Why the Raptors Must Own the Trade Market

Superstars do not change teams in free agency. For so long, that statement was axiomatic.

Shaquille O'Neal, who left Orlando for Los Angeles in 1996, was the exception. Even he was an obvious outlier, as his Hollywood aspirations made becoming a Laker his biggest priority. Kazaam does not happen without O'Neal's move, and then where are we as a society?

Michael Jordan never seriously entertained leaving Chicago, and neither did the superstars who came before or followed him, at least in the primes of their careers: Larry, Magic, Isiah, Hakeem, Patrick and The Mailman, etc. Leaving your team for greener pastures would be admitting defeat for those stars, even after they suffered actual defeat. After Jordan retired, the game's next kings—O'Neal, Tim Duncan, Allen Iverson, Kevin Garnett and Kobe Bryant—never left their teams as free agents at the height of their powers.

The Boston Celtics' summer of 2007 is perhaps the most important thing to have happened to the NBA in the 2000s. Garnett and Ray Allen joining (via trades) Paul Pierce in Boston was massive, as their Celtics took over the Eastern Conference from LeBron James' Cavaliers, causing James to consider his options in 2010, ultimately deciding to join Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh in Miami in free agency.

Now, four years on the trot, the biggest free agent that could feasibly switch teams has switched teams, regardless of the advantages the incumbent team had under the terms of the collective bargaining agreement. Dwight Howard went to Houston from the Lakers in 2013. LeBron James went home in 2014. LaMarcus Aldridge left the Trail Blazers for Spurs last year. Now, this year, Kevin Durant has gone from Oklahoma City to Golden State. That is nothing short of a tectonic shift for the NBA, no matter how many external, and occasionally unrepeatable factors influenced all of those individual cases in different ways.

Through it all, the Toronto Raptors, despite their rising profile in the league, have been on the periphery. They had moments in the spotlight—Drake's fine! Aldridge's discussion with Masai Ujiri!—but mostly, stars have moved around as the Raptors have looked on. Perhaps with that in mind, Ujiri has mostly re-signed his own players, and has tried to do his damage on the trade market or in the free agency bargain bin.

That was always destined to be the Raptors' avenues to improvement this offseason, which should make the early, and most important part of free agency no surprise for the Raptors: DeMar DeRozan is back on a near-max deal, Bismack Biyombo is gone on a starter's salary (curiously, to a team he may not start for), and they have made no additional moves.

By signing Jonas Valanciunas and Terrence Ross to contract extensions, the Raptors were never going to have significant money to throw around during a summer where nearly every team had that sort of cash on hand. Now, the Raptors have the mid-level exception (or the under-the-cap equivalent, depending on when they officially do DeRozan's deal; cap maneuvering is tedious to write about and boring to read about) to work with, and given the boom in league revenue, that apparently does not even get you Andrew Nicholson, who spent four years floating in and out of Orlando's rotation. Good luck with that, Masai.

Anyway, all of that makes the Raptors, as they stand today, worse than they were at the end of the season—unless Jakob Poeltl is better than advertised, quicker than advertised. That is a scary proposition for the Raptors, coming off of their franchise peak. They were runners-up to LeBron in the Eastern Conference. The past two teams that had that honour, the Pacers and Hawks, are now hugely changed from their pinnacles. Their entire on-court philosophies have changed thanks to the churn caused by shorter player contracts, and the stylistic evolution of the league. Although making the next step has to be Ujiri's focus, falling back now has to be a major concern for the general manager.

Alas, those panicking because Ujiri hasn't added to his team in four days need to breathe deeply. First of all, progress tends not to be linear, despite the notion that teams must climb a ladder a rung at a time, without the option of falling down a spot or two (the pervasiveness of that notion is a less-mentioned part of Jordan's legacy).

As importantly, only one team in the East has dramatically bettered itself. Boston has certainly improved with Al Horford—perhaps, along with Durant, the only player that was worth the Raptors trying to shed assets for in order to sign. Beyond that, which second-tier team in the conference has gotten better? Atlanta will have to endure a major systemic overhaul with Howard in Horford's place. Miami and Charlotte have basically stood pat. Indiana, Detroit, New York, Orlando and Chicago are all question marks with as many questions as answers.

That does not absolve Ujiri of responsibility to make the roster better. Part of the idea behind re-signing Ross was that it was important to have players on fixed, pre-crazy-TV-money salaries. Now, the Raptors have several useful players on reasonable deals—Ross, Cory Joseph and Patrick Patterson. Kyle Lowry is also on a steal of a contract for one more season, while Valanciunas's four-year pact pays him the same amount as Timofey Mozgov, somehow.

Ujiri has avoided clogging up the Raptors' cap sheet, but now his work gets complicated. For now, Ujiri must own the trade market, until he can reliably get the Raptors involved in the free-agent conversations that can truly shake up the league's power structure.