[Lewenberg] “A number of external candidates that came in, really, really pushed back on some of the moves that Masai and company made over the last few years…One of them went as far as calling the [Brandon] Ingram trade a ‘desparate Hail Mary.’”

16 comments

  1. Ingram trade was good because he’s cheap and they are looking to establish a promising young core.

    They should probably trade Barrett for a cheaper contract to reduce their payroll though.

  2. I think it was worse that a Hail Mary. at least you have a small chance with a Hail Mary

  3. The Raptors are building a team that I don’t understand how the pieces fit together. They lack a lot of the shooting for spacing and don’t seem to have that true playmaker to setup their guys who need setup. None of their guys are truly standout defenders capable of shouldering the system.

    I figured Masai was trying to cook something different – maybe some alternate way of teambuilding, but they fired him. I feel like they should’ve fired him before he made a lot of his recent moves if they didn’t agree with the direction, because I genuinely don’t know the direction Masai was going. It feels like most people will takeover and just “start over”

  4. I think if you’re viewing this as the final product of the Masai experiment you could be confused but Masai is an asset collection kind of a GM and has shown he has some sense of how to manage those assets; I believe he felt this was a buy low opportunity on Ingram and I also believe the long term plan was to likely flip a couple of these guys eventually for a star; scared money don’t make none and I don’t think getting rid of one of the most respected GM’s in the league over accumulating talent is necessarily an intelligent decision.

  5. We’re trying to act like Masai wasn’t marked for firing long before any of these moves?

  6. When you’re a market that struggles to lure free agents, Hail Mary trades is all they have left.

  7. I don’t necessarily hate the BI trade but every move they’ve made since Kawhi left has been a head scratcher. They’ve lacked direction for more than half a decade now. That championship core was worth building around or selling high but they did neither and ended up letting them go for pennies on the dollar. The current roster is like the Walmart version of those 50 win teams before Kawhi arrived which isn’t a good place to be and they’re in the tax. Masai understandably earned a lot of goodwill for what he’s done for Toronto but these last 5 years were completely mismanaged.

  8. I don’t like the Ingram trade, but I’m not sure how any trade in which you gave up 1 first can be a Hail Mary. Yes, there’s the opportunity cost of spending 40 million on him, not like having cap space in the current NBA is all that valuable anymore.

    Honestly, the Ingram trade is the complete opposite of a Hail Mary. It was literally just about getting NBA talent, specifically *scoring* talent in for a relatively low cost, regardless of the fit. That’s a safe, conservative move, not a “desperate Hail Mary”.

  9. Brandon Ingram is so underrated I think he just doesn’t have the ambition too be as good as he would be if he had a Goat level work ethic. BI is basically another Andrew Wiggins imo

  10. The year they won the chip it was rumored that Washington was willing to give equity to masai for him to become GM

    6 years later they got a few 50 win teams coached by nurse and the old core and not much to show for it

    The kawhi trade really was an all in with a straight flush draw that worked out

  11. This all started going downhill when Masai and the rappers held onto OG and Pascal too long, then traded them later for a lesser return

  12. >One of them went as far as calling the [Brandon] Ingram trade a ‘desparate Hail Mary.’”

    Wait, what? Why dont I remember this, I wouldve swore he was still in NO?

  14. He probably was told by ownership that they wanted to stay competitive, i.e. win anywhere between 30 and 50 games. As other people said, Toronto just can’t lure big names there and top draft picks would likely bounce asap. It’s a meh roster in a meh situation that will be a meh team to win just enough games to possibly get a play in game and maybe a first round series.

  15. This seems like psyops by Ed Rogers, new, full controlling owner of the Raptors, owner of Rogers Media (the company Lewenberg works for) notorious hater of Masai)

    It’s so transparently and unnecessarily negative toward Masai that it seems targeted. None of the candidates vying for the president role had a better resume than Masai, but they all had the incentive to take shots at him to flatter Ed Rogers.

    If Masai was so bad, why promote Bobby?

  16. They have a couple moves they could make. More than you can say for alot of other teams.

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