DeRozan is absolutely not the best player in Raptors history. He is not even the best player in franchise history who played for them this past season; Kyle Lowry is. DeRozan was not as good a Raptor as was Chris Bosh or Vince Carter.
I have said it before and will keep harping on it; Demar Derozan isn’t an All-Star calibre player. He’s good, not great. His defensive and rebounding shortcomings offset a lot of his offense.
I like Demar and the fact he liked Toronto and Canada is great, but the day a team starts making decisions based on sentiment is the day you should bet the under on Vegas’s season wins estimate.
Sure, LeBron is out of conference, but if your improvement plan is “Cleveland is worse” and you ignore the team’s many other playoff failures you’re not taking winning all that seriously. This trade could make Toronto not a little bit better in 2018-2019, but A LOT better. Kawhi Leonard is oodles better than Demar; they are not comparable players at all.
The only downside is Kawhi is in Toronto for one year and then gone, but is that a downside? Derozan’s contract was way, way too steep for a player of his value.
Toronto needed to take a crack at the Finals. This is a great way to do it. If Leonard wants to go to LA in 2019, fine. He’ll play hard this year for a contract.
Kawhi: 1 yr at 23 million after the trade kicker, and assuming he doesn’t exercise his player option.
DeRozan: 2 more years at 27 million, with another year as a player option.
Raptors (from here: Toronto Raptors 2022-23 Salary Cap Table | Spotrac ) post trade, 137.278 million, with a luxury tax bill on top of that of 25 million. Saving 4 million from DeRozan’s salary vs Leonard’s saves 8 million in luxury tax. And let’s face it, you’re not beating Boston or Philly, so why spend more than you have to?
After this year, if they can retain Kawhi, or flip him to, say, LAL by the trade deadline for picks and young talent, they let go of some more deadwood like Jeff Green and 10 million a year, then the rebuilding can start in earnest. Either with Kawhi as a core piece or with whatever they flip him for.
Surprising that SA couldn’t get a better deal, but there you are.
Vince Carter screwed the Raptors. That’d be like calling Kawhi the greatest Spur. Bosh is right there, but I think team success is a fine tiebreaker.
See above.
He is 100% an All-Star. He’s not Jordan, but he’s a top-3 shooting guard in the league.
I don’t know about that. Players have never had more control over the league, and I’ve never seen so many guys value the situation they’ll be playing in over taking max money. Given that, it’s probably a smart idea to maintain a good reputation amongst the players (to the extent possible), and not be perceived as lying scumbags.
My plan would be “keep the core of a 59-win team, and develop OG Anunoby, Fred VanVleet, and the other young guys. Oh, and replace Dwane Casey”.
Sustained success is undervalued, is what it comes down to. It’s easy to take five straight playoff runs for granted, until Leonard leaves next year, Kyle Lowry turns 33, and the Raptors are in the lottery and wondering what the hell happened.
The urge to cash in all the chips to make one big run is understandable, but you’re not beating the Warriors. This era right now is the one where it makes the least sense to go all-in like that.
I get that you’re not a Derozen fan, but even if you think his contract was too rich, they could have traded it for an asset(s) that’s not a free agent in a year. We’ve seen this go wrong plenty of times: the Nuggets trading for Andre Iguodala, the Bucks trading for JJ Redick, the Magic trading for Serge Ibaka…not a great track record for trading a bevy of assets for an impending free agent who doesn’t want to be there, in the hopes of pushing your title odds from 0.5% to 2%.
Toronto got a one-and-done player with obvious personality and behavior issues, one who sat out the most of last season with a mysterious quad injury which may or may not be healed, who has no desire to be there and has a history… a recent history, at that… of fighting with his team and, literally, running away from his responsibilities.
The common theme is that KL didn’t like San Antonio. IMHO, the more likely explanation is that KL has no desire to be The Man on a team with a winning tradition. He was fine playing in Duncan’s shadow, but once the responsibility of providing leadership fell on his shoulders? Did not want to do it.
Leaving HS, he was recruited by the following teams:
U of Washington
USC
UCLA
Arizona
San Diego State
4 major schools, 2 of which have won NCAA championships in the past 25 years (and UCLA is, of course, one of the more storied programs in the league), and which does he choose? The school where just getting to the NCAA’s was the standard for excellence. (And, it should be noted, got to the NCAA’s both before and after Leonard’s two years there, making it to the S16 in 2013, a run of success which is more attributed to their coach, Steve Fisher, than it is Kawhi.)
I wish him well. I wish Toronto well. But they did trade for a guy who pouted his way out of $80 million, ran from his coach, and decided he couldn’t carry on the legacies of George Gervin, David Robinson, and Tim Duncan. Good luck with that.
Isaiah Thomas signed with the Denver Nuggets for 1 year at $2 mil. I’d say that’s a great deal for Denver. Not that I think Thomas is all that great, but there’s almost no downside here. Expectations are clear, he’ll be coming off the bench. Denver has no hope to even make it to the Western Conference Finals, but a playoff appearance would be nice.
The genius of the trade is that Leonard has every reason in the world to play for a contract. He is a MUCH better player than DeRozan, and if healthy - and he appears to be - he is a huge, huge improvement.
So he leaves after 2018-2019; so what? I love Demar, but he is a wildly overrated player. If you’re Masai Ujiri, do you go for another 50-win season and playoff failure next year and in 2019-2020, or try to actually make the Finals? Which would make the fans happier? I know which one I want; I want the Finals. I have zero expectation that the team as previously constituted could get that far, even with LeBron in the West; Boston and Philadelphia will be damned good. But I believe a team with Kawhi Leonard can make it.
Of course this could blow up. That’s sports; any decision could be a disaster. But there is a very high probability it could send the team further than it has ever gone, and even if they just lose Leonard for nothing, they then have have massive cap space to bring in more talent.
Does Leonard have some quirks? Sure. I also know he improved his game, year after year, to become an elite player, and was the Finals MVP. And if he’s an ass, isn’t this the perfect situation? Let him audition for a long term contract with LA for a year, reap the rewards, let him walk, and retool with all the extra money.