Fred VanVleet’s Free Agency leaves Toronto Raptors high and dry
Toronto’s Talent Drain Issue
2019 was a long, long time ago.
It has been a steep drop from the euphoric, mesmerizing and momentary high Toronto Raptors fans experienced between winning the championship and the third day of 2019 free agency, where Finals MVP Kawhi Leonard engineered an elaborate move out of the city and to Los Angeles. Since then, the Raptors have found themselves trying to carry snow through an arid desert, as talented veteran players left the team whenever opportunities presented themselves. It is a sordid list to consider, as of the writing of this article on the first evening of NBA free agency, the only remaining players from that 2019 team are now Pascal Siakam, OG Anunoby, and Chris Boucher. Out of the three of them, only one played significant minutes during that playoffs, Pascal. His long-time running mate, Fred Vanvleet, recently signed a three-year maximum deal with the Houston Rockets, making for yet another championship core piece the Toronto Raptors have lost for no equivalent value.
Thus ends so many ‘eras’ of Raptors basketball. Fred was one of the final pieces of the ‘Bench Mob’, one of the last remnants of the championship team, and crucially, one of the only players on the roster the Raptors could consider a true scouting and development success story. Now, the Raptors tread for life in moonlit ocean waters. After the championship, Fred quickly became one of the only veteran players on the roster, and was consistently touted (and self-reported) as a leader in their locker room, even above players with more seniority. Without his steadying hand, you could see a team culture which has already shown signs of unravel to quickly lose its coherence entirely.
The whole situation, taken into account of the larger story of that championship team, would seem a cautionary tale for teams looking to make big-time, all-in moves to advance aging cores into contention. The Raptors’ total return for losing Kawhi Leonard, Danny Green, Serge Ibaka, Marc Gasol, Norman Powell, Kyle Lowry, and now Fred VanVleet has been Gary Trent Jr., Precious Achiuwa, and Thaddeus Young (at the cost of a mid-first rounder). Undoubtedly, the asset management could have been better here. At the same time, it’s a pretty revisionist point of view to say that the Raptors should have traded good and productive veterans off their team at the deadline, especially considering the rumored returns were often underwhelming. Trading either of Kawhi or Danny Green for value at the deadline in 2019 likely means no championship, full-stop. To trade Serge Ibaka or Marc Gasol in 2020 would have left a team which performed with a top-3 record in the league without bigs in their rotation, going into a title defense. Trading Fred VanVleet at his lowest value point in several years would have produced a return which likely wouldn’t have trumped just playing out the season. The most indefensible of the deadlines diamond hands was likely Kyle Lowry, who was rumored to have been able to garner young pieces like Tyler Herro or Tyrese Maxey. Still, it’s hard to say the Raptors should have traded the fanbase’s favorite player and the team leader away just to get good value for him, considering the ill-will that the similar Demar DeRozan trade inspired.
Still, an individual incident is much easier to defend than a pattern of behavior. While you could argue the Toronto Raptors have hardly made the “wrong” decision in those moments, they have clearly operated with unwarranted confidence in how far the runway on this iteration of the team could be. Most fans have had their doubts about the effectiveness of the Fred Vanvleet-Pascal Siakam partnership since its inception, and now that we can evaluate the past 4 years of them together, they were ultimately proven correct. 169–143 in the regular season (missed playoffs twice), 9–8 in playoff games (for one series win against a depleted Nets team), and 0–1 in play-in games (Diar Derozan screamed) definitely could be worse, but doesn’t compare to the successes of the previous era it had tried to emulate. The writing has been on the wall since the Bubble that the team needs a new direction, and the attempt to middle out between veterans and youth has resulted in stagnant development and discombobulated locker rooms.
A New Direction?
Like it or not, the Toronto Raptors must understand that a new era began as of June 30, 2023. Without Fred VanVleet, the team’s ceiling may not be massively lower, but the floor has certainly fallen out. This could be a legitimately bad team next season, even with the addition of Kansas Guard Gradey Dick and former Sixth Man of the Year Runner-Up Dennis Shroeder, and the retention of Jakob Poeltl and Gary Trent Jr. The already scant guard play has certainly taken a step backwards with the loss of Fred VanVleet, and there seems little available to the Raptors to compensate for those losses, barring a trade of one of their wings. As the Monkey’s Paw curls, it seems inevitable that Scottie Barnes will be the Raptors’ best option at Point Guard most nights, despite questionable evidence thus far that he can play the position full-time at an NBA level.
Despite my annoyance, I am quite glad to see Fred VanVleet leave for a hefty paycheck and the Raptors be forced tore-evaluate the roster. First of all, for all of his abilities, Fred was not doing much to elevate the offense to great heights, as the Raptors consistently showcased one of the worst half-court offenses during his tenure as starting guard. I was happy to see Masai not buy in for 3–4 more years of a pairing that held such a consistently low ceiling. I did not ever buy into the somewhat lazy narrative comparison of Fred VanVleet and Kyle Lowry as franchise figureheads, so I don’t feel any sense of betrayal from Fred simply choosing the option that gets him paid the most. In fact, I’m quite glad he was paid like he was. He’s now the highest-paid undrafted player in NBA history, and a top-12 contract value in the NBA today. He is the definition of a grinder and someone who clawed his way up, a true all-American sports hero story. When the movie rights to the “Bet on Yourself” screenplay are eventually sold to Netflix, Max, Hulu, or whatever funky merger of those platforms we may be watching in a few years, the Raptors will inevitably play a key role in that drama. I’ll certainly tune in, and I imagine you will as well.
