Raptors general manager Bobby Webster completed his first NBA trade deadline as the man in charge Thursday.<\/p>\n
Here are the biggest takeaways from his media appearance after the Raptors easily beat the Chicago Bulls.<\/p>\n
OBJECTIVES COMPLETED<\/p>\n
Toronto went into the deadline seeking some help up front and, as Webster had said as far back as the opening of training camp, to get under the luxury tax. They did both.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we accomplished the objectives,\u201d Webster said. \u201cWe needed to get under the tax. We were looking for some front-court help. We tried to get work done early. Monday, Tuesday, last night with the Trayce (Jackson-Davis) thing. We had some fun. There were some bigger deals. I think at this point, for this group, we didn\u2019t want to chase,\u201d Webster said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou didn\u2019t want to get in a situation where you felt like you were not necessarily overpaying, but we\u2019re still on the uphill climb I think. What are we, two thirds into the season. Pretty positive start here, more than a start. The group\u2019s coming together. There will be a time where we\u2019ll push in and consolidate and add some picks. We just felt the prices were, at this point, a bit higher for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meaning they want to see what they\u2019ve got and didn\u2019t think they were good enough yet to push in most of their chips for help. Given the record against good teams, that makes sense.<\/p>\n
IS RJ BARRETT STICKING AROUND?<\/p>\n
Webster discussed the rumour mill and how it sometimes gets rolling without much substance. \u201cI think everyone talks amongst themselves, and I think that creates a lot of it (trade chatter). But, you know, I stay in communication with him, his agent, even in the case of Jak. So I think they all know that unless they hear from us, or hears from us personally, that they don\u2019t need to be worried about all the rumours,\u201d Webster said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs far as RJ, I think, listen, he\u2019s had a little bit of injury bad luck this year. When he\u2019s been on the court, we win. I think when he\u2019s been on the court, he provides dynamic scoring for them. But listen, we\u2019re gonna have to win at the highest level. We\u2019re gonna have to win down here and make it to the playoffs. We have to win in the playoffs. And I think that\u2019s what we wanted to do with this group, is see what this group can do. (We\u2019re in) the last third of the season, hopefully make some noise in the post-season, and then we can sort of collect ourselves at the end of the year,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
TJD TIMELINE<\/p>\n
Toronto\u2019s been high on Jackson-Davis for a while. How long? Well, Webster noted he first saw him play way back in the summer of 2018 when he was randomly playing just a bit West in St. Catharines for Team USA at an Under-18 tournament.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen obviously great pedigree with his dad (Dale Davis), Indiana, Golden State. So I think that was someone we\u2019ve always had our eye on. Timing matters, too. We called on him in the past, and then Golden State yesterday, getting (Kristaps Porzingis made him more gettable),\u201d Webster said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it sort of was the time for him to become free. So we knew when we got under, when we did the Ochai deal, we would have the ability on Wednesday to look at some of these guys. We didn\u2019t have a lot of money to spend, but say anyone under 3 million, we could look at and bring them in. And so, Trayce quickly rose to the top of that list, and fortunately, the timing worked.\u201d<\/p>\n
AROUND THE RIM<\/p>\n
Other notes that stood out were Webster saying they believe Poeltl will be able to join them for the stretch run, barring any other setbacks; Webster noting the silver lining of the injury has been seeing what rookie Collin Murray-Boyles can do at centre. \u201cThat\u2019s huge \u2026 By all means it\u2019s translated for sure on the defensive end. the strength\u2019s there, obviously, he\u2019s not 7 foot, but for sure it\u2019s been a great surprise for us to see him (fitting in at centre) this quickly.\u201d Finally, Toronto will waive Chris Paul \u201cat the appropriate time\u201d (even though Paul is one of Webster\u2019s all-time favourite players.<\/p>\n
@WolstatSun<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Raptors general manager Bobby Webster completed his first NBA trade deadline as the man in charge Thursday. Here…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":586240,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3770],"tags":[7,10295,329,964,6,2828,681,1041,680,476,3820],"class_list":["post-586239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-toronto-raptors","tag-basketball","tag-bobby-webster","tag-chicago-bulls","tag-collin-murray-boyles","tag-nba","tag-nba-trade-deadline","tag-raptors","tag-rj-barrett","tag-toronto","tag-toronto-raptors","tag-torontoraptors"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116023776664807283","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=586239"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586239\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/586240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=586239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=586239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=586239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}