Toronto Raptors 2013/14 Season

[kmart]

I thought the reffing really let Brooklyn dictate the physicality on their side of the ball and the Raps got called for small bumps that really compromised the defence. Small fouls like when Vasquez was fronting Johnson didn't allow the Raps to be physical with the Net's physical players.

The same calls were not called for both teams regardless of what happened. The block/charge game between the Raps and the Net's was a terrible display of officiating.

Interesting to note that Casey said DeRozan had the flu during the game.

As for the team moving forward I'm looking forward to the development of Jonas. I think he is all-star material and could potentially be the best center in the east in about 2-3 years. If you look at trends of post players most of them don't reach their peak until their 4th to 5th years in the league.

They should probably exercise the team option on Amir's contract and try to re-sign Lowry for a reasonable price.

I'm hoping they find a decent replacement for Salmons, because at this stage of his career he is a complete disaster on the offensive end. His offence pretty much negates anything that he does on defence. Maybe their draft pick could fill the void.

Great season this year. I'll be looking forward to next season for the Raps.

[The Big Chill]

Well that was the best Raptors season in a very long time. Hopefully they can build on this tough loss and become more of a threat to go deep in next years playoffs.

[bluejays]

Originally Posted by kmart

I thought the reffing really let Brooklyn dictate the physicality on their side of the ball and the Raps got called for small bumps that really compromised the defence. Small fouls like when Vasquez was fronting Johnson didn't allow the Raps to be physical with the Net's physical players.

The same calls were not called for both teams regardless of what happened. The block/charge game between the Raps and the Net's was a terrible display of officiating.

Interesting to note that Casey said DeRozan had the flu during the game.

As for the team moving forward I'm looking forward to the development of Jonas. I think he is all-star material and could potentially be the best center in the east in about 2-3 years. If you look at trends of post players most of them don't reach their peak until their 4th to 5th years in the league.

They should probably exercise the team option on Amir's contract and try to re-sign Lowry for a reasonable price.

I'm hoping they find a decent replacement for Salmons, because at this stage of his career he is a complete disaster on the offensive end. His offence pretty much negates anything that he does on defence. Maybe their draft pick could fill the void.

Great season this year. I'll be looking forward to next season for the Raps.

Agreed with everything completely. Salmons needs to be replaced. The bench this year was incredible and played like solid 6th men. But back to Salmons again, the guy is useless at this stage. Slow, and almost emotionless in a bad way - he just didn't fit in. I was actually wrong about this team and Lowry this year and am so glad they did this well as a young team. Pretty much the St. Louis Blues of basketball. I don't know what their cap situation is, but aside from Salmons, I hope this team remains relatively intact. I don't think 1A FA signing will work for this team. There are certain concerns I have, and I'm not sure what comes of a guy like Ross. If it were me, I'd keep him, but then you have very similar players in Ross and DeRozan, and Ross won't have much development sharing time with him (but not good enough to be a starter yet as well). Real conundrum. Above all, where I think they have to address under the basket defensive defence. Way to many easy baskets under the basket this year, but also if they could get a solid player like Joe Johnson who can hit the 3, without overshadowing his teammates, that would be great. This is a real team atmosphere and anyone brought in can't overshadow that culture. While he wouldn't provide 3's, I wonder if JJ Hickson could be brought in?

[kmart]

Originally Posted by fleury

Agreed with everything completely. Salmons needs to be replaced. The bench this year was incredible and played like solid 6th men. But back to Salmons again, the guy is useless at this stage. Slow, and almost emotionless in a bad way - he just didn't fit in. I was actually wrong about this team and Lowry this year and am so glad they did this well as a young team. Pretty much the St. Louis Blues of basketball. I don't know what their cap situation is, but aside from Salmons, I hope this team remains relatively intact. I don't think 1A FA signing will work for this team. There are certain concerns I have, and I'm not sure what comes of a guy like Ross. If it were me, I'd keep him, but then you have very similar players in Ross and DeRozan, and Ross won't have much development sharing time with him (but not good enough to be a starter yet as well). Real conundrum. Above all, where I think they have to address under the basket defensive defence. Way to many easy baskets under the basket this year, but also if they could get a solid player like Joe Johnson who can hit the 3, without overshadowing his teammates, that would be great. This is a real team atmosphere and anyone brought in can't overshadow that culture. While he wouldn't provide 3's, I wonder if JJ Hickson could be brought in?

http://hoopshype.com/salaries/toronto.htm

On the website it looks like they have 41 million guaranteed. Reading around it looks like the salary cap is 63.2 million.

- My guess is Lowry signs a 4 year year extension at 12 mill
- The Raps choose to exercise Amirs option (7 mill)
- Qualify Patterson (4 mill)
- Resign Vasquez. (5 mill)

It seems unlikely that the Raps have cap space to target a FA unless they use the MLE (about 5 mill). Its up to the draft and trades to improve this team.

[The Big Chill]

Fields, Hayes, and Salmons eat up a lot of cap space without providing much on the court. Figuring out a way to ditch their salaries could be an important part of the offseason.

[Senator Clay Davis]

Well someone has to say it...trade DeRozan. I really don't see him going anywhere higher than where he was at this year. Cash in now and use DeRozan and a future #1 pick and try and get into the lottery this year, where there's many guys who I think profile to be as good or better than DeRozan.

But Jonas absolutely has to start seeing the ball more. He needs more touches and shots. Realistically the offense should be running through him soon. With both Lowry and DeRozan, I really don't see him getting the touches he needs to develop. 8 shots a game isn't good enough, he needs to be averaging 12-15 a game.

[octothorp]

Thoughts on the playoff performances:

Lowry: Sucks that he couldn't manufacture that last bucket (although I think that was more on coaching than Lowry), but he looked like a seasoned veteran all series long. I'd be happy with a 4-year contract for him in the offseason for $12 million or less.

DeRozan: Proved me wrong in that I thought his offence wouldn't translate to the playoffs, but whenever he was aggressive, he got what he wanted. Defence needs work though. And he seriously needs to figure out his blind-spot regarding JV. He can somehow make decent passes to every other big, but never tries the pass to JV. The biggest improvement I can imagine the offense having is DeRozan finding JV after the high screen and double-team.

Amir: really up-and-down series from him. Honestly I'm a bit disappointed, they need consistency from him and he hasn't provided that. Of course, he's playing through ankle injury, but it seems like he's spent most of the last couple seasons playing through ankle injuries. I could see him losing the starter position to Patterson next season.

Ross: Obviously had a bad series, although showed some flashes on defence at times, and you can't ask for better experience than defending on Pierce in the last seconds of game 7. I thought game 7 was actually his best of the series, and I don't think you could say that about any other Raptor.

JV: Had a few great games, but also struggled at times to hang onto the ball. Really weak rebounding performance in game 7, constantly being outworked by Blatche.

Patterson: Really impressive playoffs. His ability to hit a pull-up jumper or floater is very good for a PF. I'd love to see the Raptors retain him.

Vasquez: Had a big impact at times and was invisible at others. But actually, he showed more defence in this series than he did during a lot of the regular season. He was one of the guys that the Raptors needed a lot more from in game 7. Still, I'd welcome him back as backup PG.

Hayes: Some veteran leadership and useful minutes, but still, the fact that he got so many minutes says a lot about the team.

Salmons: Like most Raptors fans, I'm just at a loss to see what Casey sees in him.

Casey: Seriously disappointed in him. I thought he got outcoached, and given his experience vs. Kidd's, that's inexcusable. He needed to win the coaching matchup. Not knowing where the ball's being in-bounded on the biggest play of the season? That alone is a monumental error. But bigger problems were an inability to find any answers for Brooklyn's relatively predictable offence, and an inability to exploit the offensive advantages that his team had. Patterson, JV, and Amir had exceptional shooting averages for the whole series (except for JV's 1-5 today), and yet they were getting only about 20-24 shot attempts per game.

If they retain most of the team, a serviceable SF stopper and a backup C are the two big needs... and, IMO, a new head coach.

[bluejays]

Originally Posted by Senator Clay Davis

Well someone has to say it...trade DeRozan. I really don't see him going anywhere higher than where he was at this year. Cash in now and use DeRozan and a future #1 pick and try and get into the lottery this year, where there's many guys who I think profile to be as good or better than DeRozan.

But Jonas absolutely has to start seeing the ball more. He needs more touches and shots. Realistically the offense should be running through him soon. With both Lowry and DeRozan, I really don't see him getting the touches he needs to develop. 8 shots a game isn't good enough, he needs to be averaging 12-15 a game.

As hard as that is after seeing him progressing so much this year, you're not off track. Really, this team is solid, but there are a few untradeables despite this. Valanciunas and Lowry. The rest are pretty much expendable to some degree if the price is right.

Val and Lowry you simply couldn't replace IMO, which makes them untradeable. The rest pretty much are. The only problem with dealing DeRozan would be changing the team culture. He's suddenly become a coveted solid player. I'd only deal him if you could get a top 4 pick in this years draft. If you put yourself in another GM's shoes, even if you see the potential in the guy, is a 1st and DeRozan a sellable asset to your fan base for giving up a relatively franchise type draft? I don't think any GM could easily justify that to their fan base, even if they are confident in him. Realistically, his size limits to him as a good second option on a championship team - we're not the only ones to know that.

MU's going to have to make some tough decisions this off-season, and it's going to require some ballsy moves as it's a likeable group of players, though sometimes tough to watch, changes will be necessary to make them a serious contender. How that's done is anybody's guess as it can be made in so many ways.

[bluejays]

Originally Posted by octothorp

Thoughts on the playoff performances:

...

Casey: Seriously disappointed in him. I thought he got outcoached, and given his experience vs. Kidd's, that's inexcusable. He needed to win the coaching matchup. Not knowing where the ball's being in-bounded on the biggest play of the season? That alone is a monumental error. But bigger problems were an inability to find any answers for Brooklyn's relatively predictable offence, and an inability to exploit the offensive advantages that his team had. Patterson, JV, and Amir had exceptional shooting averages for the whole series (except for JV's 1-5 today), and yet they were getting only about 20-24 shot attempts per game.

If they retain most of the team, a serviceable SF stopper and a backup C are the two big needs... and, IMO, a new head coach.

Agree with everything but Casey. His hands were severely tied today with the early and unbelievable fouls. The most important thing is he has the respect of his team and while his strategy may not be Phil Jackson-like, he does have Assistants to help with a lot of it, and he doesn't look like he is an egomaniac like Kidd - he actually uses and relies on his guys. I don't even think he was outcoached. His hands were simply tied. After what the team was, and how they've developed, whether from the trade or not, Casey deserves 2 years to go with this team.

[The Big Chill]

I wouldn't trade DeRozan unless the offer was massive. He's a 24 year old all-star that is on a quite reasonable contract. He still has improvements to make, but so do most 24 year olds. JV, DeRozan, and Lowry make a very solid core.

[bluejays]

Created a new thread to discuss the off-season, once the steam has settled in this thread from this horrendous loss.

[OzSome]

Originally Posted by Senator Clay Davis

Well someone has to say it...trade DeRozan. I really don't see him going anywhere higher than where he was at this year. Cash in now and use DeRozan and a future #1 pick and try and get into the lottery this year, where there's many guys who I think profile to be as good or better than DeRozan.

But Jonas absolutely has to start seeing the ball more. He needs more touches and shots. Realistically the offense should be running through him soon. With both Lowry and DeRozan, I really don't see him getting the touches he needs to develop. 8 shots a game isn't good enough, he needs to be averaging 12-15 a game.

This...coming from a guy who wants the Raptors to tank this season. Trading Derozan is like going back from the start over and over again. Getting a high draft pick is not guaranteed to get a young player who can help the team next season or the season after. We all know what happened when Raptors drafted Andrea Bargnani 1st pick overall. Besides Derozan is just coming on his own and was one of the reason why Raptors even went to play Game 7 today.

[kmart]

Trading a 24 year old all star and a future first for a top 5 pick is a disaterous idea. DeRozan is on a reasonable contract and he's finally proven that he can play at a high level and now we should get rid of him? That would set the organization back another 4-5 years?

This draft class isn't even that great. Parker got eliminated in the first round of the NCAA tourney, Wiggins scored 2 points in a second round loss, Exum already wants to be a Laker, Smart got eliminated in the first round two years in a row, and a lot of people think Randle is overrated.

[Senator Clay Davis]

I think people are overvaluing DeRozan just a little. Not that he's bad player at all, but he's not a superstar and I'm not sure he will ever become one. For instance...

Player A at age 24: 24.6 PPG, 42% FG, 41% 3PT, 87% FT, 38 MPG
Player B at age 24: 25.8 PPG, 45% FG, 42% 3PT, 88% FT, 36 MPG
Player C at age 24: 22.7 PPG, 43% FG, 30% 3PT, 82% FT, 38 MPG

Player A is Kevin Martin, Player B is Danny Granger and Player C is DeMar DeRozan. Now I strongly suspect no one considers either of the first two players to be a superstar. DeMar can absolutely be a key compenent to a title contender, he just can't be the focus. DeRozan's jump this year over previous years is almost entirely based on the massive jump in free throw attempts per game (from a previous high of 5.3 to 8). And interstingly enough, Martin and Granger both saw similar jumps in FTA in their 24 year old seasons (7.1 to 9.5 for Martin; 4.7 to 6.9 for Granger)

I guess I'm just really, really high on Jonas. I honestly believe he can be a top 3 center in a few years with Anthony Davis and DeMarcus Cousins. I think he needs to be the focal point of the offense. With two lower percentage, higher volume shooters in Lowry and DeRozan, you simply have too much redundancy and not enough touches for Jonas. I think Lowry is more valuable than DeMar, and I'm basically thinking sell high now on DeRozan and maximize the return.

[OzSome]

You need at least 5 players to be a starter and not just one or two. I get that you are high on Jonas and I am not argue about his talent but with him as a central focus, it is easy for other team to key on one guy. I think Derozan as a small forward, Lowry as a PG, JV in the middle along with shooting guard and a power forward will give the other team a problem. Just look at Miami, they have 3 players that can score with LeBron, Wade and Bosh and it works for them. They also have good supporting players to complement them. So if one team keyed on James, it means Wade or Bosh are open. Same goes with putting two guys on Bosh or Wade.

I just don't get it on why everytime a young player a team is grooming for years, some wants to trade them because they can maximize the return. So when JV or Ross started to develop, I bet you'll think they should trade them as well because you can get good drafts in return. Not the way to run a team especially a team like Raptors who haven't been in the playoffs for a long time until this season.

[killer_carlson]

As stated above, the Raptors offensive plan is this:

Lowry drives and shoots/kicks
Derozan drives and shoots/kicks

They are the same player and make the rest of the players on the floor redundant offensively. Long term you cannot have both your point guard and shooting guard as essentially the same player.

I would be open to trading DR, but I am impressed enough by management that I will give them the benefit of the doubt.

[darklord700]

Derozan's game looks better than it actually is. I'm all for trading DD, he rellies on his atheleticism and doesn't have a go to move. He's better than 90%-95% of the ballers there are but he's not an elite player you can count on to win championships.

In Ujiri we turst to get max value out of a trade for DD.

[The Big Chill]

Why does it matter that DeRozan isn't a superstar? Should we trade everyone that isn't a superstar? He's a very good player who is still at an age where it is reasonable to think he can get better. He isn't paid like a star, and we should be hanging on to him unless another team massively over values him and wants to give up way too much to get him.

[Imported_Aussie]

De Rozan would be a better long term piece if he was more of a threat from deep. If I am building a team, I want a guy at PG who can get the ball moving, both on the dribble and the pass, an elite inside option, 1-2 guys who can shoot the ball and put it on the floor enough to keep defences honest and a PF who can rebound, defend and hit a mid-range jumper. Then you can worry about the bench having some cover and a guy who can come out and score.
The raptors could build along these lines:

PG = Lowry
SG = Ross
SF = ????
PF = Patterson
C = Valanciunas

DeRozan doesn't have a good enough shot from deep to stretch the floor, and since he is driving, it clogs the lane and makes the offence too repetitive.
His value is also high - which is what makes him good trade bait.

I am not sure you can get a guy in the draft to fit the team's needs, unless you get into the early lottery (1-7). Late lottery 2-4 guys don't jump out at me as worth a big trade, as I feel a guy with question marks projected in the 20s, like Adreian Payne or Glen Robinson III, is not enough of a drop off to trade up this year, at least purely looking at picks.
Also, the teams in the early lottery might not bite at DeRozan - maybe Utah if they think they will lose Hayward, but most have scorers at 2/3 already.

Time may be right to cash in on DeRozan, should the team feel his skillset doesn't mesh long term with their desired team makeup, but the right deal might not be there.

[darklord700]

Originally Posted by Imported_Aussie

Time may be right to cash in on DeRozan, should the team feel his skillset doesn't mesh long term with their desired team makeup, but the right deal might not be there.

DD is a tweeter, he's good at a lot of the areas of the game, shooting, driving, rebounding but excels at none. That's his problem.

He's stock might not be any higher that it is now and there should be takers like James Dolan.