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TSN Raptors Reporter

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TORONTO – Goran Dragic and the Raptors both tried to make things work, though neither tried hard enough.

When Toronto acquired the veteran point guard in the sign-and-trade deal that sent Kyle Lowry to Miami over the summer, both parties knew what this was, and what it wasn’t. It was always going to be a short-term relationship. The only question was when and how it would reach its inevitable conclusion.

It didn’t get off to the best of starts. Dragic took some heat for comments he made to reporters in his native Slovenia, expressing disappointment with Toronto as a landing spot. He understood the backlash and was sincere in his apology, but he didn’t misspeak and wasn’t misquoted. That’s how he felt, and it’s not hard to see why, even if he could have and probably should’ve kept it to himself.

If Dragic, 35, couldn’t remain in South Florida – where he and his family settled down during his seven seasons with the Heat – his preference was to end up with a contender so he could spend the final seasons of an excellent NBA career chasing his first championship ring.

As a young and retooling team, the Raptors were years away from competing at that level.

Dragic was never part of their plan either.

Once it became clear that Lowry was bound for Miami, the Raptors targeted Precious Achiuwa, the Heat’s sophomore centre, who intrigued them in the draft a year prior. They liked him enough to go the sign-and-trade route rather than simply letting Lowry walk and using the resulting cap space in free agency. Dragic’s expiring $19.4 million contract needed to be included to match salary.

The Raptors spent the moratorium period canvassing the league for a third team, hoping to re-route his contract in exchange for an asset or two, but couldn’t find a workable deal that wouldn’t have required them to take on unwanted long-term money. Buying him out wasn’t an option at that point, as his contract would’ve still counted against the cap. As a member of Toronto’s front office put it shortly after the trade: if he showed up, great – they had respect for him and his career and liked the idea of adding a vet to the room – but if he didn’t, that was fine with them, too.

Dragic did show up. He reported to training camp a couple weeks early to get settled in the city and meet his new teammates, and by all accounts he was a consummate professional from the moment he arrived. He embraced his mentorship role and took the young guys under his wing, developing a quick bond with prized rookie Scottie Barnes, in particular.

He started on opening night and came off the bench in each of the next three games, but with the team struggling out of the gate and Dragic shooting just 32 per cent, the Raptors decided to shake up their rotation. With an emphasis on development, they wondered if it made sense to use those minutes on a player who wasn’t going to be around past this season. Instead, they committed to Gary Trent Jr. as a starter, and found more time for their young point guards, rookie Dalano Banton and sophomore Malachi Flynn.

For the first time since his rookie season in Phoenix, when he came into the league behind the great Steve Nash, the 14-year vet was a healthy scratch. He watched 15 of the next 16 contests from the bench, picking up a spot start and playing 28 minutes when Fred VanVleet missed the Nov. 13 game against Detroit.

“It’s part of the business, so I had to adjust,” Dragic said after that loss to the Pistons. “It is what it is, so I just go with it and try to do my job and be professional.”

While Dragic was cool with being the old head, a mentor and leader in the locker room, he also felt like he should be more than that. Coming off a season in which he shot 37 per cent from three-point range and averaged 13.4 points, 3.4 rebounds and 4.4 assists for Miami, he believed he could help a team win.

That didn’t necessarily mean starting and playing 30-plus minutes per game. In camp, he told the coaches that he preferred to come off the bench, backing up VanVleet and leading a young second unit. In other words, he wanted to play. The Raptors wanted to use him in a more situational role.

So, when he came to them in late November and asked to be excused from the team for a private family matter, they obliged.

“He has been a complete professional in the time that he has been with the Raptors,” general manager Bobby Webster had said in a press release. “Goran has the backing of Masai [Ujiri], Nick [Nurse] and the entire organization, and we wish him nothing but the best.”

It was left open-ended, without a stated timetable for his return to the club, but privately it was always believed to be the unofficial end to his brief and bizarre tenure, a mutual parting of ways.

For the past few months, he’s been back home in Miami, working out and spending time with his family; a Raptor in name only. The optics of him posting photos of his workouts at the Heat practice facility or getting spotted attending games at FTX Arena while still cashing cheques from Toronto aren’t great, but the Raptors haven’t lost sleep over it. Again, they both knew this was a marriage of convenience.

One way or another, expect some finality by the end of this week. The Raptors are confident that they’ll be able to attach an asset to Dragic’s expiring contract and use it to acquire an impact player or two ahead of Thursday’s 3 p.m. ET trade deadline. Failing that, they’d almost certainly agree to a buyout afterwards, as his deal would no longer hold value to them.

It’s an interesting trade chip. The Raptors are right up against the luxury tax for this season. Including Dragic in a deal would allow them to match up to around $19.5 million in player salary coming back, without dipping into the tax. And because they’re far enough under the tax for next season, they’re in a position to take on some long-term money as well.

As an above-cap team, they won’t be major players in free agency over the summer, so this is an opportunity to do their off-season shopping a few months early, using the Dragic contract and some draft capital to add talent without having to subtract from their core.

The market for that type of deal was set on Sunday, when the Cavaliers flipped Ricky Rubio’s expiring money, a lottery-protected first-round pick and two second-round picks to Indiana for talented but oft-injured swingman Caris LeVert.

The Raptors have been exploring a variety of trade packages within a similar framework over the past several weeks, sources confirm to TSN. The sense is that they would be willing to part with a first-round pick and a prospect or two, but the players they’re targeting at that cost are ones that fit both their short- and long-term plans.

Their immediate needs include but aren’t limited to shooting, playmaking in the backcourt, and some size at the centre position. The irony is that Dragic could have addressed a couple of those needs, which would’ve come in handy recently as the starters have been carrying massive workloads.

But things have changed since they sent him to the bench early in the season, and then essentially sent him home a month later. Toronto has won 15 of their past 21 games, including six in a row to move ahead of the slumping Brooklyn Nets – losers of eight straight contests – for the sixth seed in the wide-open Eastern Conference.

Now that the core of VanVleet, Pascal Siakam, OG Anunoby, Barnes and Trent is finally healthy and gelling, the team has gone from jockeying for position in the play-in race to making a serious push for a guaranteed playoff spot, and maybe more.

They’re still prioritizing the future, but they’ve got good reason to expedite their timeline and invest in the present. The players that top their wish list check off both boxes. They’re guys who can step in, fill some holes and help this emerging Raptors club make a run this season, while also coming with some term left on their contract and supplementing the core group beyond this year. That was never going to be Dragic.

There is interest in Dragic around the league – and not just Dragic the salary-matching trade chip, but Dragic the veteran point guard who could help a contending team down the stretch of the season and into the playoffs. For at least a few of those teams, the interest is believed to be mutual. However, most of those clubs are short on the kinds of assets that would be appealing to the Raptors, as they learned firsthand when they shopped him over the summer.

They’ve revisited conversations with the Mavericks, one of Dragic’s preferred destinations on account of his friendship with countryman Luka Doncic. Dallas has a few more pieces to work with now, players who wouldn’t have been eligible to be traded back in August. Still, the hope is that they can do better than the Mavs’ offer, which would look something like Canadian big man Dwight Powell and veteran swingman Reggie Bullock.

If Dragic is traded this week, his next stop will likely be even shorter than this one. Odds are that Dragic would be bought out after the deadline, either by the Raptors or the team he’s moved to, at which point he’ll be free to sign with Dallas or another contender.

While Dragic has taken the brunt of the criticism for how things have played out in Toronto, the Raptors are not without blame. He was never long for Toronto, but it’s hard to believe that they couldn’t have utilized his services while he was here. If nothing else, it wouldn’t hurt to have him playing well, or playing at all, heading into the trade deadline, even if his value is rooted in his contract more than his production. Both parties have mishandled the situation, but that’s not going to matter to Raptors fans so long as the team can extract some value from it.

Achiuwa has shown promise in his first season with Toronto, but he hasn’t exactly quenched the thirst of fans that were hoping to get a bigger return for a franchise icon. Even as salary filler in the Lowry deal, it would be awfully tough to justify losing Dragic for nothing, or for the small portion of his salary that he would give back in a potential buyout.

In a week from now, Dragic’s tenure will be a small footnote in the Raptors’ history books. But over the next few days, he’s the most important bargaining chip they have. The question is, what will they do with it?