Toronto Raptors mailbag: Who should they draft, plus Masai Ujiri's future
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The second part of this week's Toronto Raptors mailbag keys on the upcoming draft, which is somehow just about here since it's June out of nowhere. What happened to May? That sure didn't feel like an early summer.
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Toronto is hard at work getting to know prospects as the draft process enters the final stretch. The NBA Finals are about to start and Canada's best-ever basketball player, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, can become the first Canuck to be the best player on an NBA champion if his Oklahoma City Thunder can keep rolling. They'll likely be facing Pascal Siakam and the Indiana Pacers (barring a stunning New York Knicks comeback) in a great contrast of styles: Smothering defence against frenetic offence. It should be fun.
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From Various people: 'Do you think the lottery was rigged, because it sure as hell seemed like it was!!!'
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RW: No. It's a lottery, weird things happen. We saw Atlanta win with minuscule odds last year, the New York Islanders and Utah Whatevers make massive jumps in the NHL lottery this year and the days of lotteries going mostly chalk are long gone. There are too many security procedures in place for it to be rigged.
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I simulated the lottery 25 times on Tankathon and Dallas only moved up twice, to second and to fourth (Toronto moved into the Top 4 several times).
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Dan: 'With the East not having many great teams, what do you think is the likelihood the Raptors attempt to upgrade their talent with a large-ish trade or two? I'm thinking trading a youth or two for a solid big makes sense for this group as currently constructed.'
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RW: That kind of happened already with the Brandon Ingram trade and it didn't cost any young roster pieces (a first-round pick and a second-round pick went out with Bruce Brown and Kelly Olynyk). Could more consolidation happen? Absolutely, but I would expect the front office to see what it has for a few months before doing anything. The whole group wasn't together for many games last year and Ingram didn't play for the Raptors at all.
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For luxury tax reasons they might need to explore what they could get for Ochai Agbaji and even RJ Barrett and eventually, if either Ja'Kobe Walter or Gradey Dick separate themselves from the other (as I've said, my money's on Walter), one of them could be on the move. But, again, don't see that happening for a while. My best guess is Toronto either makes a major deal before the season starts or nothing. League insiders have speculated there will be a flurry of trades league-wide.
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RW: Yes, I've actually reported previously that a couple of people who would know had told me when Banton signed with Boston that playing at home hadn't been great for him and he could thrive elsewhere. It didn't work with the stacked Celtics, but he's had some nice stretches in Portland. It's too bad he didn't get to have a long tenure with the Raptors, but he's definitely still an inspiration to kids from his area, as he'd hoped to be.
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