It was expected to be a big, chaotic draft night this year, with a lot of speculation over how some of the picks would play out, and many of the teams with high picks said to be soliciting trade offers, looking to move bad contracts. This type of draft usually bodes well for the teams on the outside looking in, as the Raptors were this year, having traded their first round pick in the trade to move DeMarre Carroll’s contract to the Brooklyn Nets a year ago, and their second round pick gone to Phoenix in the trade to acquire PJ Tucker at last season’s trade deadline. Still, if there were moves to be made, Masai Ujiri should’ve been able to find a way in, to help jump-start the Raptors big summer and find a way to set up their next moves.
That’s not what this draft was though, at the end of the night. Not a single player currently under contract was traded during the course of the night, and while there were trades, they were solely in the format of draft picks changing hands. Without a pick in the draft, and with the team likely looking to not find themselves in this situation in future seasons, that left them watching as events unfolded. While it’s easy as a Raptors fan to be unhappy with the result, a draft where the team didn’t gain any assets, or shed any contracts, if the trades simply weren’t there, and it appears on this night they weren’t, it’s hard to argue that it was a missed opportunity.
The good news is, this isn’t the end of the summer, and free agency is just a week and a half away. The Raptors definitely have some things to address this summer, with a looming large luxury tax bill if they intend to keep Fred VanVleet, who the team has been vocal about wanting to retain. Beginning to address that at the draft would’ve been a great place to start, and would’ve potentially allowed the team to add players on rookie-scale contracts, but it’s not required in order for the Raptors to have a successful summer.
However, being unable to begin the process at the draft does add pressure to free agency. Whether it’s moving out one of the larger contracts and changing the makeup of the roster, finding a taker for Norman Powell’s deal, or looking for another avenue to reduce the future luxury tax burden, there is now added pressure to make that next move quickly once free agency begins in July, because there will be other suitors for VanVleet, and until they address the longer-term salary issues, they might be reluctant to commit to re-signing him. Once he signs an offer sheet, the Raptors will have just 48 hours to decide on matching, and it would be a big loss if they ended up seeing him leave because they didn’t clarify how they were reducing the burden to retain him quickly enough.
It’s hard to grade the draft as a failure for the Raptors, because they didn’t fail, the moves simply weren’t there to be made. Other teams weren’t trading players for draft picks either, and it seems that this year the teams with the picks just weren’t interested in those moves. But it does feel like an opportunity lost to start the summer early, and hopefully one that can be made up for in the coming weeks, as the organization finds it’s direction for next season.
