After last night’s blowout loss to the San Antonio Spurs, the Raptors will finally return home for a Thursday night game against the Utah Jazz after a 3-3 mark on the road trip. But the real highlight of this past week for Raptors fans wasn’t anything in the games, it was the news that Paul Millsap may be available on the trade market, and moreover may have been headed to Toronto during the summer if Al Horford had agreed to stay in Atlanta. The power forward position for the team has long been a point of contention, with some(myself included) arguing that Patrick Patterson should get the nod and would be perfectly serviceable in the role if asked, and others arguing that the team simply needed to make a trade to acquire that player.
While the fan base has been feeling the need for a trade urgently to address these issues, general manager Masai Ujiri has been, at least on the surface, content to ride things out patiently, sitting on his heaps of assets. And while the temptation may be there to treat this as Ujiri simply standing pat and not making an effort to make the needed trade to improve the team, it might not be that simple.
Always near to these arguments sits Norman Powell, who has 9 DNP-CDs this year, to go along with his 5 starts, and the 24-year old has been solid as expected in the minutes he’s been on the court, but often seems stuck behind Terrence Ross in the rotation. And while Ross has been much improved this year, one could hardly fault the fans for feeling like the enigmatic Ross is holding back Powell by taking the minutes that would otherwise go to Norm, and the solution to both problems would seem to be building a package around Ross to acquire the power forward the team needs, whoever that might be.
The biggest adjustment for Raptors fans, however, is that the team is now a buyer in the trade market this year – a squad loaded with good assets, that needs another big piece or two to maybe leap into the elite echelon of teams. For a franchise that hasn’t seen much success, this is a new experience, and being a buyer brings with it new aspects in the trade market. The first of which is that while being a buyer with a lot of pieces in the cupboard means you can make a run at any players out there, it also might mean you don’t get to set the price. A team like Atlanta or Sacramento can afford to be patient with the trade market, because by looking at trading their stars they are admitting they’re headed for a rebuild anyways, so the worst case scenario is just a longer rebuild. So while it might be easy to say ‘send a package featuring Ross out and get a star back’, that might not be the asking price, and we don’t know how many of these scenarios Masai has turned down due to concerns over the cost.
Toronto fans should remember the converse though, because we saw it many times under Bryan Colangelo, when he would make a move to acquire what he saw as the next piece needed at any cost, and often overpay, leaving the team shorthanded and continually emptying the war chest while not maintaining depth. This happened when he went out and got Jermaine O’Neal, Shawn Marion and Rudy Gay. Despite drafting well, Toronto kept finding itself needing more assets because of the desire for immediate improvement.
Maybe the Raptors will go out and get DeMarcus Cousins or Paul Millsap, there’s plenty of time remaining between now and the trade deadline to make things happen. But if they don’t, it likely won’t be because of a lack of trying, but more likely due to an inability to agree on a price. That’s not failing, but taking the long-term approach, one that has brought us to this very situation of a stocked cupboard and a young, talented team, and that’s a path we should all be ok with maintaining until the right opportunity appears to improve, not just the first opportunity.
