guarantee postseason play seems... short-sighted to me, if I'm to be delicate about it.

The trade for Poeltl isn't a failure. The failure is the situation into which he was placed, and the development thereof. He's a fine player. He's a very useful, quality player, who clearly exerts a big impact on our team. What we need is other things to come through. Masai made some mistakes, to be sure, but that was not one of them.

Just put yourself in a world where you were told in Feb 2023 that the Poeltl trade would lead to ZERO playoff appearances over 3 seasons.

Poeltl is a good player and it’s not his fault we’ve performed poorly. It is undeniable that we have not gained ANY benefit from the Poeltl so far and it’s been 3 years. It was a win now trade that has resulted in zero playoff appearances.

What is one positive we’ve gained from the Poeltl trade over 3 years?

[JB7]

This isn’t the case if you have halfway competent management. OKC didn’t enter a prolonged tank, neither did Houston or San Antonio. What they did do is commit to the tank and gave themselves multiple opportunities in the draft to pick up talent and eventually trade for allstars. So even if Jalen Green doesn’t pan out with the second pick, you draft an allstar with the 16th pick. We should have been trying to draft the next Brandon Ingram and Poeltl, not trade for them.

You are overly optimistic about the draft. Per ChatGPT, from 1992 to 2021 (30 drafts) only 37% of 2nd overall picks made an All-Star team in their career. Of non-lottery first round picks, that number drops to 8%.

Even if you hit on multiple draft picks that is no guarantee of success in the playoffs. The Sixers had two #1 and two #3 picks over a four year span ("The Process"); one of those picks made All-Rookie, two made All-NBA and All-Defense teams with one of those guys winning MVP. Their best playoff performance? Losing in the 2nd round.

This argument doesn’t hold water because draft picks are not made in a vacuum. Sometimes Sam Presti has the 2nd overall pick. Sometimes David Kahn has the 2nd overall pick. If you have someone like Masai Ujiri drafting 2nd you’d expect well above average results.

The crux of tanking should be this: try and do what OKC did in 2022. Maximize your choices from the draft pool by tanking with your own pick and take chances with surplus picks acquired from your rebuild. It won’t always work out but the goal should be to give your FO (who is hopefully competent) multiple bites at the apple in the hopes of finding all-stars. That (was) the tanking argument for the Raptors: let our front office (who has a strong draft record) have multiple shots to find high level players. They won’t always hit on picks but if you’re tanking for 3 years they’ll have a much higher success rate if they have 5 1sts over that period as opposed to the traditional 3 1sts.

Tanking should equal: competent front office + multiple bites at the apple. It doesn’t work nearly as well if you only have one half of that equation.

Does a high pick guarantee success? No. But it does give a good FO the most choice.

To create that many opportunities in the draft, usually means the team is gutting its roster, to trade good players for those picks, and then to suck to get a high draft pick with their own pick.

Then you are counting on that strategy to pan out, otherwise you are the Pistons, Hornets, Wiz, etc.

[Pointgod]

This isn’t the case if you have halfway competent management. OKC didn’t enter a prolonged tank, neither did Houston or San Antonio. What they did do is commit to the tank and gave themselves multiple opportunities in the draft to pick up talent and eventually trade for allstars. So even if Jalen Green doesn’t pan out with the second pick, you draft an allstar with the 16th pick. We should have been trying to draft the next Brandon Ingram and Poeltl, not trade for them.

OKC got Shai, and he blew up into an ATG-level MVP monster. I don't know that their strategy is relevant without mentioning that part, when they acquired a former 11th-overall pick for Miles Bridges and a pair of 2nd rounders...

That matters a lot more than basically anything else.

OKC blew up a 44 win team by trading away Chris Paul, Danilo Gallanari, Dennie Schroeder which allows them to tank for Giddey, Chet and Cason Wallace. They used Giddey to get Caruso and were able to sign Hartenstein. Maybe they trade the pick that became J Dub for a win now piece.

Either way without tanking they don’t have key piece of their championship core and key role players. Absolutely they lucked out with Shai becoming MVP but the fact that they chose to take a step back instead of trying to rush to be competitive (like us) allows them to build a championship that can sustain. It isn’t just about having an MVP or else the Sixers would have had way more success.

The same people that don’t want us to tank and rebuild probably believe the Thunder should have built around a 44 win team

[Harcore Fenton Mun]

The problem is the cap doesn't line up with our projections. If we didn't trade for Poeltl or BI, we'd just be younger and in a better position with more assets.

What the hell does it matter about our spending lining up with our projections. Spending is the team using what levers it has to get better. The reason most teams passed up on BI was because they couldn't afford to pay him $40M. Raps could, and therefore got him for a cheap price.

If he performs well, which he is incentivized to do because his deal is 2 + option (clearly he wants to get back into FA), he helps the Raps in terms of the teams performance, and he potentially becomes a better asset to trade, if the right deal comes along.

The team is already mostly young players on their 1st, 2nd or 3rd years. How much younger do you want it to be? If it were any younger, they would be in no position to win.

Also on the amount teams spend. People should focus less on this, because all team are converging around the tax line ($188M for this season). I imagine most teams will probably be if not right near the tax line, they'll be within $10M to $20M of it.

Lower ceiling. We have less dry powder. We're a team coming off 30W's with 200M+ already on the books.

[tsherkin]

Poeltl is a good player and it’s not his fault we’ve performed poorly. It is undeniable that we have not gained ANY benefit from the Poeltl so far and it’s been 3 years. It was a win now trade that has resulted in zero playoff appearances.

What is one positive we’ve gained from the Poeltl trade over 3 years?

The impact he's exerted whenever he's on the floor; c'mon, what kind of weird question is that?

We have an actual, rotation-level center who rebounds, rolls well, plays good defense and we fall apart when he sits on the bench. His impact is demonstrable.

The fact that the REST of the team is a disaster for various reasons speaks to him not being a superstar, not to his acquisition being a mistake. We've been over this. Measuring the trade by team success isn't a quality approach to that trade at all.

[JB7]

There is no justifying the Poeltl trade. It was clearly a win-now trade that had resulted in zero playoff appearances. The core in which he was meant to bolster is also pretty much completely dissolved.

Expecting a trade for a supporting cast player to guarantee postseason play seems... short-sighted to me, if I'm to be delicate about it.

The trade for Poeltl isn't a failure. The failure is the situation into which he was placed, and the development thereof. He's a fine player. He's a very useful, quality player, who clearly exerts a big impact on our team. What we need is other things to come through. Masai made some mistakes, to be sure, but that was not one of them.

Just put yourself in a world where you were told in Feb 2023 that the Poeltl trade would lead to ZERO playoff appearances over 3 seasons.

Poeltl is a good player and it’s not his fault we’ve performed poorly. It is undeniable that we have not gained ANY benefit from the Poeltl so far and it’s been 3 years. It was a win now trade that has resulted in zero playoff appearances.

What is one positive we’ve gained from the Poeltl trade over 3 years?

Perspective matters in looking at the last 3 years. They tanked in 2 of those seasons (including trading Pascal & OG), and lost in the play-in for the other.

Lets see what Poeltl does to make this team a good team for the next few seasons. He is signed for another 5 seasons.

The one positive. Yak will raise the floor with this team. Without him, they are not making the playoffs.

[JB7]

The problem is the cap doesn't line up with our projections. If we didn't trade for Poeltl or BI, we'd just be younger and in a better position with more assets.

What the hell does it matter about our spending lining up with our projections. Spending is the team using what levers it has to get better. The reason most teams passed up on BI was because they couldn't afford to pay him $40M. Raps could, and therefore got him for a cheap price.

If he performs well, which he is incentivized to do because his deal is 2 + option (clearly he wants to get back into FA), he helps the Raps in terms of the teams performance, and he potentially becomes a better asset to trade, if the right deal comes along.

The team is already mostly young players on their 1st, 2nd or 3rd years. How much younger do you want it to be? If it were any younger, they would be in no position to win.

Also on the amount teams spend. People should focus less on this, because all team are converging around the tax line ($188M for this season). I imagine most teams will probably be if not right near the tax line, they'll be within $10M to $20M of it.

Lower ceiling. We have less dry powder. We're a team coming off 30W's with 200M+ already on the books.

They need salary to make trades. There was nothing they could have signed in FA that was better than what they had on the team. Team was already over the cap.

[tsherkin]

Perspective matters in looking at the last 3 years. They tanked in 2 of those seasons (including trading Pascal & OG), and lost in the play-in for the other.

Lets see what Poeltl does to make this team a good team for the next few seasons. He is signed for another 5 seasons.

The one positive. Yak will raise the floor with this team. Without him, they are not making the playoffs.

It's a vaguely daft question to have asked in the first place. We acquired a good center. His impact is self-evident. He's not a superstar, so of course we won only so many games in tanking seasons. But we were clearly better at either end when he was on the floor.

As you say, now that we're actually trying to win and have assembled some decent pieces and are hoping to be healthy, we'll see what happens.

[ConSarnit]

You are overly optimistic about the draft. Per ChatGPT, from 1992 to 2021 (30 drafts) only 37% of 2nd overall picks made an All-Star team in their career. Of non-lottery first round picks, that number drops to 8%.

Even if you hit on multiple draft picks that is no guarantee of success in the playoffs. The Sixers had two #1 and two #3 picks over a four year span ("The Process"); one of those picks made All-Rookie, two made All-NBA and All-Defense teams with one of those guys winning MVP. Their best playoff performance? Losing in the 2nd round.

This argument doesn’t hold water because draft picks are not made in a vacuum. Sometimes Sam Presti has the 2nd overall pick. Sometimes David Kahn has the 2nd overall pick. If you have someone like Masai Ujiri drafting 2nd you’d expect well above average results.

The crux of tanking should be this: try and do what OKC did in 2022. Maximize your choices from the draft pool by tanking with your own pick and take chances with surplus picks acquired from your rebuild. It won’t always work out but the goal should be to give your FO (who is hopefully competent) multiple bites at the apple in the hopes of finding all-stars. That (was) the tanking argument for the Raptors: let our front office (who has a strong draft record) have multiple shots to find high level players. They won’t always hit on picks but if you’re tanking for 3 years they’ll have a much higher success rate if they have 5 1sts over that period as opposed to the traditional 3 1sts.

Tanking should equal: competent front office + multiple bites at the apple. It doesn’t work nearly as well if you only have one half of that equation.

Does a high pick guarantee success? No. But it does give a good FO the most choice.

To create that many opportunities in the draft, usually means the team is gutting its roster, to trade good players for those picks, and then to suck to get a high draft pick with their own pick.

Then you are counting on that strategy to pan out, otherwise you are the Pistons, Hornets, Wiz, etc.

Yeah, that’s what we should have done. We never should have traded for Poeltl. We moved late on FVV, Siakam and OG and got lesser (or no) returns. The past 3 years have proved this as we’ve missed the playoffs each year.

We missed the playoffs 3 years in a row and our highest pick was 9th. That’s a failure through and through.

We botched the last 3 years.

[Harcore Fenton Mun]

What the hell does it matter about our spending lining up with our projections. Spending is the team using what levers it has to get better. The reason most teams passed up on BI was because they couldn't afford to pay him $40M. Raps could, and therefore got him for a cheap price.

If he performs well, which he is incentivized to do because his deal is 2 + option (clearly he wants to get back into FA), he helps the Raps in terms of the teams performance, and he potentially becomes a better asset to trade, if the right deal comes along.

The team is already mostly young players on their 1st, 2nd or 3rd years. How much younger do you want it to be? If it were any younger, they would be in no position to win.

Also on the amount teams spend. People should focus less on this, because all team are converging around the tax line ($188M for this season). I imagine most teams will probably be if not right near the tax line, they'll be within $10M to $20M of it.

Lower ceiling. We have less dry powder. We're a team coming off 30W's with 200M+ already on the books.

They need salary to make trades. There was nothing they could have signed in FA that was better than what they had on the team. Team was already over the cap.

Are you sure this wasn't just a favor to BI's agent?

[tsherkin]

We missed the playoffs 3 years in a row and our highest pick was 9th. That’s a failure through and through.

We botched the last 3 years.

You keep repeating this, and there's some truth to the fact that the past couple of years could have gone better. But using it to lampoon the acquisition of Poeltl makes no sense.

In the meantime, we are where we are. Tanking earlier wouldn't have guaranteed anything, and NOT acquiring Poeltl and being somewhat worse wouldn't have guaranteed us anything either. We weren't going to be in the running for Wemby, and our larger problem has been that the moves we've made didn't land the way the team hoped. OG had injury issues, Scottie doesn't have it as a scorer, Quick hasn't been healthy, RJ hasn't been good enough. We moved on from Siakam too fast. Sure. These are true things.

But Poeltl isn't some anchor point for why we didn't do better. We weren't far off from some of the best odds to land a top pick shy of being the worst team in the league, which wasn't really an attainable goal without having a huge fire sale and guaranteeing that we would suck ass anyway.