Do the Toronto Raptors have TOO MANY guys who need minutes? | Can they survive without Jakob Poeltl?

Do the Toronto Raptors have TOO MANY guys who need minutes? | Can they survive without Jakob Poeltl?

On your Friday episode of Locked on Raptors, at long last, the Raptors seem to have a whole lot of dudes who can play. But which dudes will play and how much? Plus more on a Friday mailbag. All coming up. Thanks for hanging. You are Locked on Raptors, your daily Toronto Raptors podcast, part of the locked on podcast network. Your team every day. Hey, what’s going on and welcome to another episode of Locked On Raptors, part of the Locked On podcast network, your team every day. It is Friday, August the 15th, and I am your host Sean Woodley. I’ve been coming to Toronto Raptors now for 11 seasons on various platforms. You can all my work over on Blue Sky. You can find the show on Instagram. You can join us in the Lockdown Raptors Discord server. Come be part of our listener community. uh really important on days like today where I’m taking your questions straight from the Discord mailbag chat. So, please join. It’s a great place to come interact with me. I’m in there far too much. So, come hang out with your uh beautiful handsome host and all of the little freaks who like to hang out in there as well. Today’s show is brought to you by my friends over at Monarch Money. Take control of your finances with Monarch Money. Use code lockmbna at monarchmoney.com for 50% off your first year. And we’re off and running here to close out your week with a mailbag. And we got some banger questions today. I’m very excited to dive on in. We’re going to talk about minutes distribution. Play the 240minute game that you play when you’re doing the sliders in NBA 2K when you don’t have want to have to do subs all on your own. Uh we’re going to talk about which who’s going to lead the team in scoring. What’s the order of scoring importance going to be on this team? We’ll talk about big men. We’ll talk about draft guys who should have been taken by the Raptors and a whole lot more. As we close things, I’ll have some fun at the end of the show, too. maybe veer a little away from Toronto Raptors basketball and talk about the other Toronto sports team that rules right now, the Toronto Blue Jays a little bit. Uh that’ll come up later in the show. Let’s get to our first question and shout out today my Discord nemesis uh cause was actually pretty good at coming up with questions. He’s got two good ones here on the show that will be featured today. The first one is play the 240minute game. Assuming there is a fully healthy team, how does Dark Oryovich distribute minutes among all the newfound depth? Yeah, it’s kind of a brave new world here for the Toronto Raptors. Uh, you know, you think back to the later stages of the Nick Nurse era, even the start of the Dark Aryakovich era. This was a team that basically had at any given time five to six good players who were playing a whole lot of minutes, 30 plus minutes, 35 plus minutes, in some cases flirting with 40 minutes. if you were Fred Van Vleet or Pascal Seakum during the peak of Nick Nurse’s end of care end of Raptors tenure mania and the Raptors I think this year are going to probably roll out a way more balanced minutes distribution than they’ve had in the past part of it will be because you know there are some injury concerns that you want to manage but I also just think with the way this team is going to stagger lineups as we’ve talked about at Nauseium since I got back a couple weeks ago I think it’s going to be one of the stories of how this team plays this year is they’re going to mix and match starters with bench guys. There are a lot of bench guys who I think they want to get minutes for developmental purposes. There are a lot of good players in the starting five who are paid handsomely who are going to want to play, who the Raptors are going to want to play. Each of them is going to want little pockets of the game to kind of operate and run the show. So, I do think there will be some pretty good balance to how this is all played out here by Darakovich. doubt we’re going to see anyone playing north of like 34 or 35 minutes a game unless things start to get serious and they’re in, you know, a playoff race and you start to tighten the rotation, but over the course of 82 games, I I think it is going to be a pretty balanced and um even minutes distribution. Let’s get into it. I think for me, Scotty Barnes will probably lead the team. He’s the most important like overall player. I know I said yesterday Emanuel Quickley is the most important player to kind of making the team function. That’s true. But Scotty Barnes is the best player on the team, all things being equal. and what he does for the defense, what he does to Grease along the offense with his finishing and playmaking. Uh, and what I think is probably going to be his best finishing season. Uh, getting to work off of other creators in a way he hasn’t really gotten to in the past. I think it’s going to be uh, you know, about 34 minutes a game for Scotty Barnes, leading the way for the team, but not like overly taxed. He’s not going to play 40 minutes a night. I think there’s going to be ways to get him breaks and still have functional lineups on the floor, which is a big deal. Uh, number two, I have Emanuel Quickley at 33 minutes a game. And I have game this solid. I have exactly 240 minutes uh spoken for here. I have Quickley at 33 minutes. He’s the only real point guard on the team. He’s just going to have to play a lot of minutes. Um, and I think, yeah, we we’ll we’ll probably see him really, I think, ratchet it up. After last year, he played 28 minutes a game. His minutes were kind of suppressed just because of the injuries. He left a lot of games early, uh, in some cases extremely early. Uh, and he also again, you know, by the end of the season was kind of, okay, the team is threatening winning in the last quarter of the game. Let’s sit everybody down and make sure no one plays more than 25 minutes a night. That’s going to be not a thing, I think, for the Raptors this year. I think the uh sort of guard rails will be taken off and we’ll see Emanuel Quickley play a full complement of 33 minutes a night. Then I have Brandon Ingram at 30. Uh, you know, you might think, wow, he’s making $40 million a year. Shouldn’t they play him more? I think they’re just going to be careful with him and not overdo it, right? There will be games surely where he plays a lot. If he’s cooking, if he’s carrying the offense, sure, he’s going to probably play into the mid-30s at times. And when things get really serious in the postseason, if they get there, he’ll play heavy minutes, no doubt. But I think they’ll play the long game with him this year and just not overburden him. 30 feels like a right sweet spot, especially considering like we’re already running out of minutes to sort of distribute between these guys. And I I’m realizing now I forgot a guy who probably will also get minutes that I got to find a way to squeeze in here, too. one of them good problems. Um, next I have RJ Barrett at 28 minutes a game. I could see this being lower. I could see this being as low as like 26. I again I think he’s probably gonna start from day one, but I also think he’s going to be a guy who is like a quick early sub out, runs with the second unit and probably doesn’t close every game for the Raptors. I think he’ll be used similarly as say Yaka Purle was back when he first was acquired by the Raptors where he didn’t close every game just because the fit was kind of weird and they had different lineups that worked a little bit better in sort of the matchup uh you know in matchup time and crunch time etc. I think that’s going to be the case for Barrett. I don’t think he’s going to close most games. The defense is just that big a problem for him unless he makes some serious strides on that end which you know I’ll believe it when I see it on the defensive end for him. when I see it for more than two weeks after getting called out by Scotty Barnes like we did last year until it kind of went back to normal. Um, so yeah, I’ I’d say maybe I’ll pot it down a little bit to 26 for R.J. Barrett, meaning I have a couple minutes to play with elsewhere. Uh, Yaka Purle I have at 28 minutes. I think he’s probably not going to play quite as much as he did last year because I do think they have some small ball looks that’ll be pretty fun to get to. Colin Murray Boils, Scotty Barnes, even Jonathan Mo, Mamu, like they’re going to have different ways to fill in the center position. He’s still going to play a lot though. I think he will close a lot of games. I think he might just play a little bit less in the chunky meaty parts of the games as they try to get in some fun transitional lineups that are a little smaller. Um, then we get into the bench and the bench is really hard to figure out here. I think Grady Dick will be the leader in minutes off the bench just because his shooting is so important. I’d say 24 minutes a game for Grady Dick. Maybe that’s a little high, but I think he’s going to play a ton with the starters. Going to play a lot with Scotty and Ingram and Purle. Uh, and I think he he’s just going to be this sort of like additive thing where you have a lineup where it’s like, uh, spacing’s a little clunky. All right, Grady Dick can go right into that lineup and add some gravity, add some offball juice, and just kind of make it function a little better. I mean, the Raptors offense functioned significantly better on a points per 100 basis when Grady Dick was on the floor versus when he was off last year. Even during his times of struggle, he just is a guy who greases better offense. And so, I think he leads the team in minutes off the bench. I’d say 24 there. And we’re already running out of minutes here big time. Then we get into Oiabaji, Jacobe Walter, Colin Murray Boils, and probably Jamal Shed as the next four guys off the bench. I do wonder how much Shed is actually going to end up playing this year. I think he could maybe get squeezed if he’s not hitting his threes. I love Jamal Shed. I think he’s very cool. He’s obviously a big part of their high pickup point nasty perime, you know, point of attack defense thing they really like to do. But if the shooting’s not there, which you know, there were some signs last year a little bit, some mechanical fixes that I wrote about and talked about uh last season throughout the year, you know, if can that sustain? If it can, great. He will play. And then this changes this minutes distribution for sure. But I do think he right now looks like he might be the odd man out is maybe they just look to have Ingram or Barrett kind of run the second unit. Maybe Scotty sometimes run the second unit with some spacing around them as opposed to just throwing out there. Um, it’s just kind of how when I put this together, shed did kind of feel hard to kind of squeeze in here. But, uh, yeah, Oiabaji, I think, probably leads this crew in minutes. I have him at 20 minutes a game. That might be a little high. Maybe I’ll pop that down to about 18 as well. Um, so I have four minutes to play with now. I think Jacobe Walter probably comes in right at around 18 minutes a game as well. I think that he’s got some upward mobility for sure if he shows some of the two-way potential that he’s flashed at times. I think the offense right now is a little behind the defense. But if he can, you know, get the shots to fall, if he can work on the rim finishing, the strength, finishing around the cup, getting back to the line like he did so well in college, then I think there’s a chance he could maybe uh climb up and be like seventh on the team of minutes, even six on the team of minutes if he’s really outperforming Grady Dick. Uh but right now, I’ll say 18 minutes a game for him as well. And again, I only have like four minutes left over after I talk about these next two dudes. I have Colin Murray Boils at 15 minutes. Maybe that’s high. I might pot him down to 12, which gives me now seven spare minutes to play with. Um, and so I’m gonna Yeah, I’ll say Jamal Shed comes in behind Colin Murray Boils at like 9 minutes a game. That feels low, but again, and look, this is all going to get worked when there’s injuries and guys fill in and play longer minutes. I’m just playing the 240minute game right now. But with Jamal Shed getting nine and Colin Murray Boils at 12, that leaves eight minutes left over for Jameson Battle, Mamu, Jonathan Mo, I think we’ll probably only see one of those guys on a given night in all likelihood. Maybe you throw shed into that group of guys who share those eight to 10 minutes at the very back of the roster. Again, this is not they’re not going to have a healthy full roster for every single game. So, all of this will get certainly warped, but that’s kind of how I’m envisioning it right now. If you’re kind of power ranking the roster in terms of who is going to play that feels like that the last four shed battle Mamu Mobo maybe shed a smidge ahead of those guys but again Mamu brings shooting to the table that’s important battle brings shooting to the table that’s important maybe those guys find a way in maybe Colin Murray Boils doesn’t play as much as you think he will he is a rookie after all there will probably be ups and downs in terms of his ability to play and soak up minutes um but yeah that’s kind of how I’d handicap it right now again one of them good problems oh there’s too many guys who are deserving of 18-ish minutes a game. Great. That’s awesome. Fantastic. Uh it’ll sort itself out. These things always do. Injuries are a thing. Uh cold spells are a thing. Guys will play themselves in and out of the rotation. But that’s my look at if they had a fully healthy roster, how the minutes would be broken up right now if I were doing the 2K thing and making the the minutes distribution across the full game. Uh we’ll come back on the other side. We got some more questions, including another good one from Cause. We’ve got one about the schedule. Yeah, the schedule’s out. Do I care? Not really. We’ll get into that. Uh, and a few other things as we continue your mailbag show here on Friday. Today’s show is brought to you by our friends over at Monarch Money. Most people can’t name all their financial accounts or even what they’re worth. I am certainly one of these people. I am not uh like the best at my finances. I’m okay. I’m not like a total adult when it comes to like knowing where my money is and stuff like that, but it’s not like my favorite thing. I don’t like doing admin is the thing. 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The code locked inmbba at monarchmoney.com in your browser for half off your first year. That’s 50% off your first year at monarchmoney.com with the code locked on NBA. Back at it here on a mailbag edition of the podcast on a Friday and uh just looking ahead to next week, we will have one of the folks from the new locked in NBA draft uh with no ceilings podcast. the Celings guys have taken over that feed and they’re great and looking forward to having one of them on next week. Talk about Colin Murray Boils, maybe some Elijah Martin, some other drafty stuff and you know, maybe we’ll even get into the doomsday scenario of things go to hell once again and the Raptors are picking high. Uh, you know, will there be any silver linings going into what seems like a pretty loaded class at the top next year? Maybe not so good after the top few. Either way, we’ll talk some draft next week among other things. Of course, Big V will be along. We’ll get Katie Hel back on the show as we continue to breeze through the summer. Uh, this one comes from Loquacious Drew. Uh, it’s the newsy thing of the day, so I figured I’d get it in even though it’s not something I much care about. Loquacious Drew asks, “How are you feeling about the Raptors schedule?” Um, I feel nothing about the Raptors schedule. I think caring about the schedule drop, maybe this is bad to say in the business that I’m in where I’m trying to have content throughout a year, but I don’t care about which order the team plays all the teams they play every single year in really. Last year was an extreme example because they played all of the good teams in the first 50 games and then all of the wretched teams in the last 30 games and that like had a clear effect on shaping how the season transpired. Sure, that mattered. Uh looking at the schedule this year, doesn’t seem to be any any glaring sort of outlier in terms of how they start versus how they finish, it seems pretty balanced. So cool. Yeah, they’ll play games in a prescribed order as they do every single year. Uh we’ll talk about the NBA Cup matchups when that gets a little bit closer because that’s always fun. But uh yeah, I I am uh just I I can’t muster up good strong schedule takes and I’m sorry if you came here for that today. They play games in a prescribed order, in a random order against the same 29 other teams that are in the NBA as has been the case as long as the NBA has existed. That is how I feel about the schedule. Uh, next one here from Bashara 6209. Why do the Raptors crater the moment Yaka Purle is gone for any extended period of time? And is there any way Mamu can fill that void? Is it feasible for the Raptors to trade away some of their depth at shooting guard for another defensive anchor big? Uh, so kind of two questions here. I mean, the reason they’ve fallen apart without Yaka Purto the last couple years is they’ve had zero insulation behind him. Um, you know, yes, they’ve had Scotty Barnes, who I maintain is going to play a lot of backup five this year. Uh, but like starting him at the five, not great. Especially when you’re like the Raptors of the last few years where you’ve been very thin in terms of guys who can carry heavy minutes loads. You can’t just go put Scotty at the five and not have that have a cascading effect on how you deploy the rest of your lineups over the course of full games. And look, I don’t think they are rich in like long-term replacements if Yaka Purle goes down. Certainly, it’s going to be a bit of a a hodgepodge if that happens. Mamu, yeah, sure he can fill in and be an offensive spark plug. He’s also 6’9 and a bad defensive player, so I’m not terribly hopeful that he could be the long-term starter. Jonathan Mo, I think there’s, you know, been flashes here and there of vertical lob finishing and the defensive switchability is a real thing with him. The playmaking, the short roll stuff. I think there’s something there, but he’s maybe uh not quite ready for full-time backup center duty if he ever is going to be ready for that. He’s also quite under size and it’s tough to play 15, 20 games in a row in that configuration. Um, you know, Colin Murray Bole, Scotty Barnes, I think will be capable of filling in that spot. Yeah, I when you look at the roster and I just went through the depth of it, like there is certainly a log jam at the two guard spot and there is seemingly an opportunity here to find some kind of trade. You know, the one I look at is Oiabaji, right? If you can find like a like forlike swap where you can trade him to a team for a big man, that sounds great to me. Uh this is also a thing I’ve thought about with RJ Barrett. If you are going to move RJ Barrett, which all signs point to, as we’ve talked about, the Raptors not being the team that is going to pay him his next contract, if they’re trying to move off of him, while his value is, you know, conceivably as high as it might be coming off a year where he averaged 21, five, and six or whatever it was, um, going into a year when he’s maybe going to have a lesser role, I, you know, I I think there is a case to be made that, you know, an R.J. for even like a less talented but better fitting backup big man type would make a lot of sense. A guy I’ve had my eyes on is Daniel Gaffford with the Dallas Mavericks now that they have Derrick Lively and Anthony Davis and Cooper Flag kind of loading up that front court. Maybe there’s less of a need for a backup five. Or maybe they just plan to play Cooper Flag at the three and Anthony Davis at the four and roll Lively and Gaffford as a platoon big man duo and maybe they don’t want to move Gaffford. But um he did just sign that contract that pays him about 20 million bucks a year. the salary matching would be quite easy if you wanted to pull something off with with the Mavericks. Um, but yeah, you know, again, I I’m of the mind that backup centers aren’t all that important. Um, of course, then if your center goes down, it’s like backup quarterbacks, right? If you have a good backup quarterback, it doesn’t actually matter if you have a good starting quarterback, unless that guy gets hurt. But even then, if that guy gets hurt, your backup quarterback is probably not replacing that guy anyway, no matter who you have in that spot. And so you’re kind of just screwed and you just got to take your lumps as they come. I think that might be kind of the case here with the Raptors and Yaka Purle. Like a lot of teams are screwed if their center goes down. If uh Nicole Joic goes down, the Nuggets are screwed. All respect to Yonas Valenunis. If the even if like the Detroit Pistons lose Jaylen Duran for a little bit, they’re in some trouble. If uh you know, we’ve seen with Joel Embiid and the Sixers. None of these guys are as good. Yaka Purle’s not as good as any of these guys, of course, but similar idea. The drop off from starting center to backup center is not a problem exclusive to the Toronto Raptors. This is a leaguewide thing. Backup centers are not very good. They’re sort of replaceable. You can find him on the scrap peep and I think that’s probably what they’d do if there was a long-term injury to Yaka Purle, but hopefully he plays like 70 games and we’re not so worried about this. And one more here before we hit a quick break. This one comes from Barney Bass. Kind of going back to our original question about the minutes distribution. And the question is, uh, who are your top seven scorers this year and how many points per game will they average for the season? Uh, look, I’m not going to get into the exact point totals because it gets all wonky because guys miss games and, uh, the total number of points they score fluctuates up and down based on who’s in the lineup and who was not. Um, and you know, it’s just tough to make that math all work in my head without exploding my brain. Uh, and so I’ll just go sort of off the cuff how I think the point scoring order is going to go. Again, I think it’s going to be pretty balanced. I I don’t see anyone being like a 26 game 26 a game scorer on this team by any means. I think Brandon Ingram probably leads in the team in scoring in like the low 20s, maybe like 22, 23. Then I think Emanuel Quickley I’d probably put at number two, though I could hear an argument for Scotty Barnes for sure. I I think the argument for Quickly is he takes a lot of threes. threes are worth more than two. He’s going to have pretty high volume. He’s going to work off the ball quite a bit, get a lot of open looks that he maybe wasn’t getting um as a primarily on ball guy last year. And I think his scoring could actually increase as a result. Maybe his assists go down, but you know, on like a per 36 minute basis, but I think the scoring might go up for him. And so I’ll go quickly number two, Barnes number three. But again, the argument for Barnes is, you know, he’s freed up to play finish more often. He has been a pretty good finisher around the rim in his career and he might just get a lot of easy garbage buckets around the bucket and maybe that just helps him ratchet up some good totals. He probably gets to the line more often than Quickly does as well. So, I think those two guys are very much a tossup for two and three. It’s going to be a fun question when we do our overunders and props contest. I think uh going into this coming season. Um number four, I’d say RJ Barrett. I think it’s going to be kind of a surprising drop off to some people for him on a per game basis. like I don’t see him averaging 21 a game again, 22 a game. Like I I think it’s going to be that he is very much like the fourth option with the starters and maybe he, you know, racks up some scoring with the bench units, but I think his minutes are going to be down a little bit compared compared to where they’ve been. And so I think he’s probably going to come in around like 15 or 16 a game. But I think that can be a good thing. I think that can be like RJ Barrett streamlining his role once again like he did after the trade in 2324 and the looks he’ll get will just be higher quality. He’s going to have more room going to the rim than he had last year where he was just seeing walls of help every single time he drove because there was no space around him in the times where he had the ball in his hands a lot. Um, and so, and I think if he’s playing with the second unit as well, I think we could see his assist go up a little bit and maybe the actual shot usage go down just as he maybe gets some chances to run pick and roll with this with the second unit. And so, yeah, I’ll say he’s at fourth at like 15 or 16 a game. Yaka Purle probably comes in fifth, although I was tempted to go Grady Dick here because I do think he’s just going to come in off the bench and let it rip. Um, you know, Purle, I just think he’s just so reliably going to give you 11 or 12 points a game. You know, Dick scored more than that last year for sure. I think he was at 14 a game last season. So, actually, no, I’ll go Grady Dick fifth because I think he will pour it in off the bench and I think Purle um you know, his scoring probably goes down a little bit, but his overall impact will be very high. Maybe his assist go up a little bit. I think his rebounding will continue to be very, you know, consistent. He’s going to be a double double-ish guy. So, maybe it’s like 11 or 12 a game for him, 13ish for Grady Dick. Um, but then you start like getting up to, oh, like we’re already near like a 100 points between these six guys and you know, you’re probably going to average like 110 points a game. Where are all the other points coming from? Obviously, again, injuries happen. Guys ratchet up their totals because the role changes when they fill in for guys who are hurt, all of that. But, um, yeah, it is it’s again one of them good problems of figuring out where the points are going to be. Could totally see this being a team where like no one averages more than 20 a game, too. It could just be a very flat um you know and you know maybe people will look at that and say oh you’re paying all this money for guys who aren’t scoring 20 points but I think it’ll probably indicate a pretty healthy offensive environment if it’s that balanced and everyone’s kind of eating. Um but yeah I think that’s Grady Dick fifth Purle sixth Jacobe Walter seventh is kind of where I’d go and soft guess but yeah maybe Oiabaji there I think Walter just kind of has a little bit more sort of quick microwave scoring ability if it all hits. So yeah, that’s where I’d go for the top seven scorers on the team. Don’t feel great about it. I think there could be all kinds of move room for maneuverability within that top seven. We’ll come back on the other side. Got a few more mailback questions to go through, including one really fun basketball related one and a couple that are not at all basketball related to close out your week on a fun silly note. We’ll do that coming up in just one sec. wrapping up the mailbag here on a Friday, middle of August, baby. And so we have ourselves an extremely August question to uh close off the basketball portion of today’s proceedings that once again comes from cause with a really good one. The greatest contributions cause a guy who has been on this podcast before, having won the fantasy league that we do for the the podcast every year. Um, this is his greatest contribution to the show. I think this question in particular, the first one was pretty good, too. Although kind of chalk. Uh, this one, can we get a starting five of the dudes the Raptors should have taken in the past 25 years in the draft? I’m talking clear mistakes, not we should have taken Jokic instead of letting him fall to 46 or whatever. Great question. I think there are some guys on here that are going to be pretty obvious answers to some, and there will be others that are a little less obvious. Let’s go first with the most obvious one. 2004 the Raptors take Hafa Arujo at number eight and Andre Iguodala goes number nine to the Sixers. Uh yeah, they should have taken Andre Igodala. He would have been an absolutely perfect fit then with Vince Carter and Chris Bosch. Like does that convince Vince Carter to stay if they take Iguodala instead of Hafa? Maybe. Do they have Vince Carter, Eigodala, and Chris Bosch ruling a not very good Eastern Conference for a few years? Maybe. Bad pick. Hafa Roujo not very good at all. Uh yeah, easy. That’s the the clear like number one guy penciled in. I guess it’s written in pen on this starting five. Then we have 2005. Danny Granger goes one pick after Joey Graham. I think it was one pick or it was Yeah, I think it was directly after Granger went 17th to the Pacers. Joey Graham went 16th. Uh Joey Graham’s going to figure it out one of these years, but he hasn’t yet. And Danny Granger very much figured it out for a good long run there. Got hurt obviously near the end, but I think he’s a very obvious uh second choice here. Someone who I think is in the minds of Raptors fans quite a bit. Uh thinking back to that draft in 2005, Igodala, Danny Granger, Chris Bosch, uh Vince Carter, and you know, insert point guard here. Man, that would have been a lot of fun in a not very good Eastern Conference during the 2000s. My childhood would have been so much more enjoyable. Um, the next one, a more recent one, and there aren’t many of these recently because the Raptors, I think, have been pretty damn good at drafting over the last 10, 12 years. Um, but 2021, obviously, Desmond Bane over Malachi Flynn is how they should have gone with that 29th pick. And you can go back, I I said this on draft night, they should have taken Desmond Bane over Malachi Flynn. was not a huge Flynn guy in the draft. Um I know Bane was a little bit older, but man, he just seemed like he was gonna be a good basketball player. Um yeah, that that one stings. It really stings. Flynn was also kind of older, too. So, it’s not like they took the young uh sort of talented prospect guy with upside. It was no, let’s take this six foot point guard instead of this uh bowling ball man who is like gonna be a good NBA player. Tough stuff. Desmond Bane third on my list. The next two I think are either, you know, sort of maybe against consensus, uh, guys who maybe other people would have taken someone else over the guy the Raptors ended up taking or one that I think maybe just no one has thought of. 2006, Andrea Andrea Barnani goes number one. Uh, we all didn’t like that very much, did we? No, it stunk. Um, and I think the sort of consensus is, well, LaMarcus Aldridge went number two. That should have been the guy. And yeah, Aldridge went on to have the best career of anyone in that that draft year for sure. Uh, he might be a Hall of Famer, fringe Hall of Famer, I don’t know. He was very good. I am of the mind that even though his career was cut short by injury, Brandon Roy should have been the pick at number one. And look, I was like dumb in 13 when this draft happened. Uh, I I liked Brandon Roy more than Aldridge. I liked Rudy Gay more than Aldridge, so we get some things wrong. It’s fine. But I remember wanting Brandon Roy quite a bit. And Brandon Roy through the first four years of his career, you could argue was like a top 10 player at his peak in the NBA. He made a second team allNBA, a third team allNBA, three all-star games. He won rookie of the year right out of the shoot. Like you put Brandon Roy in that 0607 Raptors team in place of uh some of the guys who were playing minutes on that team. Boy oh boy, things get real interesting. You put him on the team with Germaine O’Neal. Maybe they don’t trade for Germaine O’Neal because they just have Brandon Roy and he’s a good co-star for Chris Bosch. Um, you know, put him on those teams with TJ Ford and Jose Calderon, Chris Bosch, uh, you know, I think there was late stage Rasho Nsterovich in there. Like those are some fun teams and Roy was the kind of guy who fit on every team in the league. You know, do they keep Chris Bosch if Brandon Roy is a Toronto Raptor? I’m saying maybe. Uh obviously after Bosch left that final year uh 0910 that was Royy’s final season of being effective in the NBA. The injuries caught up to him and he never made it back to those heights. But man, Brandon Roy was awesome. A top 10 player in the league at one point. And I think even like just for the four years there, he would have been preferable to the eons that it seemed like Andrea Brani hung around. That said, they traded Bronny for Yaka Purle and ended up trading Yaka Ple plus some stuff for Kawhi Leonard. So, it all worked out in the end, but Brandon Roy to me very clearly fourth in this starting five. And then lastly, 2001, going with a bit of a deep cut here, Michael Bradley goes 17th overall to the Raptors in 2001. Two picks later, Zack Randolph gets picked, I believe, by the Knicks. Um, yeah, I think it was the 2000. Yeah, it was the Knicks because, yeah, that’s how he started off his career. Didn’t go so hot and then he ended up being awesome later. Uh, no, sorry, it was the Portland Trailblazers. He went to the Knicks after that. It was the Blazers, of course. Zack Randolph to the Blazers at 19. Yeah, that’s a tough one. Uh, Zack Randolph rules. I would have loved to have seen Zack Randolph play on those teams with Vince Carter and uh, you know, Alvin Williams and Mo Pete and, you know, Antonio Davis and Antonio Davis, Zack Randolph front court would have been a ton of fun. Um, you know, obviously Randolph took a long time to kind of sort himself out in his career. didn’t become the player he really turned into until he got to Memphis where he was just one of my absolute favorites of all time. But Michael Bradley played 93 games for the Raptors and averaged 3.8 points a game. I would have preferred even a volatile and uh not quite fully realized Zack Randolph to him for sure. So yeah, that’s rounding out the starting five of should have been Raptors. Brandon Roy, Andre Gdala, Danny Granger, Desmond Bane, Zack Randolph. Let’s get to a couple of non-basket questions to close out the show on a fun note. This one also comes from Loquacious Drew. Do tomatoes belong on warmer hot sandwiches? If it’s a BLT, yes, if it’s basically any other sandwich, and I’m going to even say cold sandwiches, get the tomato out of here. What if this is wet floppy bomb? If it’s tomato season and you’re making a tomato centric sandwich, a tomato and toasted tomato with cheese and mayo. Okay, we can get by there because it’s the crux of the sandwich. But if you’re going like, let’s slap some tomato on this otherwise perfectly chromulent turkey sandwich, I think you’re ruining it. Um, BLT, fine. Again, it’s part of the the sort of core of what the sandwich is, the the core craftsmanship behind the sandwich. Fine. But yeah, get tomatoes off the hot sandwich for sure. Like this wet kind of flavorless disc within a hot sandwich. No, you’re just going to add some more moisture it probably doesn’t need. And then on a cold sandwich, you know, sometimes I’ll get it if I go to like Jersey Mike’s or something, I’ll get some tomato on it just because that’s how it comes. And I’m not trying to make a stink and be like, “Can you take the tomato off, please?” Uh, Mike’s way but without the tomato. I’m not doing that. But I am like asking, you know, at times if I’m like a Subway or something like that, like if you’re going to put tomato on, make it like two small slices just for like that extra like nutritional value if anything else. That’s what I’m doing it for. Uh, otherwise, yeah, tomatoes on sandwiches. I’m like a person who likes basically all foods, and I’m not going to turn my nose up at a sandwich where there’s tomato, but if you’re crafting your own sandwich and putting tomato on it, if it’s not like a tomato-based sandwich in its conception, uh, I think you’re doing yourself a disservice. Here’s an idea. Do pickles, do uh, cucumber, and do some like banana peppers instead. I think all three better served on a sandwich than tomatoes are. Uh, last question here, and it’s fitting considering if you’re watching on YouTube, you see my attire for today’s show. Matt T asks, “Hey, Sean, what are your thoughts on this year’s Blue Jays? They rule. I love it. I’m having the time of my damn life. Had a kid. And when you have a kid, you spend a lot of time, especially when it’s 5,000 degrees outside every day. Spend a lot of a lot of time sitting indoors, watching TV, hanging out with the kid. And boy oh boy, have I been watching a lot of baseball throughout this time with the newborn. And it’s the best. I could not thank the team enough for being awesome during this stretch for coming of course yesterday off of Vladimir Guerrero Jr’s big late home run against the Cubs in a big game where Max Scherzer totally pushed. It’s tons of fun. We love the Blue Jays. Go check out Locked on Blue Jays by the way as they’re covering it wonderfully over there. Uh and it’s the time of our lives man. It’s like I’m a Raptors fan obviously love the Raptors. The championship is one of the like the dearest moments in my entire sports life, obviously, but no team has been further embedded into my brain as a sports fan since I was very young than the Toronto Blue Jays. My mother went into labor with me while at the first uh Blue Jays championship parade. Uh it’s just kind of like in my DNA. Uh my first birthday party. Uh the home video of it is the first half me being all cute opening presents and stuff and the second half is my entire family getting absolutely cked watching Joe Carter hit the home run to win the World Series in 93. Awesome stuff. Uh yeah, I’m a Jays fan through and through and when they’re good, there’s nothing better. And uh yeah, jump on, man. It’s a ton of fun. Great bandwagon sport. If you’re getting in at the back end of the season, all comers welcome. And uh hey, the Raptors haven’t been so good. So it’s like especially nice to have this balm of a really good Toronto sports team keeping us going through the summer. Uh and it’ll bring us right into ideally, you know, the World Series ends like the week the season starts. Uh so here’s hoping, knock on wood, that we just have like a throughine of fun Toronto sports with no lag time over the next few months here. We love it. We’re going to leave it there. Thank you so much for rocking with the show. As always, we’ll be back again next week, probably Tuesday to uh continue our summer where we play stupid little games and we talk about, you know, hypotheticals and we do mailbags and we talk about draft stuff and all that good stuff. I appreciate everyone for rocking with the show throughout the summer. We’ll be back again very soon. Have a wonderful weekend and join the Discord link in the description of the podcast. Especially good if you want to get mailbag questions in. Do that up. And uh yeah, have a great weekend. Talk to you soon. Bye-bye. And I stink.

The Toronto Raptors have a lot of guys who are gonna need minutes this year — do they have too many?! In Episode 1925, Sean Woodley goes solo to field a whole bunch of mailbag questions from you, the listeners! Off the top, Sean plays the 240 Minute Game and tries to lay out how the Raptors’ minutes distribution will shake out up and down the roster this season. It’s tough to fit everyone in! Next, Sean gets into why he doesn’t care about the schedule release, the Raptors falling off a cliff whenever Jakob Poeltl gets hurt and whether than can change this year, and who the team’s top-7 scorers will be in 2025-26. Lastly, Sean lays out his starting five of guys who should have been Raptors if not for some poor draft night decision-making. Plus, tomatoes on sandwiches? And the Toronto Blue Jays!

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