The Reason Behind Masai's 2015 Off-Season Moves

[Apollo]

Strong defense is most important to winning in the playoffs more times than not. Things get rough, the refs put their whistles away on some matters that would be called in the regular season and so it's harder to score and easier to get away with rough stuff. Also the atmosphere is much more intense and so getting cold on offense is more likely especially for a young team. How do you hang in there and give yourself a chance to pull one out? By making life hell for the other team. Ujiri is assembling a roster that teams are going to hate to play.

[Miekenstien]

Highly unlikely. The Raptors won't be using all 4 first rounders over the next 2 years cause there won't be any room on the roster for all of them, so at least one or two of those will eventually be moved and other roster spots will open up.

depending on draft position, those picks might be really cheap contracts. with the "farm system" in place keeping those picks now becomes viable

[Letter N]

I'm starting to fear that Masai is too loyal. He's doing all this to help Casey succeed even though it's obvious to everyone else that Casey is the problem.

I'm taking your kindness as a sign of weakness Masai.

[ceez]

haven't really read the thread but i think MU just wanted to build a team of strong 2-way players who can defend AND provide something on offense. washington really exposed that.

i don't think he made the moves as a knee jerk reaction, for casey. if that's what he was aiming to do he would've moved Val. i think he built the team the way he sees fit and while yes it does fit moreso what Casey wants to do it's still up to him to do his damn job. imho Dwayne's on a short leash this season.

[slaw]

The problem with the way that Masai Ujiri has gone about rebuilding the Toronto Raptors is that he has adjusted the team to match his coach's system, rather than asking the coach to adjust his system to the talents of his players. It's completely backwards.

Has Masai said he signed two players for tens of millions of dollars in long term deals to satisfy Dwane Casey's defensive system? Not sure why you believe that is the motivation for signing Carroll or Joseph. Carroll was the best SF available in FA and solved a massive, gaping black hole on the roster. Joseph did the same and was probably the best young PG available in FA. Why do two common sense, perfectly reasonable moves have to fit some strange conspiracy theory (other than, of course, so people can find some reason to shit on the team even when it has its best offseason in about 14 years)?

Masai's moves this offseason shouldn't be surprising to anyone with a memory beyond the last 3 weeks. Look at the players Ujiri brought in when he was at Denver. Look at his draft record and his trades and FA signings. The players, for the most part not uniformly, fit a pretty similar pattern.

[Superjudge]

I will give Coach Casey credit for adjusting his offence--fourth in the NBA--to the players he had last year, but not for adjusting his defence, which fell off dramatically from the previous season. With the exception of Lou Williams, he never seems to create systems to take advantage of his players' strengths, or to hide their weaknesses.

Disagree.
Casey has done well. His team is not the most talented, and it has changed every year. You can only make so many adjustments, and to be honest, getting that team to play defence was impossible.

You might see a better defence this year, BUT, if the center position doesn't improve...it will be marginal. If the guys in front of the bigs can't get a bit better.... again.

I see a lot of the use of the word "system" here. I wonder if it is over used, and a bit misused. NBA basketball is still just basketball. Defense is thinking and effort. Its that simple. If you aren't in it mentally, you won't defend well. I think whatever defence you gave that squad last year would have been executed poorly. They werent defenders.

I will finish by saying that of course the coach can do better, clearly he can, and had better. But I will say this, the amount of emphasis, and blame, and critical commenting that is aimed at Dwayne Casey on this forum is a little ridiculous. The players play the game, they are well armed with good plans to do so. Its on them to perform. They didn't, and you saw, and are seeing what the GM is doing about that.

[mcHAPPY]

"Tons" of cap space is a little strong. If they let Ross, JJ, Scola and DeMar walk, and JV is not signed to an extension so only his cap hold is on the cap, they will have 23M or so in cap room. That's enough for an RFA max (equivalent to about 16M this summer) but not enough for a DeMar/Durant age max.

If they extend both Ross and JV this summer, odds are at least 10M of that disappears. At that point they are better off giving DD whatever he wants to keep him as a (hopefully) tradeable asset and add via trade. Also note that the MLE will be much less valuable, as it does not scale with the cap.

Yeah.

No question the next step is trade.

Signing more quality role players like Carroll or Joseph isn't going to cut it to get to the next level.

[Letter N]

Masai's moves this offseason shouldn't be surprising to anyone with a memory beyond the last 3 weeks. Look at the players Ujiri brought in when he was at Denver. Look at his draft record and his trades and FA signings. The players, for the most part not uniformly, fit a pretty similar pattern.

I didn't know Kenneth Faried, Evan Fournier and Quincy Miller were defensive specialists.

Or did you mean Galinari, JaVale McGee, Felton and Turiaf? Because they're 1st class defenders if I've ever seen one.

How do I do the pink font on here?

[raptors999]

If MU actually catered to Casey he would have gone all in on Chandler.

[raptors999]

Also DC had a huge majority if his pts off assist and CoJo is a non-shooting guard. Both are the opposite of Casey players

[Marz]

haven't really read the thread but i think MU just wanted to build a team of strong 2-way players who can defend AND provide something on offense. washington really exposed that.

i don't think he made the moves as a knee jerk reaction, for casey. if that's what he was aiming to do he would've moved Val. i think he built the team the way he sees fit and while yes it does fit moreso what Casey wants to do it's still up to him to do his damn job. imho Dwayne's on a short leash this season.

The moves may not have been for Casey, but one could construe them as a way to make sure Casey has "no excuses" come this time next year. In other words, if he doesn't excel with this roster, he has no way to talk himself out of it.

[slaw]

I didn't know Kenneth Faried, Evan Fournier and Quincy Miller were defensive specialists.

Or did you mean Galinari, JaVale McGee, Felton and Turiaf? Because they're 1st class defenders if I've ever seen one.

How do I do the pink font on here?

I never claimed that defensive prowess was the specific common denominator among his personnel moves. Not sure what you are on about.....

EDIT: To be clear, I also never claimed there was any common denominator among his personnel moves, rather, that the moves fit a team-building pattern where Ujiri values athleticism and physically gifted players, while trying to stack his roster with vets and young players at various positions.

Obviously, a GM is never going consistently select the exact same type of player because he needs to fill team needs and solve weaknesses and he also needs to try and get the best possible players, not all of whom fit a pre-determined mould, and he also has to work with what he has.

[Letter N]

I never claimed that defensive prowess was the specific common denominator among his personnel moves. Not sure what you are on about.....

"Masai's moves this offseason shouldn't be surprising to anyone with a memory beyond the last 3 weeks. Look at the players Ujiri brought in when he was at Denver. Look at his draft record and his trades and FA signings. The players, for the most part not uniformly, fit a pretty similar pattern."

[Marz]

Masai's moves this offseason shouldn't be surprising to anyone with a memory beyond the last 3 weeks. Look at the players Ujiri brought in when he was at Denver. Look at his draft record and his trades and FA signings. The players, for the most part not uniformly, fit a pretty similar pattern.

Masai's stint in Denver included him taking fliers on talented players that either weren't desirable or had some kind of a hole in their games (e.g. McGee and BBall IQ, Faried and defense, Anthony Randolph and not fully realizing raw talent). The only player I see that fits the mold during this off-season is Biyombo. The other players he's drafted/signed are coming from good systems and have proven themselves on some level, which is why I started this thread - to find out why.

[ceez]

The moves may not have been for Casey, but one could construe them as a way to make sure Casey has "no excuses" come this time next year. In other words, if he doesn't excel with this roster, he has no way to talk himself out of it.

oh i agree, i'm just saying i don't think MU built the roster with Casey specifically in mind.