Quote:
Originally Posted by Vinny01
Funny that you bring the Raptors up. In 2013 they looked to be ready to tear the team down. They sent Rudy Gay to Sacramento and came extremely close to trading Lowry to the Knicks. The team took off after their deal with the Kings and it sparked the best run in franchise history. Had the Knicks not pulled out of the Lowry deal the Raptors don’t win a championship in 2019.
This current Raptors team is looking at moving potential UFA players and doing nothing different than the Flames would do if they completely fall out of the race and sell of their pending free agents as rentals. The Raptors are also on a 9 game slide and not a fringe playoff team anymore. Just a bad comparison in my opinion.
I think there is a large chunk of this team that needs to be turned over. I don’t think there is a hope that the Flames do anything other than try and win as long as they employ Sutter as coach. There is no rebuild coming this summer but I think we see massive changes. I am prepared to be extremely underwhelmed by the returns our former core players get in trades.
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Say what you will about Lowry, but without great drafting and talent development (see Siakam and Vanvleet), and an unprecedented trade for Leonard, they're nowhere close to a championship, as evidenced by being trounced by the Cavs in the playoffs year after year. So you can focus on not trading Lowry, but that was the first of about 5 or 6 things that they were fortunate on.
The Raps were talking sell well before this 9 game losing streak which effectively ended their playoff hopes. So no, I don't think it's a bad comparison. I'd say the trajectory of both teams in their respective leagues is rather comparable. One accepted their fate, the Flames are caught in the middle yet again.