Disclaimer: Yes this is a long-standing Bill Simmons gimmick (that has gone dormant for three years and counting, but whatever). It’s also a column that I’ve always enjoyed and find legitimately useful.
The trade value ranking is a good way to honestly assess players in context to one another, and by breaking down the roster of one team like this, I think does a good job of taking a snapshot of the Raptors’ assets at this precise moment in time.
Before we get to the rankings, here are the rules (as written by Simmons):
1. “Salaries matter.” Would you rather pay Norman Powell $9.3 million next season, or OG Anunoby $1.6 million?
2. “Age matters.” Would you rather have Serge Ibaka for the next three seasons or Jakob Poeltl for the next 12?
3. “Contract length matters — a newish wrinkle in an era defined by shorter guarantees, swollen caps and forward-thinking GMs who hoard cap space like it’s Walter White’s crystal meth recipe.”
4. “Pretend the league passed the following rule: For 24 hours, any player can be traded without cap ramifications. If Team A tells Team B, ‘We’ll trade you Player X for Player Y,’ would Team B make the deal?”
5. “This list runs in reverse order.” If Powell is no. 10, then players one through nine are all players about whom Masai Ujiri would either say, “We hate giving up Norm, but let’s have a meeting ASAP,” or, “Done! Call this deal in!” And the Raps wouldn’t trade him straight-up for any player ranked below him.
With that in mind, away we go:
TIER ONE: “Hello, thank you for calling me back”
12. Lucas Nogueira
We’ve seen the flashes from Nogueira, who has stepped up when called upon in moments throughout his Raptors career, but at this point, thanks in part to the emergence of players like Poeltl and Pascal Siakam, he’s as expendable as he’s ever been and in the final year of his contract.
11. Norman Powell
*Note: Powell technically can’t actually be traded by Thursday’s deadline — a team has to wait six months before moving a player signed to a rookie deal extension. Powell signed a four-year, $42-million deal in October.
Needless to say, no player is further down the list than where they would have been at the beginning of the season, but here we are. Powell has slowly been turning it around as of late after going through a horrid shooting slump and seeing his role drastically reduced (37.7 per cent from the floor and 26 per cent from deep since Dec. 1, averaging 13.4 minutes in that 29-game span).
That the team has gone 23-6 during the stretch in which Powell’s role was reduced certainly doesn’t bode well for his placement on this list.
In Tuesday’s 20-point blowout win over the Boston Celtics, Powell and Nogueira were the only players to record a negative plus/minus, going minus-3 in three minutes of action.
The $31 million guaranteed over the next three seasons (with a player option for $11.6 million in 2021-22) may turn out to be a bargain if we see Powell regain his form — hardly out of the question — but for now represents a squandered use of cap space.
10. Jonas Valanciunas
Valanciunas has been playing great, and his spot on this ranking isn’t a knock on his performance of late. Heading into Tuesday’s Celtics game the 25-year-old was averaging 15 points and 10 rebounds per game over the past month and often helps to set the tone for the Raps early in games.
Valanciunas is ten days younger than Delon Wright, and his contract isn’t that bad either. Valanciunas will earn $16 million next season and has a player option for $17 million in 2019-20, but it’s still a big chunk of change for a player seeing the court less than he ever has in his career, mostly thrives only in specific matchup situations and rarely sees the floor in crunch time.
That the team has reportedly tried to move Valanciunas multiple times over the past two seasons with no luck could speak to his appeal around the NBA. As my buddy Will, a long-time Raps fan (wow, this really is a Simmons joint) puts it: “What team is like, ‘I need JV’?”
TIER TWO: “Okay, I’m listening”
9. Fred VanVleet
VanVleet has emerged as an anchor for the second-unit, and “Steady Freddie” has taken more and more responsibility as the season goes on and thrived.
A reliable floor general, killer competitor, and calming influence (in a good way), he’s gone from undrafted unknown to valuable rotation player in just about the span of a year.
He’s also in the final year of a contract that pays him just $1.3 million this season and is due for a raise this summer.
VanVleet’s intangibles are probably his biggest asset, and makes evaluating him difficult in this context. As great as he’s been, there are a lot of point guards coming through in the draft, on G-League teams, or at the ends of benches like VanVleet was who are able to step up when asked to — more so than any other position — and that fact alone places VanVleet lower on this ranking than you may have anticipated.
8. C.J. Miles
A consummate veteran teammate with size and legitimate shooting ability under a very favourable contract. In other words: exactly as advertised.
TIER THREE: “You’ll have to blow me away.”
7. Pascal Siakam
After the Raptors’ win over the Celtics on Tuesday, Boston head coach Brad Stevens said that the Raps’ bench unit “overwhelmed” his club with their speed and physicality. He may as well have been talking about Siakam.
At six-foot-nine Siakam runs the floor as well as any big in the game and is a terror at the rim on either end of the floor. His career 16 per cent shooting mark from beyond the arc limits his overall impact on the game a bit, but the ever-improving 24-year-old sophomore is locked into his rookie-scale contract until the summer of 2020.
6. Delon Wright
You could reasonably argue swapping Wright for each player above and below him on the list. Like Siakam, Wright is a game-changer off the bench with a unique skill-set that masks shooting deficiencies.
His ability to carve up defences off the dribble and either finish at the rim or find open teammates makes him extremely difficult to contain, and his size and instincts make him a versatile on-ball defender. It’s not hard to notice the positive influence he has on the players around him while he’s on the floor.
Wright turns 26 this year and is on the books for one more season at a bargain $2.5 million dollars.
5. Serge Ibaka
Position scarcity moves Ibaka above Wright, and while he makes substantially more (an average of $21.6 million per season), the length on his contract is quite favourable (off the books the season after next).
During the duration of his current deal, Ibaka, 28, provides a ton of value to his team. His shot-blocking may be down from his heyday with Oklahoma City (team-leading 1.4 blocks this season), but Ibaka remains a reliable defender, whether at the rim or closer to the three-point line.
He’s established himself as a third scoring option and has successfully extended his range beyond the three-point arc. Players like Ibaka exist around the league, but are hard to find.
TIER FOUR: “Take it easy, Champ. Why don’t you sit this next one out, stop talking for a while.”
4. OG Anunoby
What more can you want from a 20-year-old rookie who looks entirely comfortable in the starting lineup of arguably the East’s best team and will earn an average of $1.79 million for the next four years?
Anunoby has shown he has the makings of an all-NBA type defensive presence, should blossom into an all-around offensive difference-maker, and hasn’t shied away from the moment despite out-performing expectations in every way imaginable.
3. Jakob Poeltl
His averages on the season may not blow you out of your chair, but Poeltl is an absolute gem of a find for Masai Ujiri & Co. The ninth-overall pick of the 2016 draft, Poeltl has a combination of size, mobility, NFL-calibre hands and deft footwork, plus a sound understanding of his role while on the floor that is a lot more difficult to find than people may realize.
With Anunoby the Raptors have discovered buried treasure, but there are a whole lot more players like him coming through drafts in the next few years than there are seven-footers with the skill-set that Poeltl brings to the table.
The 22-year-old has two more seasons after this one remaining on his rookie deal, and while he currently splits playing time with Valanciunas, is averaging 13.5 points, nearly ten boards, and 2.4 blocks per 36 minutes while shooting 64.4 per cent from the floor.
TIER FIVE: “Um, no.”
2. Kyle Lowry
Confession: I originally toyed with putting Lowry lower on this ranking, due mainly to his $33-million-per-year contract and the fact he’s on the wrong side of 30.
But he’s a bona fide all-star and remains the engine for a team eyeing a potential run to the Finals. It’s too much to overlook. His contract looks bloated, but it’s decent market value and the fact that it’s only on the books for two more seasons means that you can expect him to maintain his production during its duration.
1. DeMar DeRozan
Do you remember when people were aghast that DeRozan, 28, would earn $27 million annually until the summer of 2021?
Now his deal looks stellar and is tremendous value for a bona fide go-to star in the heart of his prime garnering (long-shot, but still) MVP discussion and still expanding and improving his game with every passing season.
This was by far the easiest player to slot on this list.
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