it would certainly give him some good karma after the aspiration stuff lol

It’s fucking dumb and short sighted. Jokic was a second round pick, Kawhi Leonard was 15th. Giannis was 15th, SGA 11th.

The poster child for tanking, the 76ers, got an mvp and for a time some good players. Ultimately an absolute failure.

You do not need to try to lose. The fucking pacers were an Achilles pop away from possibly winning game 7 of the nba finals 1 year ago.

It’s not necessarily about purposely losing games. It’s about no wasting resources on pointless win now moves when we aren’t contenders. No reason raps should’ve traded frps for Thad young / poeltl or signed poeltl to that ridiculous contract. We also should’ve traded Fred/pascal at least a year before we did/they left

see its really difficult nowadays because i understand your point about the spurs being the only team out of that group to have tanked for their star, but for example the celtics only got brown and tatum because the nets decided to trade the farm for two aging vets. To get that game changing player in todays NBA you need to tank, fleece another team, or sell the farm for a star in FA/trade. Its a really strange situation

Celtics absolutely got their best players through tanking, only it was outsourced. But if they didn’t get those picks they would be a treadmill team or in the middle of a rebuild by now.

Spurs and OKC did tank though and Celtics two best players are from selling high on old players and benefiting from Brooklyn losing for multiple years. Knicks haven’t won and the nuggets lucked out with the greatest second round pick of all time.

Well to get those players via lower pick you either need insane luck (Jokic) or to get those players via trade you will need to have an excess of picks or to have talent you’re willing to trade that is valued around the league, more likely to be found the higher you are in the lottery. Nobody’s saying you’re guaranteed to get a superstar but the likelihood is much much much higher than riding the treadmill like the Raps have been doing.

Like don’t try and twist it around into a “tanking doesn’t work”; for a team in dire need of talent the Raptors essentially fucked their rebuild with a myriad of bad decisions from 2020-present. They’ve wasted resources they could’ve used to put them in a better spot now by trading picks for guys like Thad and Poeltl, trading away players who were good fits but older (and even then they waited 3 years too long to do it) just to skip the rebuild and hit the fast forward button a year later and they’re essentially in the same spot again with not a lot of talent and a lot of money invested into a bunch of pieces that don’t fit well together. The Raps have no path to getting that superstar player as currently constructed unless they tear it down and actually rebuild properly. Whether that’s through the draft or accumulating enough assets to go all in, they just aren’t there right now and destined to rot in the middle with their current cap sheet and talent ceiling.

It’s different being a all nba player due to defense compared to offense. Scotty is that guy on defense, but can’t create like one on offense. Y’all need the offensive guy.

But probably just better creators in general would fix this problem.

Would you like one Fox?

I don’t like the Jakob and IQ contracts either, but we’re 14th in the league (and 1million from 22nd) in team salary this yr and will be 9th next yr when Jakobs extension kicks in. It sucks but not an impossible situation especially considering we have all our picks.

Raptors didn’t tank once after VC left when Bosh was on the roster, they stayed in the middle, thats probably why they never put a decent team around Bosh, plus Colangelo’s obsession with only getting Euro players is probably why they never did anything.

I’d argue it’s much worse for team culture to have a really expensive cap sheet just to cap out as a first round team year after year. At least if you’re rebuilding you have a direction, opposed to how the Raps have been operating since like 2020. And if guys can’t tough out a couple years of losing I don’t think you’d want someone that mentally weak on your team when you start to contend anyway.

No, but statistically the closer you are to 1 the more likely you are to get a star talent. The Raptors are often cited as the only team to win a championship without lottery picks, but they had to use their several years of top 10 picks (DeRozan, Poeltl, Ross, JV) and excess picks in order to make those big swing trades for Kawhi, Ibaka, Gasol and finalize their championship roster. If you don’t get the guy to necessarily take you over the hump, you are still far more likely to find high value assets in the lottery that you can trade later. They don’t have that same luxury now because they frankly burned a lot of assets in recent years on bad moves.

The Raps aren’t a free agency team, so that leaves the draft and trades, and they don’t have the pieces to make any good trades since a lot of their guys are overpaid (IQ, Poeltl) or not valued (RJ) and the only picks they have are their own.

At some point they’re going to have to sell guys. Whether that’s to actually execute a rebuild properly or in order to restock the asset chest remains to be seen but they don’t really seem to be indicating a willingness to make any moves with much foresight beyond this current group.

“Way more” is a stretch

Really? Who are the true superstars in the NBA?

True #1 to me is someone that could reasonably win a championship as the clear cut leader. I doubt there are more than 12 guys in the league id feel comfortable putting in that list.

30 true number 1s in the NBA now? Thats a lot

Normal response tbh

No, the Knicks traded him for OG specifically to improve their defense against the Celtics 

That’s definitely not the case. He’s had good size but not a great vertical, wingspan, or lateral footspeed to be a top tier defender. He never got the toughest defensive matches as a Knick and I didn’t see much change in that as a Raptor

He can lock in against certain guys and has played good defence in the past. However it’s extremely inconsistent and if he guards a quicker guard instead a slower wing he gets exposed in horrifying fashion

Both RJ and Ingram are mostly fine on ball, nothing crazy but RJ is strong for a 2, Ingram is long, they can both be beaten by quick guys and Ingram can get overpowered but they are fine.

The problem is they both aren’t good enough to be THE guy on ball, and they are both bad as help defenders/off ball gap guys.

He’s below average. -.6 Defensive EPM which is around 38% percentile of defenders.