Raptors playing “dangerous game” as extension deadline passes
The Toronto Raptors could see their roster decimated in the offseason, as names like Pascal Siakam and OG Anunoby are slated to hit free agency. Another big piece got thrown into that miasma now that Precious Achiuwa could be on a new team next year.
Achiuwa is the type of player Masai Ujiri dreams about, as he is a tremendous defensive chess piece who has the boundless athletic ability needed to eventually become a star in this league if his finishing comes around offensively. Ujiri did not think, however, that Achiuwa’s performance mandated a new contract.
At a time when so many 2020 draft picks were agreeing to contract extensions, the Raptors chose not to extend Achiuwa’s contract. This means the former No. 20 overall pick of the Miami Heat will enter the (somewhat) open market and hit restricted free agency in the offseason.
While the restriction will give the Raptors the ability to match whatever offer sheet Achiuwa signs in the offseason, a desperate team with money to spend could give Precious an offer so expensive that Toronto could be unwilling to commit to him. This team is playing with fire all over the roster.
The Toronto Raptors could lose Precious Achiuwa in free agency.
In stark contrast to those who want Ujiri to press the reset button and start rebuilding this team from the ground up, the front office has taken a blase wait-and-see attitude with their approach to roster construction. Both Siakam and Achiuwa alike could feel the burn.
The Raptors have invested a ton of time and developmental energy in Achiuwa, which would make it foolish to lose him after this season. Still, Toronto can’t hope for a discount if the former Memphis star finally turns a corner as a scorer inside the rim.
Toronto stands to potentially lose three of their four best offensive players and one of their top defensive studs in Achiuwa, which would be a complete catastrophe for a year that has placed a perhaps inordinate amount of confidence in their ability to develop homegrown talent internally.
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The Raptors will likely do everything they can to keep Achiuwa, who is a perfect scheme fit and a player that stands for everything those front office believes in from a talent evaluation point of view. The fact they didn’t get a deal done, however, should still loom large over the season.
SIMMONS: Toronto Raptors have become irrelevant in the NBA
To be a player, you have in the middle of everything. You have to be connected.
And by player, I don’t mean individual players. I mean, being a player in the league, being a team that matters, being a team that gets noticed beyond the borders of your land.
Masai Ujiri said at the end of last season that he didn’t enjoy watching the Raptors play. You don’t hear that often from a team president.
He didn’t like what he called their selfish ways. He thought, as so many executives think in sports, that the collection of players was greater than the team itself.
Now a new season begins with almost no outside expectations, few believing the Raptors are going anywhere but paddling in circles in the mushy middle of the NBA, almost the worst place any franchise can be in pro sports.
Ujiri might fib just a little and say he likes this team. He has to say that. It’s his team, his sell.
But around the NBA, with a season beginning, there are all kinds of bold predictions and thoughts and screaming in all the usual places — there just isn’t any real talk about the Raptors.
They have a new coach in Darko Rajakovic and no one really knows who he is or what he is capable of. Ujiri gambled once before in hiring Nick Nurse to replace Dwane Casey. That worked out wonderfully well at the beginning, with a championship and a coach of the year honour, and not so wonderfully well at the end, where the team Nurse put on the floor was the one Ujiri couldn’t stand to watch play.
What will Darko do for the Raptors? It’s not exactly talk of the NBA.
You come in as a new coach and sometimes you need time to establish who you are and what you’re capable and maybe what style your group needs to play to be successful.
The NBA is all about shooting and offence and the Raptors are among the worst shooting teams in the league and at times seem offensively challenged.
They drafted a shooter, Gradey Dick, with their first-round pick in June. Four months later, there is no knowing where he will fit in, if he will fit in, as an NBA scorer.
That is another question that isn’t being asked around the NBA. No one really cares where Dick fits in with the Raps.
This is what happens, not because you play in Canada where Vince Carter once captured America’s attention, but because you play in the NBA nether-regions. You fall into the middle and you all but disappear.
There are only two places you really want to be in the NBA: You want to be great and challenge for championships or be a threat around the league.
The Raps had a remarkable run under Ujiri, Casey and Nurse. In a seven-year period, which includes the Kawhi Leonard championship season, the Raps won 48, 49, 56, 51, 59, 58 and 53 games. They were a LeBron James away from being more explosive than just one title. In a five-year period, they averaged 55 wins a season.
If they win 40 this year, I’ll be surprised. Being .500 in the NBA means you might get a play-in game, you might get one crack at the post-season. It doesn’t mean much more than that unless you’re the Miami Heat and the Raptors are not the Miami Heat.
We don’t know what the Raptors are. We don’t know what they will be. And it’s not at all like the start of the Maple Leafs season or the Blue Jays season, where you know the roster has possibilities and you can’t wait for playoffs by the time Game 3 comes around.
What I look at now are the seasonal matchups. When does Nurse return to Toronto? When does Shai Gilgeous-Alexander play here? When are the games against the championship Denver Nuggets, with Nikola Jokic and the Kitchener kid, Jamal Murray?
I heard a national radio show in America do an hour preview on the NBA the other night and not mention the Raptors. I read the apparent bold predictions made in The Athletic and their power ratings to start the season. They have Raptors 21st in the league, no mention of them in the thousands of words written in their preview piece.
So it begins again, with Pascal Siakam, Gary Trent Jr. and O.G. Anunoby all facing free agency at the end of the season. They have something to play for — their futures.
All of them are good-to-great NBA players, none of them great enough to alter teams the way great players can change teams in the NBA. All of them are complementary stars.
You want to be great in the NBA and challenge for divisional titles or, in the end, the championship. Or you want to be terrible and wind up in the draft lottery and hope you find the next big thing.
Being 21st is treading water in a race with Penny Oleksiak. You get nowhere doing that.
The worst part is being irrelevant, lost and forgotten in all the gossip and postings and rumours that makes the NBA so fabulous and different. That’s your Toronto Raptors.
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