Desperation deeper than deadline
Toronto Star|February 07, 2024
More deals by 3 p.m. Thursday aren't essential. This rebuild is going to take time and patience
DAVE FESCHUK
Desperation deeper than deadline

Since trading OG Anunoby to the Knicks for RJ Barrett and Immanuel Quickley, the Raptors have the NBA's second-worst defensive rating.

TONIGHT
Raptors at Hornets 7 p.m. (Sportsnet One)

There’ve been moments this season when Thursday’s NBA trade deadline looked as though it might be eventful.

Just last month in Toronto, for instance, Raptors president Masai Ujiri was fresh off making two major trades in the span of three weeks, dealing long-time stalwarts Pascal Siakam and OG Anunoby in moves that finally, mercifully ushered in a youth-focused rebuild after too many years in not-quitecompetitive limbo. And when Ujiri was asked about the prospect of continuing the wheeling and dealing in the days that followed, he sounded like a man who believed in making his own momentum.

“Definitely,” Ujiri said, speaking of his willingness to continue the makeover sooner rather than later.

No time like the present, after all. And given how the Raptors have lost eight of 10 games since Ujiri made that statement — mailing in a 38-point loss in New Orleans on Monday that spoke to the abysmal lack of talent remaining in the fold — clearly the situation can’t be improved fast enough.

Still, there are limits to the possibilities here. Ujiri’s rush to get respectable value for Siakam and Anunoby not only relegated Toronto’s heavy lifting to the rear view. It also cut two key characters from a leaguewide rumour mill that has since lacked much oomph. In a year in which the possibility has been dangled that no less than LeBron James could be on the market — a notion promptly shot down by James’s agent Rich Paul — it appears as though Thursday’s deadline will come and go without the customary dose of NBA-standard intrigue.

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