Post deadline reaction: are you glad Masai stood pat?

[white men can't jump]

That's the only conclusion I could come up with.
Unless you're a future Top 10 player, you're bait to them.

As I said earlier, they're clearly looking for their "Blake Griffin" who can turn the entire franchise around single handedly.

Right, they're really taking their plan to its craziest extreme. It's ridiculous.

[S.R.]

Wouldn't really call Dragic athletic. Wade also isn't as explosive anymore.

Why not?

[Axel]

That's the only conclusion I could come up with.
Unless you're a future Top 10 player, you're bait to them.

As I said earlier, they're clearly looking for their "Blake Griffin" who can turn the entire franchise around single handedly.

Right, they're really taking their plan to its craziest extreme. It's ridiculous.

I actually think MCW isn't that great of a prospect, so I have no particular issue with moving him, but the overall strategy at this point does seem completely messed up.

I saw somewhere that they have like 16 2nd rounders over the next 5 years or something ridiculous like that. How many teams are really going to take multiple 2nd rounders as trade currency? Most teams might like one or two as trade sweeteners, but you aren't going to be able to build a trade around those assets. And you sure as hell can't draft that many 2nd rounders.

I think the cap jump is also going to hurt them as fewer teams will be looking for salary dumps. I suspect the 76ers will be continually awful until Hinkie is fired.

[Other Scott]

Still wondering what the fuck Philly is doing...

Seems they're completely obsessed with hitting a draft home run, don't feel they've done so yet, and are going to be constantly willing to shed assets in the hopes of doing so.

I wonder if the real swindling going on here is Hinkie swindling the owners. Keep moving back the date where you're going to start to field a competitive team until the last possible moment (a couple years from now), and then after that you probably have an additional couple of years to see how your draft picks and young players turn out.

You get minimum 5 years of job security as an NBA GM for basically not doing your job. It's a sweet deal.

[white men can't jump]

I actually think MCW isn't that great of a prospect, so I have no particular issue with moving him, but the overall strategy at this point does seem completely messed up.

I saw somewhere that they have like 16 2nd rounders over the next 5 years or something ridiculous like that. How many teams are really going to take multiple 2nd rounders as trade currency? Most teams might like one or two as trade sweeteners, but you aren't going to be able to build a trade around those assets. And you sure as hell can't draft that many 2nd rounders.

I think the cap jump is also going to hurt them as fewer teams will be looking for salary dumps. I suspect the 76ers will be continually awful until Hinkie is fired.

I have no issue with them moving MCW in theory, but it's not like they got a great haul for him. Basically it's only a good trade if the Lakers pick comes to them this year, which is far from a given since it's top 5 protected and the Lakers are so bad they give awful a bad name.

They traded a late lottery pick in the hopes of getting a mid lottery pick, but that could also end up another late lottery pick. So essentially, they're just trying to delay developing a team until they think they've got the horse they can build around. It's extra funny when you consider Embiid has a chance to be that horse and they might not need to keep tanking so hard.

[Joey]

I wonder if the real swindling going on here is Hinkie swindling the owners. Keep moving back the date where you're going to start to field a competitive team until the last possible moment (a couple years from now), and then after that you probably have an additional couple of years to see how your draft picks and young players turn out.

You get minimum 5 years of job security as an NBA GM for basically not doing your job. It's a sweet deal.

Up until yesterday, they were about $12M below the minimum Salary total. And being a franchise like the Sixers, you'll always some money of merch and tickets (philly fans are diehard). I'm sure the owners are fine. But I don't think Hinkie will be given that kind of slack.

[mcHAPPY]

Up until yesterday, they were about $12M below the minimum Salary total. And being a franchise like the Sixers, you'll always some money of merch and tickets (philly fans are diehard). I'm sure the owners are fine. But I don't think Hinkie will be given that kind of slack.

I am not sure how much they are relying on ticket sales in Philly.

They are 2nd last in average attendance and last in total attendance.

(Raps are 5th in avg and 2nd overall)

http://espn.go.com/nba/attendance/_/sort/homeTotal


The new revenue sharing and tv deals might only further encourage tanking without changes to lottery system.

[MACK11]

Reading some of these posts I'm glad MU is the GM. Why do so many people want to trade 1st round picks and/or Ross for players like Faried? Chandler? Afflalo? Gibson?

None of these guys move the needle enough to make us go from 2nd round fodder to Contender. Trading future asset for meddling players leaves you in a bad situation going forward, just ask the Brooklyn Nets.

If there's a player out there who's a star and can take this team to the next level, then by all means get that player. But there's no reason to waste assets on Kenneth Fucking Faried or Taj Gibson. This is what Bryan Colangelo did during his tenure here and it got this team absolutely nowhere!

And now we have a GM who actually cares about the draft and doesn't overpay for the likes of Hedo, Landry Fields etc or trading picks for a broken down Jermaine O'Neal.

And we have idiots on this website trashing MU? Saying we could've done this or that

You people are fucking stupid and pathetic

[McRealistic]

We don't need to trade our assets unless it is for a Super Star player. Plus, we need all of our cap space to sign Amir and Lou this summer.

[Scraptor]

Reading some of these posts I'm glad MU is the GM. Why do so many people want to trade 1st round picks and/or Ross for players like Faried? Chandler? Afflalo? Gibson?

None of these guys move the needle enough to make us go from 2nd round fodder to Contender. Trading future asset for meddling players leaves you in a bad situation going forward, just ask the Brooklyn Nets.

If there's a player out there who's a star and can take this team to the next level, then by all means get that player. But there's no reason to waste assets on Kenneth Fucking Faried or Taj Gibson. This is what Bryan Colangelo did during his tenure here and it got this team absolutely nowhere!

And now we have a GM who actually cares about the draft and doesn't overpay for the likes of Hedo, Landry Fields etc or trading picks for a broken down Jermaine O'Neal.

And we have idiots on this website trashing MU? Saying we could've done this or that

You people are fucking stupid and pathetic

Easy there hoss. I agree with you on not making a stopgap move.

But there's a problem with this argument which has come up thousands of times here and elsewhere. "He's not BC!" is not a strategy. There has been a tendency to say that everything BC was totally disastrous, so that by virtue of doing the opposite, Masai must be doing incredible. But the premise is false: not everything BC did was a disaster. So we should be able to look at what Masai's doing from a level perspective and analyze it without it devolving into a "BC is Satan and do you want Satan running this ship" type of argument.

Grantland put us in the trade losers column for a reason, and it's not because they wanted us to make a stopgap move. It's because it is perfectly reasonable to ask whether or not we still have needs or how we are going to move forward.

[KeonClark]

Grantland put us in the trade losers column for a reason, and it's not because they wanted us to make a stopgap move. It's because it is perfectly reasonable to ask whether or not we still have needs or how we are going to move forward.

Actually, Andrew Sharp put us in the losers column. And just a few weeks ago he wrote, "for some reason, I just can't bring myself to care about the Raptors". He really knows nothing about the teams approach or why Masai is doing what he's doing.

[Other Scott]

The Raptors were put in the deadline losers on Grantland because the writer, Andrew Sharp, knows nothing about the Raptors. He admitted that the Raptors are a team he doesn't care in the slightest about in a column just last week.

There's no one out there available for trade that would have made the team better. It's that simple. Who's minutes is Kenneth Faried taking? Amir Johnson? Amir Johnson is probably a better player. Patrick Patterson? Patpat is the Raptors only stretch forward, they need him on the floor exactly as much as he is currently on the floor.

You can keep going down the list. Wilson Chandler would have cost way too much and is only a fringe starter. Kevin Garnett is only a slight upgrade over Hansbrough and cost freakin Thaddeus Young, plus I don't think there's any way he's going to Toronto. Did you want them to get in on the million point guards flying around? They already have a top 10 point guard plus one of the best backup PGs in the league.

Those who say the Raptors should have done something, please propose a trade for an available player that would have made sense for both teams. Then maybe we can talk.

Edit: Keon both beat me to my point about Sharp and confirmed I wasn't imagining that he wrote that.

[white men can't jump]

Sigh. Andrew Sharp is not a name I was very familiar with two weeks ago, but from the couple of pieces I've read he seems like an awful basketball writer.

[Fully]

It's easy (and fun) to speculate and theorize about who was available and for what price, but we really don't have a concrete idea on what options were on the table for Masai this past week. The NBA trade market does work as simply as we think at times.

I'm like a lot of others on here where I don't see the past deadline as a success/failure. I trust that Masai did his due diligence, and that he didn't find any trades that made sense to him. Part of me wanted Masai to move Ross and salvage some of his quickly dwindling value, but I didn't want or expect for TR to be given away either. I wouldn't have cared if the Raps moved their 2015 first round pick for a piece that could have helped push them a bit farther this year and beyond, but if no move made sense, then by all means keep the asset in your war chest.

[mcHAPPY]

Masai can't make a big change right now. Too many unknowns about how good the team is, too much hype and promotion in the last year, and too much fallout for not seeing it through. We alll have opinions on what will happen, including Masai, but until the playoffs play out no one will be able to say what this team could be. Before any changes can be made you need to let this season play out. Masai owes that to players, coaches, and (most of) the fans.

The playoffs are going to tell where this team goes in the short and long term I think.