Columnist image

TSN Raptors Reporter

| Archive

ATLANTA - As a flurry of buzzer-beating trades began to roll in moments before Thursday's deadline, the Raptors - all of them - were hard at work in the Hawks' practice gym. 

What looked like it would be a quiet afternoon quickly turned into the most active day of dealing in recent memory.

All the while, Masai Ujiri was a willing spectator, by design.

"Yeah, you talk," said the Raptors'general manager, speaking to reporters back in Toronto shortly after the 3:00pm et deadline. "But I feel going in, we kind of knew what we wanted and where our direction was, so nothing for us, for now."

"We really had nothing from the beginning."

Ujiri and the team's front office staff fielded calls in the hours leading up to the deadline, garnering interest in some of their young players, draft picks and expiring contracts but, ultimately, they opted for continuity, a philosophy they have emphasized throughout the last 12 months.

"We feel confident in this team in terms of growth, in terms of growing," Ujiri said. "We’re still a long ways away, we understand that, but a lot of things that were put in front of us were things that maybe... makes you slightly better now, but it also takes away from younger guys continuing to grow." 

"We felt it wasn’t the time. Yeah, a vote of confidence to our players, team, coach. Keep plugging away."

Over in Atlanta, the Raptors prepared for Friday's game against the first-place Hawks, starting off their home stretch leading up to the playoffs. Naturally, players breathed a sigh of relief, to some extent, as the deadline came and went, but no one seemed too surprised by the team's inactivity.

"I had no idea," said Kyle Lowry, asked if he was confident Ujiri would decide to stand pat. "Didn’t pay attention to it. If it happened, it happened. It’s a business. At the end of the day, if something would have happened, we would have said, ‘OK,’ and we would have moved on."

"Everything is a rumour until it happens. I was traded to the Knicks last year," the point guard joked, looking down at his practice shirt and pointing to the city's name etched across his chest. "This says 'Toronto,' don’t it? Everything’s a rumour until it happens."

"We're sticking with our guys," Dwane Casey stated definitively after making a similar assertion the day prior. "These are the guys we believe in. We're going to grow with our guys, it's a process. It's going to take a little longer to get to where we want to go, but we believe in our young players, we believe in our core. So our development and our growth and our progress will depend on how fast our guys grow. So that's the commitment we're making to our players."

The Eastern Conference is wide open, more so than it has been in years, and while some may have liked to see the second-seeded Raptors look to take control with a bold move, they weren't the only team that thought it best to sit out. Of the East's top five clubs - Atlanta, Toronto, Chicago, Washington and Cleveland - only the Wizards pulled the trigger on deadline day, swapping back-up point guards in a small deal. Five of the seven teams competing for the final three playoff spots - Milwaukee, Miami, Brooklyn, Boston and Detroit - made big splashes.

The Heat may have been the conference's biggest winner, acquiring Goran Dragic from Phoenix, while the Bucks got younger and deeper adding Michael Carter-Williams, last season's best rookie, Miles Plumlee and Canadian point guard Tyler Ennis, despite giving up Brandon Knight in the middle of his career year.

In total, 11 trades were completed on deadline day, many of them coming in at the last minute. Over 38 players changed teams with more than 12 draft picks on the move. Meanwhile, the Raptors are one of only eight NBA clubs yet to make trade in the 2015 calendar year, valuing the chemistry they've built and the internal growth they've committed to above all else.

"We can't look at the other moves," Casey said. "We understand what they're doing. We want to get better, but we're trusting that our growth internally will be just as good as some of those moves those guys are making. Teams make moves for different reasons, whether it's financial, saving cap space, gaining assets or whatever, but we're doing it to grow our players and [we] believe in our guys from within."

The team's brass - namely Ujiri and Casey - often use the word "platform." When the GM took his post in the summer 2013, he gave Rudy Gay and company the platform to decide their fate - the team floundered and Ujiri acted, trading Gay. He gave the altered group, including a point guard in Lowry and a coach in Casey on expiring contracts, that same platform.

With those two locked up during the summer, Ujiri has given this core the platform to build on last season's success. How they do, how they grow together and whether or not they can improve on their first-round playoff exit will determine their long-term future in Toronto.

"It's going to be that continuous evaluation the rest of the year," Casey said. "We're going to have to make some decisions at the end of the year of who is going to be here, who's not, or if we have to make any moves at all. But it's up to our guys and this is a great platform for them to show what they can do. We're making a commitment to them as an organization, so in turn, [they need to] give it to us and take us as far as we can go this year."

They'll have some tougher decisions to make over the summer. Amir Johnson and Lou Williams will hit unrestricted free agency. Jonas Valanciunas and Terrence Ross will both be eligible for extensions. Meanwhile, the Raptors will have some money to spend, depending on how much they throw at the aforementioned four, with Tyler Hansbrough, Chuck Hayes, Landry Fields and Marcus Camby's cap hit coming off the books.

"We’re a summer team, I think," Ujiri said. "In [the] summer you can do more due diligence. You can study more and you have a little bit of space. You have guys to re-sign, you have the draft, we have future picks, so I understand the moves a lot of teams make, depending on the situation, but for now we’re second in the East. I know it could go up and down, but I think we have good placement for now. In the summer we’ll evaluate again.”