Everything Goran Dragic

[inthepaint]

There was probably some legit personal reasons at play, but those most of the time are just for a few days/weeks, you typically don't see a player take a whole year off for that, especially if it's a contract year.

There was probably a combination of factors, though golden's version is likely the closest to what actually happened. He started the first game of the season, he was ready to go. Nurse then started playing two young and green guys ahead of him. Part of it was due to style (in case of banton), part of it was prioritizing development, part of it was maybe locker room dynamics. The the DNP's started to pile up on the guy's contract year, so they mutually decided to part ways, and see if they could find a win-win at the deadline.

I don't blame Nurse for the dnp's, that's the coach's prerogative: he wanted to play lenghty and fast, develop guys they saw as part of the future, banton was red-hot to start the season so he made the call to go with him. The irony though, as pointed out, is that later in the season we saw banton/flynn naturally fall out of the rotation, and the team found itself lacking steady guard presence from the bench to keep the team in games and tone down the starter minutes (which is what Dragic could theoretically bring)

It's easy in hindsight to point it out as a fumble, but if banton kept balling like he was earlier on and/or we had gotten someone like poetl or turner at deadline with dragic as ballast, no one would be talking about this. Didn't break that way, now it's behind everyone and they should look ahead.

[G__Deane]

Doug Smith of the Star was on a podcast and he said why he is not with the team is for personal issues . He said legitimate personal reasons . Is Doug
Smith just being an a player apologist ? or just lying or is Dragic spinning the story to look good .. Players using personal reasons and metal health reasons
are being thrown out in the modern NBA and when you use those terms a lot ..

Could be the Raptors are allowing him cover (we decided to go young) for legitimate personal reasons, who knows.
Then again, I highly doubt it.
What we know is that Dragic stated openly he didn't want to come here and had "higher ambitions" ie a better playoff potential for him as a vet. Then he should have played a bit more here, mentored the young guys and yes, eventually took a few more of the minutes from them that they weren't then getting anyway.

For a team with expected success, he's be a low risk option to bring in and who knows, catch lightning in a bottle....he was already here. I just think the whole situation was a miss and a huge waste of money to boot.

[DanH]

Doug Smith of the Star was on a podcast and he said why he is not with the team is for personal issues . He said legitimate personal reasons . Is Doug
Smith just being an a player apologist ? or just lying or is Dragic spinning the story to look good .. Players using personal reasons and metal health reasons
are being thrown out in the modern NBA and when you use those terms a lot ..

I believe his family including two young children (I'm admittedly fuzzy on the details) still live in Miami, so the "personal reasons" may have been just that if they weren't going to use him, might as well stay close to his kids while staying in shape and being a warm body for them at the trade deadline. Or maybe there was something more significant/immediate at the start that precipitated the specific timing of his departure and then after the fact it became just an agreement to have it stay that way.

[Kagemusha]

Doug Smith of the Star was on a podcast and he said why he is not with the team is for personal issues . He said legitimate personal reasons . Is Doug
Smith just being an a player apologist ? or just lying or is Dragic spinning the story to look good .. Players using personal reasons and metal health reasons
are being thrown out in the modern NBA and when you use those terms a lot ..

Maybe Dragic was hurt when the Raptors told him they wanted to go young. Lol

I'm with the Raptors on this one.
Dragic never wanted to play here, it was proven from the start, he even said it himself.

Fuck him.

[golden]

Doug Smith of the Star was on a podcast and he said why he is not with the team is for personal issues . He said legitimate personal reasons . Is Doug
Smith just being an a player apologist ? or just lying or is Dragic spinning the story to look good .. Players using personal reasons and metal health reasons
are being thrown out in the modern NBA and when you use those terms a lot ..

They were DNP'ing him. The "not fitting into plans" narrative is backed up by what we saw on the court. Dragic was rotting on the bench, with Banton and Flynn playing over him.

"Dragic left for personal reasons" sounds a lot better than saying: "hey, Dragic sucked so bad that we sent him home because he couldn't grasp Nurse's system better than a couple of kids, who we're not sure if even they can crack the rotation."

That's also more palatable to Goran's ego and future trade value, so maybe that's what he meant by mutually agreed upon parting of ways.

[guyroch]

So that settles that mystery. It was Raptors who didn't want Dragic around. We told him we wanted to go young, but instead of playing the young guys, we played our starters 40 MPG.

Well, technically we did get young (Thad, that is).

Doug Smith of the Star was on a podcast and he said why he is not with the team is for personal issues . He said legitimate personal reasons . Is Doug
Smith just being an a player apologist ? or just lying or is Dragic spinning the story to look good .. Players using personal reasons and metal health reasons
are being thrown out in the modern NBA and when you use those terms a lot ..

[golden]

Keep in mind, this quote is from Dragic. If the scenario played out where they said they wanted him to stick around and mentor guys as they wanted to go young, but he wouldn't have any minutes unless the young players played poorly, and he wasn't interested in that, and therefore both sides agreed he could just step away as the best solution for everyone, is his quote any different here?

Considering that the young guys (Flynn/Banton) who were fighting for the same minutes, also stopped getting minutes for a stretch... you have to wonder if Nurse would have went back to Dragic later on. Especially when we started running our starters into the ground.

What is clear is that once the ball goes up, Nurse is 100% focused on the winning the game.... and that's why he's a great in-game coach. But bench development be damned. If Dragic was given some time to find his groove and could have helped Nurse win a game, my guess is that he probably would have played over the young guys. All water under the bridge now.

[DanH]

Even if this is true, I still find it the fault of Management.
What could it hurt to have the guy stick around and mentor all these young players that were supposed to be playing and learning?
He couldn't teach a thing to FVV? Flynn? He could have been like a playing Coach and they could have easily promised him stay-in-shape minutes with a promise to trade him by the deadline instead of paying him 19M(!) to up his PlayStation prowess.

Then when the youngsters weren't advancing well (hell Malachi was glued to the bench for weeks) they could have given him a bit more run, coinciding with the Raps actually getting back in the playoff mix and needing someone who looked pretty much like him HIM at the trade deadline....or trade him from a better position of strength than they did.

This was a mismangement muff.

Keep in mind, this quote is from Dragic. If the scenario played out where they said they wanted him to stick around and mentor guys as they wanted to go young, but he wouldn't have any minutes unless the young players played poorly, and he wasn't interested in that, and therefore both sides agreed he could just step away as the best solution for everyone, is his quote any different here?

[Primer]

it worked out and we have someone who can at least fit into the system right now with ease. Someone who can taper down more starter minutes than dragic would have. Like Thad can taper down Scottie, OG, and Siakams minutes. If you reduce each of their minutes by 7 that's easily 21 minutes right there of solid high level play where the drop of is significantly less than it was before.

Yeah I definitely think Thad is a good fit vs Dragic being a bad fit so in the end not upset. Alls well that ends well.

[TrueTorontoFan]

The starters are young I guess?

When we benched Dragic and told him to go home we were playing the young guys a lot more. But that shifted to less and less minutes. Maybe in hindsight would should have kept him around to play when the young guys faltered but could have been a tense situation inbetween so maybe best we let Dragic peace out.

it worked out and we have someone who can at least fit into the system right now with ease. Someone who can taper down more starter minutes than dragic would have. Like Thad can taper down Scottie, OG, and Siakams minutes. If you reduce each of their minutes by 7 that's easily 21 minutes right there of solid high level play where the drop of is significantly less than it was before.

[G__Deane]

So that settles that mystery. It was Raptors who didn't want Dragic around. We told him we wanted to go young, but instead of playing the young guys, we played our starters 40 MPG.

Well, technically we did get young (Thad, that is).

Even if this is true, I still find it the fault of Management.
What could it hurt to have the guy stick around and mentor all these young players that were supposed to be playing and learning?
He couldn't teach a thing to FVV? Flynn? He could have been like a playing Coach and they could have easily promised him stay-in-shape minutes with a promise to trade him by the deadline instead of paying him 19M(!) to up his PlayStation prowess.

Then when the youngsters weren't advancing well (hell Malachi was glued to the bench for weeks) they could have given him a bit more run, coinciding with the Raps actually getting back in the playoff mix and needing someone who looked pretty much like him HIM at the trade deadline....or trade him from a better position of strength than they did.

This was a mismangement muff.

[Primer]

So that settles that mystery. It was Raptors who didn't want Dragic around. We told him we wanted to go young, but instead of playing the young guys, we played our starters 40 MPG.

Well, technically we did get young (Thad, that is).

The starters are young I guess?

When we benched Dragic and told him to go home we were playing the young guys a lot more. But that shifted to less and less minutes. Maybe in hindsight would should have kept him around to play when the young guys faltered but could have been a tense situation inbetween so maybe best we let Dragic peace out.

[golden]

So that settles that mystery. It was Raptors who didn't want Dragic around. We told him we wanted to go young, but instead of playing the young guys, we played our starters 40 MPG.

Well, technically we did get young (Thad, that is).

[Kagemusha]

I thought this thread was about to get locked.

[golden]

My question is, why isn't Simmons ready to play? It's been a week since the trade and they're still saying weeks away? Was he just watching Netflix these last couple months? Every game matters for the Nets to even get of the play in spot or make the playoffs, and Simmons is still weeks from being able to help? Or he is so incredibly soft that he's avoiding the Philly game in a couple weeks before he comes back...

Maybe Simmons not being ready is the same reason why Pascal "never picked up a basketball" during the 2020 Covid layoff, pre-bubble. He did end up playing, but the results showed that he clearly wasn't ready.

The other more likely reason is that if Simmons needs to continue the charade that he's "not mentally ready" to play, so the fines that he got from the Sixers might be reversed, like he was sitting out because of an injury. It would be too suspicious if he's ready to play like 1 week after the trade.