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     Saarang Pilla Bewarse Username: Saarang Post Number: 47 Registered: 04-2015 Posted From: 97.113.94.59 Rating: N/A |
This path is unpleasant. It is pain. It is empty seats, dull crowds and dino sadness as the Maple Leafs rise. Bottoming out guarantees nothing. Sometimes you get Tim Duncan. Sometimes you get Bargnani. Staying good is safer. Staying good is OK. There is honor in competing, even if no one in the East can compete with LeBron. Chasing rings and living in the toilet are not the only two choices. The bet here is that Ujiri has earned the political capital and job security to try whatever he wants. He has shrewdly built two teams at once: an annual 50-win team of veterans, and a rising group of prospects snared in the draft and via smart trades. If he wants to go young, he probably has ownership buy-in. If he thinks he can keep straddling the line between competing and rebuilding, you can't blame him. Perhaps the best way to do that: Re-sign Lowry, even if it takes the full max, let Ibaka go and fill the power forward vacancy with multiple players on shorter, cheaper contracts. That is risky. The last two years of Lowry's five-year deal will hurt. But I'm confident Lowry will be an All-Star-level player for the next two seasons, maybe three. He has fewer miles on the odometer than the typical 31-year-old. Shooting sustains. Ibaka has never been an All-Star, and every indicator shows an aging big in decline. I'm not sure Ibaka on a four-year, $85 million deal is any more tradable than Lowry at the full max. That's a good team, and the Raptors in that scenario would be locked into only two long-term mega-deals -- Lowry and DeRozan -- instead of three. They could have cap flexibility in the summer of 2019, when Carroll and (pending a player option for 2020) Valanciunas come off the books. In the meantime, they could continue to work the margins. Maybe Powell pops. Maybe Valanciunas rediscovers his form from last season's playoffs, and turns into an appealing trade asset. Maybe Poeltl thrives in his place, or becomes an intriguing trade piece himself. Maybe a desperate team overpays for DeRozan two years from now. Maybe Ujiri swindles another rival, or nails one of those franchise-altering picks outside the lottery. It wouldn't shock me if that status quo path -- or, really, any path -- involves changing coaches. Dwane Casey has done good work in Toronto, but the offense is stale. It falls apart when the games really matter. If the Raptors don't change the main players, they may want to see if changing the coach unsticks things. These are hard choices. They force organizations to confront their core beliefs about the very purpose of professional sports. They are not fun to face. But this sweep laid it bare: It is time for Toronto to face them. |