I don’t see RJ getting another contract here
OT: The Official Toronto Raptors Thread
- Thread starter hockeylover
- Start date
MindzEye
Wayward Ditch Pig
I don't think many or any of the talents who are going to move this summer are actually premium. Randle, MPJ, old Durant, 2025 Ja, PG, Demar, Lavine. Lonzo maybe but he's shown next to zero interest in playing winning basketball, and Trae has shown almost no ability to play it. Imo I think our best bet is to treat it like we're in 2014 again and we're running with Kyle-Demar-Val-TRoss and the rest of the gang and see what happens.
I mean, we're kind of guaranteed not to already. Ingram and mid to high lottery pick is already a pretty significant injection into the org and just being healthy probably would have won another ~10 games this year without Ingram.
Seriously, we basically started flat out tanking 15 games ago and still finished with 30 wins. We're 100% in the playins mix with a group of 20-25 yr olds if our starters didn't combine for ~130 missed games. Fwiw, the expected W-L was also 30-52, so based on what happened strictly on the court this wasn't a team who was lucky to hit 30 wins either. It speaks to something I've been saying for ages, it's fucking hard to not be a complete clown show of an organization and finish at the bottom of the league.
So yeah, I'm good with running it back though I would like to see them hit free agency to get at least one legit rotation body (NAW, Melton, etc) who can defend the ball. It's a good looking starting lineup next year
5 - Jake
4 - Scottie
3 - Ingram
2 - RJ
1 - Quickley
That should flirt with being a top 8-10 starting unit (in the league, not the East) if it can stay healthy enough to play together. The bench is complicated with a lot of kids that I'm kind of lukewarm on all or most and I'm not sure if next year we're going to see them treated with kid gloves like this year (lots of minutes and opportunity regardless of how they're playing as long as the effort level is there) or whether we're going to have a more professional bench (Boucher, Okai, and a functional free agent or two) and expect the kids to knife fight for minutes (my preference)
I think summer 2026 is when big choices need to be made and when we can start considering a big swing. We'll have lots of salaried assets who can be packaged for higher end players, lots of kids with NBA experience who will have varying levels of value to teams in trade, and all of our own 1sts from now until the end of forever to spend if someone legitimately good is available.
This is the big name summer to skip imo. There are some developing situations to keep our powder dry for imo. Giannas, Sabonis, Ball, Maxey, and who knows what else comes up.
MindzEye
Wayward Ditch Pig
Depends on what he's looking for tbh. If he's thinks he's a top 2-3 player on a contender...well, bye. But if he's looking at something like what Wiggins got from GSW, I'm interested.
