TORONTO — When Jakob Poeltl returns to the Raptors’ lineup, which should happen sometime during their upcoming six-game road trip, he will face a completely different team.
The veteran centre damaged his ankle during a win against Golden State earlier this month after landing awkwardly on his now-former teammate Pascal Siakam’s foot.
At the time, the Raptors appeared to be a young, retooling club on the rise, having won three of their first four games after acquiring Immanuel Quickley and RJ Barrett. In the roughly three weeks since, Poeltl has seen them lose seven of eight games and trade away a dear buddy.
“It was tough because I think he was the guy that I was closest to on this team,” said Poeltl, who joined the league with Siakam in 2016, vacationed with him during numerous all-star breaks, and grew close to him and his family during two distinct spells in Toronto.
“I guess I was mentally prepared for it previously because there had been so many rumours, so I knew it was possible. It didn’t come out of nowhere, which made the process a little easier, but it’s still very painful for me to have lost my best buddy on the squad.”
Poeltl chose to re-sign with the Raptors over the summer after being reacquired from San Antonio ahead of last year’s trade deadline, a deal that was controversial at the time and has not aged well. The 2022-23 team had fallen short of expectations, but demonstrated enough throughout a 15-11 post-deadline run to persuade president Masai Ujiri that the core deserved a second chance, thus the plan was to run it again.
Instead, Fred VanVleet went in free agency, and now, halfway through the season, OG Anunoby and Siakam have been dealt, with the latter giving Toronto draft capital and future flexibility.
If you have any doubts about what the organization is prioritizing in the second half of the season and beyond, watch the last moments of Monday’s loss to Memphis. With a few minutes remaining, head coach Darko Rajakovic substituted 20-year-old rookie Gradey Dick for Gary Trent Jr., a potential free agent whose future in Toronto appears bleak. Dick, who has received more playing time since the Siakam deal, finished the game with 22-year-old Scottie Barnes, 23-year-old Barrett, and 24-year-old Quickley, indicating a clear and purposeful effort to get him some higher leverage repetitions alongside the franchise’s other key players.
Does the dramatic shift in team direction affect Poeltl’s feelings about his decision from last summer or his future in Toronto?
“The only thing that mattered to me was that I was on a team that could play competitive basketball,” the 28-year-old centre explained. “As long as there wasn’t a squad that was deliberately trying to tank, I believe that was enough for me. For example, I’d like to play for a team that is constantly striving for victory. So, even though we made some adjustments and lost some really talented players, I believe we’re still on track to develop around this club right now rather than looking for a No. 1 draft pick, you know? So as long as that’s the case, I believe I’ll be happy here, and I hope to contribute to this new Raptors squad, this new project that we’re embarking on.”
Call it anything you like, but this new project, or rebuild, as it is widely known, might take a variety of forms as it progresses. This is not a tank in the usual sense, at least not yet. For the time being, the idea is to foster the young players in a competitive setting while also having older players around to help them progress.
However, competing at a high level while simultaneously prioritizing internal improvement is difficult to achieve, even in the best of circumstances, but especially with a young squad that has recently traded away two of its best and most experienced players. If and when forced to choose between the two, there’s no doubt where they’ll lean.
“The main vision is developing a young core, how this organization is going to look in the future and establishing a foundation for the future of this team,” Rajakovic said in a statement on Thursday. “We prepare every day to compete and do our best against any opponent, which I believe is a healthy mentality.” [But] giving young players and core players the opportunity to achieve and fail is the only way we can continue to evolve.”
This is a team in transition, and despite a couple of significant franchise-altering transactions, Ujiri has made it obvious that they are not done dealing before the Feb. 8 trade deadline. Multiple league sources have confirmed the obvious: the Raptors appear to be open for business, and aside from Barnes and the two former Knicks, everything and everyone is on the table. If they can transform any of their veterans – Trent, Dennis Schroder, Chris Boucher, the freshly acquired Bruce Brown, or possibly even Poeltl – into picks or prospects to help push the rebuild along, it’s difficult to imagine them passing it up.
According to their own admission, the Raptors pulled their foot off the accelerator – or tanked – toward the close of that disastrous 2020-21 season in Tampa, when they rested their older players to better their lottery possibilities, finally securing them a franchise cornerstone in Barnes.
If things continue to go south late in the season, it’s not unreasonable to expect them to make a similar decision with any of the veterans who remain on the roster after the deadline. The noteworthy difference this time around is that Toronto owes San Antonio its first-round selection, protected one through six, as part of the Poeltl trade.
In a vacuum, dealing a lightly protected first-round pick for a solid starting centre isn’t an awful deal. If Ujiri had done the same deal 12 months ago, when the team was in the midst of a 48-win season, needed a big, and gave up a first for Thaddeus Young at the deadline, it may have been regarded one of his best moves ever. Instead, it will go down as one of his worst performances. It made little sense at the time, given the club’s dismal record, ungainly fit, and impending financial obligations (Poeltl included). It makes even less sense now that they’ve changed their strategy and may use that pick in what is considered a weak 2024 draft.
“I’m not going to sit here and cry over spilt milk or give you guys any excuses,” Ujiri said when asked if he had any regrets about the Poeltl transaction last week. “If it was a mistake, it was clearly one. But, looking forward, that’s good value for us, whether it’s now or in the future.
In theory, top-six protection for the pick may make a late-season tank more enticing; with each defeat, the chances of keeping it increase. Monday’s loss to Memphis, the team just below them in the standings, decreased the Raptors’ season record to 16-28, the sixth-worst in the NBA, giving them a 45.8 percent probability of holding the selection.
While the league’s bottom four clubs – Detroit (5-39), Washington (7-36), San Antonio (8-36), and Charlotte (10-32) – would be difficult to catch, their chances of retaining the selection increase to 63.9% if they fall behind Portland, who has a three-game lead for the fifth-worst record. They would only have a 32% chance of keeping their choice if they finished with the seventh-worst record, and four clubs – Toronto, Memphis, Brooklyn, and Atlanta – are now within two games of that position.
Then, in addition to the normal ethical and practical difficulties with tanking, there’s the question of whether keeping a pick in this year’s draft is even worthwhile. If it does not convey in 2024, it moves to 2025 with the same safeguards, then to 2026 before becoming two second-round picks. Given that they’re certain to stay in the lottery for the foreseeable future, losing their first-round pick in a terrible 2024 draft may be preferable to losing one later, even if it ends up being the seventh or eighth overall selection. Perhaps they should look at it as a sunk expense and let the chips fall where they may.
The problem is that even with the finest intentions, wins might be difficult to come by. Poeltl’s return will assist; they are 1-7 without their starting centre, but he has yet to be cleared for contact and will need to regain his conditioning after missing three weeks. Quickley is now anticipated to miss some time due to a thigh contusion, ruling him out for Friday’s game against the Clippers.
After hosting the Clippers, one of the NBA’s hottest teams, they’ll embark on another six-game road trip before next month’s trade deadline, when an already youthful rotation might become even younger.
Poeltl wants to be a part of a developing team as long as it is competitive, and the Raptors want to remain competitive as long as they are developing. For the time being, their trajectories align. For the time being, but possibly not for much longer.
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