Jakob Poeltl Extension: GOOD! RJ Barrett’s future: MURKY | Toronto Raptors Rebrand: OVERDUE

Jakob Poeltl Extension: GOOD! RJ Barrett’s future: MURKY | Toronto Raptors Rebrand: OVERDUE

On your Wednesday episode of Locked on Raptors, my post Pat leave avalanche of offseason takes continues with thoughts on the pretty solid Yaka Purle extension, Mamu, and what the hell’s going on with this lack of rebrand. You are Locked on Raptors, your daily Toronto Raptors podcast, part of the Locked On Network, your team every day. Hey, what’s going on and welcome to another episode of Locked On Raptors, part of the Lockdown Podcast Network, your team every day. It is Wednesday, July the 30th. And I am your host Sean Woodley. I’ve been covering the Toronto Raptors now for 11 seasons on various platforms. You can find all my work over on Blue Sky. You can find the show on Instagram. You can join us, of course, in the Locked On Raptors Discord server. link in the description of the podcast. 100% free to join, be part of our listener community. We mostly have fun in there. Sometimes it’s yell and angsty, but most of the time it’s all in good fun. And uh today’s episode is brought to you by Monarch Money. Take control of your finances with Monarch Money. Use code locked on NBA at monarchoney.com for 50% off your first year. And we’re off and running here on a day two of 500 takes of summer. I’m back after six weeks on the sidelines taking care of a little newborn and I had a backlog of opinions to share into this here microphone and camera if you’re watching on YouTube uh from watching the Raptors off season from the sidelines and yeah, let’s uh we got we got lots on the docket today. We’re going to talk about Yaka Purdles extension. And yeah, I know it makes the Raptors quite expensive and locked into a lot of money for years to come, but I’ll get into why I think all told, I think it’s a positive deal, even if there is maybe some downside in terms of just like how much money the team is spending right now. We’ll talk about Mamu and the backup center situation, the constant RJ Barrett question of will he be here, will he not for the long term, summer league takeaways, and uh just I’m going to get on a bit of a diet tribe later on about rebrands and logos and uh NBA paint, etc. We’ll do that to close the show, but let’s start off here with the Yaka Ple extension. Of course, you’re probably this is a news to you if you’re a Toronto Raptor fan. uh while I was uh you know doing the the newborn thing. Four years $104 million extension where Yak picks up the final year on his final the player option the final year of his current deal. Then gets paid 26 28 and $30 million for the final three years of the deal. He is under team control now for five more seasons, 19ish for the next couple years and then it hikes up to that 26 28 30 when ideally you’re in the part of the cap rising era where it it’s you know pretty comfortable and that is just like regular old starter money which it kind of already is right now. It gives them a little more wiggle room for the next couple years as well to have Yak still making 19 this year and next. And I think again that the deal is going to look totally fine as the cap rises in the back part. And all told, we’ll get into some of the concerns with the deal which I think have nothing to do with Yakob Purle the player and are more just to do with, you know, salary cap minations and all of that. But I I’m ultimately happy with the deal because Yakob Purle is about as dependable as they come in the sort of mid-tier center market in the NBA. If you’re not going to have a Max guy under contract as your starting center, having someone adjacent to Yaka Purle who is um you know he’s making like Miles Turner money. He is right in that middle tier of starting centers in the NBA. He doesn’t really take much off the table. He brings a lot to the table. I I I think it’s a perfectly fine place to be with your center position. And we’ll get into the backup and sort of the lack of an obvious sort of traditional backup center in a little bit. I actually am not remotely concerned about that. Barring some long-term injury for Yaka Purle, which hey, if that happens, the team’s screwed anyway because any long-term injury to a core piece is probably going to make your season a little more bumpy. Um, but I do think they have some options to fill in behind him. We’ll talk about Mamu and the rest of the roster in a second here, but again, happy with the deal. Yaka Purle just wins his minutes, man. Yaka Purle when he’s on the floor makes the Toronto Raptors a competent basketball team. He makes them run smoother. He makes development more viable and easy for the rest of the young players on the team that he’s playing with. He’s just a stable pillar of competent, solid NBA basketball. And again, me, someone who all I’m looking for out of this team in the near future is just like competent, fun, enjoyable, compelling regular season basketball. Yaka Purle is the kind of guy that can very much offer that when he has been on the floor for the Toronto Raptors since he returned and even dating back to the beginning of his Spurs days. When Yaka Purle’s on the floor, his teams play better. It’s just the rule of Yaka Purle. You go back through his clean the glass pages, a lot of orange when it comes to when he is on the floor. His oncourt differentials have been very good. when he came to the Raptors in that back part of the season post trade, the Raptors were 14.1 points per 100 possessions better with him on the floor than when he sat. The year after that, a year where they lost 55 games and he missed the long stretch and they were just disastrously bad when he was out, the Raptors were 9.6 points per 100 possessions better when he was on the floor. Last year, the team that was, you know, not good at all started the season miserably, uh they were 6.2 two points per 100 possessions better when he played and they were nearly like a 500 team in the minutes he played. They were a minus0.7 team overall in the minutes he played for a team that ranked near the bottom in overall net rating. This was a team that uh is a team that goes as Yaka Purle goes or at the very least if Yaka Purle is out there going they have a chance of going at full tilt. When he’s not out there it gets a little bit more difficult. He’s a good basketball player who makes the team more more functional, makes them run smoother. And I I think that deal as much as $30 million in that final season is like, whoa, sticker shock. I I think that’s again by the time we get to that point in this cap rise with the new TV deal coming in next year. um s you know there’s going to be more cap space to go around and you know even if the increases in the cap are less gargantuan than they maybe were projected to be it’s still going to be a rising cap world for the years to come that contract is going to look totally fine and I think it’s probably going to end up being one of the more tradable contracts on the team as it ages as well you know a really good starting center you know that that’s always something that another team could use right someone maybe a contender is looking for that sort of last piece a guy to um slot in as like a really excellent sixth man, a backup reserve big for a really good team. You know, the Marsaltt style trait the Raptors made back in the back part of Marcusaul’s career. You know, that’s an attractive type of player on a deal that’s not going to be immovable by any means. And I think that is why I’m feeling pretty all right about the Yaka Purle extension. And I’m not sitting here, you know, like stewing over, oh my god, the cap sheet is just so full and loaded because of this. Um again, he’s a good basketball player. I don’t have a problem playing paying good basketball players reasonable money. And I know if you do that too many times and you have not enough really value contracts on the team, it can really get you in trouble, especially in this new cap era. But I I think overall, yes, Purle’s deal does lock them into a lot of money for the years to come. And as it stands right now, you could make an argument that the cap picture does not look pretty for the Toronto Raptors because if you look at Emanuel Quickley, that deal is not one you’re going to trade for value right now. It’s a type of player that has maybe been a little bit faded this offseason. Though I do think Quickley is better than your Malik Monks and your Cam Thomas’ and your classic um just sort of gunner guards. I think he does more than that for you. And his three-point shooting is just so incredibly valuable in a way that a lot of these other guys can’t bring to the table. He’s one of the single best elite three-point shooters in the league. on ball, off ball, he does it all. And I think there’s a little bit more playmaking chops and actually like averageish defense there with Quickley than those other guards who have very much fallen out of favor. Your Fernie Simons types, for example, I I think Quickley is a, you know, a tier above those guys for sure. And I think again, I think his contract is going to age fine as well. I expect big things from Quickly this year. And hey, if you don’t get big things from Quickly this year, then yeah, things look disastrous on the cap sheet going forward. That’s a problem. But I do think a full season of him playing with a team that is conducive to his skill set. We’re going to see the best of Emanuel Quickley that we’ve seen in Toronto this coming year. And again, this is the thing with cap sheets, right? They can look like a disaster at one point. And then you finally see a team play together, which by the way, we haven’t actually seen this team play together. We haven’t seen Brandon Ingram take the floor. We’ve barely seen the core players on this team that existed before Ingram play together due to injury and tanking and all of that. like I I still think there’s a lot left to be given by this team and a lot of sort of say in what the shape of the catch sheet looks like to be, you know, still kind of ironed out by these players. And again, you have a lot of guys who are on rookie deals and cheap contracts who stand the chance of offering you surplus value in the next couple years as well. Those guys won’t stay cheap forever. Of course, this is the cycle of the NBA in the new era where yeah, like eventually guys are going to get expensive. You’re going to have to make decisions. we’ll get into a guy in RJ Barrett who I think maybe the decision has already been made on one way or another. We’ll we’ll do that which I think that will clear things up capwise going forward as well. But all told, I I think I’m still perfectly okay with what the Raptors are doing here in terms of just collecting a bunch of good players on fairish contracts and using those guys in the future to make opportunistic trades when they come along. They have all their picks still. They have young players filling in the back of the roster. I I think there is still a lot of maneuverability here for the Raptors and I think as they play with this team which I think is going to be better than the Vegas overunders probably suggest because the Raptors you know historically you go back to 2013 I mean there was an eight-year run there where they hit their over every single year. This is a team that is notoriously under underp projected in Vegas win totals and yes the last few years that’s very much been fair because they’ve not been good and they’ve come under a few times. But I do think this team with the starting five it projects to have the just the the sheer talent they have across the board and the youthful internal development chances they have with Grady Dick, Jacobe Walter, Colin Murray Boils in year one, some other guys as well. I I I think this stands a chance of being a pretty good regular season season team at the very least. And if you’re a good regular season team that wins in the mid-40s in games, which I think is on the table for this team, in this Eastern Conference, no less, I think there’s a very real possibility that we look at the cap sheet as it stands now a lot more favorably a year from now. And I could totally be wrong. It could totally blow up. And if it’s a disaster, then boy oh boy, there are going to be some hard decisions to be made a year from now. This is a really makeorb breakak year for sure. And I’m always going to come in on the optimistic end of things because why the hell not? This is sports. Who cares? Uh, I worry about the bad things after they happen is kind of my whole thing as opposed to worrying about bad things twice. Um, but yeah, I I think just looking at the the state of the Eastern Conference, the way this roster could function at full health with the ability to stagger across 48 minutes with different combinations of their of their starters and core pieces with younger guys filling in the gaps. I do think there’s a recipe here for a pretty successful regular season which will change the shape of what we think of this cap sheet going forward. Um we’ll come back on the other side. We’re going to pick up the thread on the center conversation with Mamu Sandro Mimukuli and Scotty Barnes, Jonathan Mo backup center fill-in minutes and then we’ll talk to some RJ Barrett as well which remains one of the sort of big overarching questions of the offseason which maybe has already been answered for this summer but certainly I don’t think we’ve heard the end of it going forward. We’ll get into all that coming up in just one sec. Today’s show is brought to you by my friends over at Monarch Money. Ever wish managing your money felt easier? With Monarch Money, it can. Whether you’re growing your savings or planning a big purchase, Monarch puts your puts you in the driver’s seat. It’s like having your own personal CFO, giving you full visibility and control over your finances. Monarch Money is more than just a budgeting app. It’s a complete financial command center. You can track all your accounts, investments, and spending in one place. So, in addition to managing your money, you’re also building wealth. Look, I just had a kid and uh finances all of a sudden way more important for the long term for uh buying diapers in the now because my god, they’re very expensive. Uh all of that, you got to have a good handle on where your money’s going. And my wife and I, we each have our own separate accounts. We have a shared account. We have a mortgage. putting all that into one command center so we can see exactly where all our money is going at a given time to make sure we got money for the stuff that’s important. It is a wonderful thing. You can take control of your finances with Monarch Money. Use the code lockedmbba at monarchmoney.com for 50% off your first year. That’s monarchmoney.com. Code lockedmbba for half off your first year. Go check it out. Back at it here on your Wednesday edition of Lockdown Raptors. Just a heads up tomorrow on the show. Michael Pina from the Ringer, my dear pal, will be on the show. We’re gonna talk about his uh mild Toronto Raptors optimism. One of the few national media folks out there who does not think the Toronto Raptors are totally doomed, which is nice. We will get into that. Uh and of course, we will continue our off season into three shows a week time here for the next month or so. The VC Jacob will be back next week after a hard earned week off after carrying the show for the last six weeks. He’ll be back next week. We’ll probably play some lineup fun, come up with some lineups we’re looking forward to seeing on this team, and I’ll get Katie Hindel involved, maybe do some mailbag stuff coming up soon. Yeah, lots of stuff on tap, even though we are now very much into the dog days of the off seasonason. Let’s pick up the center conversation after putting the Yak thing to bed with Mamu Sandre Mamuk Mamuki. God, it’s a hard name even though I know how to pronounce pronounce it. It’s a lot of syllables. Uh he is uh your newest Toronto Raptors offseason signing. two years I think near the minimum. Uh there’s a player option in the second second year of the deal. And look, he’s not really a center, though he is branded as a center. I think he’s more of a stretchy four who will probably need to play next to like a good rim protector to be functional, be it Yaka Purle or Scotty Barnes and smaller looks. But I’m certainly not mad he’s on the team. He’s a really fun spark plug of a player. He’s essentially just like a Euro version of uh Chris Bush. It’s kind of the uh the read on on on Mamu, like capable of white hot shooting nights, super fun heaters, probably not someone you’re going to trust playing major minutes, but someone who can definitely help you navigate the regular season, fill in lineups, give you some shooting pop. And the shooting pop is very re real with him, right? Like the thing you are excited about is the stretch element that Mamu brings. As much as Chris Buchet brought on and off three-point shooting and was very good in his last season, he was far more often a bad three-point shooter. Mom is just like a good shooter, takes a buttload of threes, too. Like most of his shots come from three. 43% of all of his shots are above the break threes. It’s a huge number. That’s in the top 10 percentile in the NBA per clean the glass. That rules. And he shot 38% on them. That also rules. It’s like he’s going to pull the top off the offense a little bit when he’s out there as the spacing big. Give guys like Scotty Barnes and Colin Murray Boilles space to roam and sort of probe on the interior without too much, you know, clogging of of the middle and all that stuff. Um, you know, good offensive rebounder. I think he brings that with him. He he tends to, you know, bring good offensive rebounding numbers teamwise when he’s on the floor as well. Not much of a defensive player. I I don’t think you’re really bringing him in for that. And this is going to be the interesting I talked about this a bit yesterday, but this is going to be the interesting sort of mixand match game that Dario has to play this year, which is kind of finding the balance with what I think right now there are some two-way guys on this team. Don’t don’t get me wrong, but there is a lot of guys who are very kind of extremely coded to one side of the floor or the other. and how those guys interact on the floor and who you’re playing with who to complement skills and cover for weak areas I think is going to be a really interesting subplot of this season for Darko as he plays with a deeper roster than the Raptors have frankly had in years. Um, and I think Mamu is going to be a really interesting part of all that. I think yeah, like he’ll have some times where he’s playing at the four next to Yaka Purle. I think that can work fine. I think there are going to be times where he’s playing the four five next to Scotty Barnes or Colin Murray Boils. I think that has a chance to be pretty interesting. Um, again, especially the offensive rebounding he brings to the table. That’s something the Raptors obviously covet. It’s a thing he does pretty well. He grabbed 8% of all offensive rebounds when he was on the floor last year. That’s great. Um, or available offensive rebounds. And the team like his Spurs team, you know, performed well in the offensive rebounding category when he was on the floor despite him only being 6’9. Um, that’s obviously a thing the Raptors really, and this is a leaguewide trend, right? Is kind of looking at offensive rebounding as a bit of a a cheat code for extra possessions and easy offense. He’s going to help him with that. You know, obviously, he’s maybe not the kind of guy who you would think, okay, well, if Yaka Pearl gets hurt, he’s someone who can just plug in as your starting center and hopefully get 70% of the production and not fall off too hard in terms of how the team functions. That I think is not what you’re getting here with Mamu. Like I I I think someone who I looked at in the offseason as a free agent target who would have made a lot of sense in this regard would have been like Luke Cornett for example who signed with the Spurs essentially replacing Mamu down there. Um you know he would have been someone who you felt comfortable okay you know Yak’s missing 15 games for an injury Cornet can kind of fill in and be a perfectly fine and capable starter. I don’t think you’re getting that with Mamu. think there’s a real chance that if Yaka Purle were to go down, we probably see a bit of a rejiggering of the Raptors rotation and you probably see Scotty Barnes start at the five. Maybe you see a Barnes Colin Marie Boils 45 or a Barnes Jonathan Mobo 45. We know Mobo started in place of Purle a lot last year. And look, that’s not like the most ideal, of course, like you’d like to have more of a a sturdy triedand-true backup center to fill in in the event of an injury to Yaka Purle, but I don’t know if you can totally build your team around the possibility of losing an important player for a long stretch, unless you’re like the Sixers and you employ Joel Embiid where you kind of have to bake that in. I think you have to just kind of go in hoping for the best health-wise and then build your roster accordingly assuming solid enough health. And so I think backup center-wise in games where Yaka Purle does play, I think the Raptors are going to be in pretty good shape. I I think they have a lot of fun interesting looks they can go to, and I don’t think they’re going to be missing not having like a, you know, a sort of more sort of groundbound classic center type, right? Um, look, frankly, again, I’ve said this before, I said it yesterday, backup centers are the backup catchers of basketball. They are way over inflated in terms of the importance and most of them are pretty bad. And if you’re missing, you know, if you need to fill in 18 to 20 minutes a game of backup center play, I’m perfectly fine to do that with Jonathan Mo, who I think obviously his two-point shooting and accuracy around the rim, his floater game, that’s going to be the big swing for him. That’s got to be better than it was as a rookie. I have hoped that he can improve there as he was really bad in that area of the floor last season as a rookie. He was also like lights out from that range of the floor in college. Yes, not against incredible competition, but dude dunked everything. Dude uh didn’t miss shots inside like six feet in college. I think there is some potential for him to bounce back. And now that he’s found out the sort of beats and rhythms of the NBA game. We saw at the end of last season some real strides in terms of vertical lob finishing as he became way more of a threat to throw down lobs as the season went along. Um and that floater game obviously is a big part of it. I think he’s got enough in terms of defense and passing elsewhere in his game to be on the floor and be a rotation player if the two-point scoring can come along. And I think there’s at least enough proof of concept with him doing that, not in the NBA, but elsewhere to give him at least another year to figure it out. And I do think Mobo filling in at backup centers, he makes you more switchable. He gives you some optionality there. I think it’s perfectly fine way to fill in those minutes. You also have Scotty Barnes, who I think is just better than 95% of opposing backup big men. just throwing Scotty Barnes at the five, which by the way, some of his best stretches as a pro have come with him playing at the five. We know he’s an excellent rim protector. We know he’s a quote unquote future basketball player to quote the now departed Messiah Jiri. I I think he can perfectly fill in as a backup five on this team. And you’re not going to miss much of a beat. I I think you’re going to um probably bludgeon second units if you have the right players out there with him. You know, the right amount of shooting, things like that. And again, I think they can stagger more effectively this year than they have in years past where it was like, you know, the Brandon Ingram addition makes those staggered lineups way more possible to achieve. I I think we’ll see a a better balance and a better opportunity for Scotty Barnes to shine as a backup five. And I think he’s probably going to get the line share back up five minutes this year. And I don’t think that’s a problem at all. Colin Murray Boils probably fills in some there, too. So, yeah, center rotation I think is fine. Again, barring a long-term injury for Yaka Purle, which would suck and derails things in a big way anyway. Um, regardless of who you have as a backup, because again, most backups are pretty bad. I think uh the way they can navigate 48 minutes of center play within games, they’re in a better spot this coming season than they have been, I think, in years. The uh other big couple things, I got three things I want to rattle through to close off the show. I I’ve gone a little long on the center of stuff because I do think it’s pretty interesting. We’ll get into on the other side. RJ Barrett, the sort of lingering question about him, some quick summer league takeaways, and then again, I’m going to get angry about logos and rebrands and the lack thereof to close out the show. Let’s do that coming up here in just one sec. All right, rapid firing through 500 takes of summer, part two, segment three. RJ Barrett. Um, again, there’s not really anything that happened here with R.J. Barrett to have like a firm take on necessarily. RJ Barrett is on the Toronto Raptors. That is what was true before I went on break and what is true now that I’m back. He was not traded. I thought maybe there was a chance he would be while I was off, but he’s not. He is here on the team for now. And the sort of question of his future very much keeps on hanging out there. I do think the way the cap situation is set up after the purle deal only furthers the possibility or the likelihood even that RJ Barrett’s next contract will not be coming from the Toronto Raptors. In fact, I think they’ve sort of telegraphed that the rumors we’ve heard from Mark Stein, RJ Barrett, not RJ Barrett, Jake Fischer, other reporters in the know about the Raptors fielding offers for RJ Barrett u sort of, you know, testing the waters for him in the trade market. Like that all to me suggests that they unlike what they did with OG and Anobi and Pascal Seakum who by the way are more valuable players than RJ Barrett. But still like the folly with how they handled those guys was they did not get it ahead of those markets, right? They did not um sort of recognize, hey, we’re not paying these guys our next deals. Let’s get this done early before while we can maximize their value. I think what they’re trying to do with R.J. is, hey, yeah, like we’re probably not going to pay his next deal. Look at the way the books are set up. Look at his sort of clunky fit on this team. he’s probably not going to be on the next good version of the Raptors long term. And you know, maybe if they’re good this coming season, he’s part of them. But like beyond this contract, I think that’s uh it’s unlikely he’s going to be around, barring like a real star turn and some improvements defensively that uh frankly seem unlikely at this this point considering his track record to date in his career. But I do think um they they seemingly are aware that they’re not going to pay him his next deal and are trying to find some sort of deal out there for him. Do they find a deal? I don’t know. I don’t think his value is zero. I don’t I don’t think he’s like some untouchable player. I think obviously he’s got a player option after this coming season. Maybe he’s more tradable at this year’s deadline when there’s only a year and a bit left on his deal. Maybe next summer when there’s only a year on his deal. I would assume he’s going to pick up that player option as I don’t really see him getting more than 28 million bucks on the open market. Um which I believe is what he maybe makes 30 in his final year of his deal. Either way, like I I don’t think he’s getting that on the open market right now considering the defensive limitations and the challenge of having him on your team, but I do think there are some teams out there that could certainly use him. The Milwaukee Bucks come to mind. He would be like their third best player. Uh maybe their second best player depending on your mileage on Miles Turner. He’s probably their third best player. Um I think the Mavericks are a team that really comes to mind. A team with a lot of defensive infrastructure that just doesn’t really have anyone who can like have the ball in their hands. They have a lot of extra surplus centers and extra guys on the team. They’re a very sort of deep roster of guys who maybe not won’t even get on the floor. Maybe there’s a deal there to be had. I’ve kicked around like Daniel Gaffford and Naji Marshall or something like that as a as a potential framework in the past. Um, you know, Daniel Gaffford, PJ Washington, whatever. Like I do think because of the log jan that team has and just their dire need for any kind of offense in the back court until Kyrie Irving comes back and even after Kyrie comes back some secondary play so that Brandon Williams is not like their lead guard coming into the year. Uh I I think they could totally use that. And so again it’s just a matter of finding the right match for a deal. I think there can be one out there. Maybe it’s more of a mid mid-season at the deadline thing where the Raptors at once, you know, kind of balance the roster, duck the luxury tax, and trade RJ Barrett to get off paying him his next deal. One way to I don’t think they’re telegraphing here that they’re going to further clog up their books by giving RJ Barrett big money. And I do think that is kind of the biggest story to watch transaction-wise for the next little while here going into the season up to the deadline into next summer if he’s not moved by the trade deadline. Um, but he’s on the team for now and I do think there’s still a world in which it kind of works. I know when I was away that VC Jacob and Joe Wolfon had a show talking all about R.J.’s fit and I agreed a lot with what was said there in that it’s not a perfect fit but I do think if we think about what we’ve seen the the sort of environment we’ve seen RJ Barrett be at his best since coming to the Raptors and in his NBA career was what we saw in that back part of the year after the trade in 2324 where he was off the ball more played and finished off the catch got the ball at the nail roared towards the rim had shooting around him and was able to uh really wreak havoc and sort of a trim down play set, you know, like sort of fewer plays that he was being kind of asked to run. Um, different types of plays. There was just like a handful of sets they would run him through and it was really damn effective. I do think with Brandon Ingram taking on a lot more of the ball handling duties now and with just with the staggering they’ll be able to do to kind of give all these guys a little extra shooting with guys off the bench in terms of Walter and Grady Dick and Oiabaji and Mamu. I think they’re going to be able to give the space that RJ Barrett needs to find those pockets where he can roar to the rim and not see all kinds of help, which was the problem last year. played a lot with the ball in his hands, a lot with just like a million guys around him and not a lot of shooting, especially in those times when Scotty Barnes was hurt and Yaka Purle was out for a stretch and just the team quickly was obviously not available for long stretches of the season. He was just asked to play in a miserable context for him. And I do think that in a better context, we can see something closer to the version of R.J. we saw after the trade within this version of the team if he’s able to buy into a role. And hey, he’s been willing to take a lot of threes. He’s taken six threes a game since becoming a Raptor. Mid to high 30s from deep. If he can continue that, great. If it falls off and it’s bad, then that’s that’s a problem and for sure. And maybe he gets moved to the bench. We’ll see. I don’t think it’s like a surefire thing that it’s going to work, but I don’t think it can’t work with him on this team and with this starting lineup. And it’s a lot of talent. You know, Zack Low made the point of this on his show earlier this week, like it’s a lot of talent and sometimes talent can overcome bad fit. And if R.J. Barrett’s the fifth best player in your starting five, which I do think is true. That’s not a bad place to be with RJ Barrett, as much as the fit is clunky and the defense just needs to be better. Either way, that’s where I’m at on the RJ thing. Uh, quick thoughts, rapid fire, summer league takeaways. Look, summer league, I don’t like one of the great things of being off during summer league this year was I didn’t really feel compelled to watch summer league, which was beautiful because summer league basketball is not good. I watched that 200 run they had against the Nuggets. That was great. about all I needed from summer league. I do think big takeaways from what I did see and from what I read and from the highlights I checked out and from the little pockets of games I did see. The one takeaway I have is this team is going to be a bunch of tryards again as they were last year driven by Jacobe Walter whose defense looks fantastic by the way. We’ll see about the offense. The shooting was a little wobbly. The two-point stuff I think there’s some stuff there. There’s some refinement needed all of that. There’s some really nice Jacobe Walter stretches. I think Jamal shed obviously the high pickup point stuff with him really enticing even though the offense was a little bit you know shaky for him at times here and there. Love that floater game though. Love that he can get to that floater whenever he wants it seems. Um you know I I just think you know between Oiabaji and with Jonathan Mo and Colin Murray Boils who just seems like an absolute maniac on defense. Like this is a team that’s going to bring a tryhard ethos to the table. I think Scotty Barnes at the table for that last year as well where he really gave a damn even in games where he wasn’t scoring well. He was shooting three of 16. He brought it on defense every single night. And I think that can account for a lot of, you know, flaws and deficiencies in terms of raw talent. If you’re just giving a damn every night and a lot of dudes are doing that in concert, you can be better than some of your parts defensively. And I do think that was my big takeaway here was those guys were fully bought into playing as annoying as a style of defense as possible. And uh yeah, really looking forward to seeing how the bench guys fill in. Again, I don’t think it’s going to be a straight hockey sub type team. I think we’re going to see just straight dudes coming in off the bench, you know, five dudes, you know, all reserves coming in together. Don’t think that’s going to be the way they do it. I think it’s going to be very staggered in the way the Raptors play, but uh yeah, I I think um it’s uh it’s uh it’s very exciting to to think about all these little tryhard maniacs helping to bolster the defensive acumen of the team. Lastly here, this has been a thing that I’ve been just kind of stewing on for a few weeks and it’s not all that relevant or important really, but look, and I want to preface this by saying I love our friends at NBA Paint. If you’re not familiar with NBA Paint, one of the more fun social media follows out there. Uh great artist. Makes very cute little NBA paintings and drawings in a very simplified and glorious way through through mic Microsoft Paint. Lovely. We love it. Uh wonderful thing. The Raptors really seem to have uh taken the NBA Paint logo that if you’ve seen it, if you follow the Raptors on social over the last month, you’ve surely seen it because it’s stuffed down your throat. NBA Paint dropped a cute little dinosaur logo with an angry face holding a basketball in hand in the spirit uh in, you know, inspired obviously by the original red Raptor logo from the original jersey set. And you’ve surely seen the Raptors plugging this non-stop. They’ve had merch drops. In fact, they had another merch drop today where they uh you know, hey, now we have purple. You buy the purple t-shirt, all that. And look, assuming NBA Paint is getting a cut of this, I think it’s great for them. I think our dear pal NBA paint getting paid for the art that’s fantastic. More people getting paid for their art is good. Get that money. What frustrates me is that the Raptors have been teasing on socials for years now that a rebrand is coming. You love purple, don’t you? We know you love purple. We We love it too. Can’t wait for more purple. And it just doesn’t seem to be coming. And I think they have used this sort of NBA paint logo which just kind of fell into their laps through no creative vision of their own and said, “Well, this is our new logo now for the the summer that we’re going to keep on plugging merch with.” And when we get into the regular season, guess what? No rebrand. Same jerseys, same bland chevron, same lack of purple, all of that. I think that’s what we’re destined for here. It seems like we would have seen by now, probably at the draft, if there was going to be a true rebrand back to purple. I’m not looking forward to having to change the the show’s color scheme back to black and red. I thought purple was going to be here to stay after they teased it last year. And all summer long, it’s been wow, look at that court we had last year. Wasn’t it awesome? Wouldn’t it be great if there was more of that? And I just don’t think it’s coming at this point. And I’ll be thrilled if I’m wrong, but we usually know by now if a rebrand for a team is coming. And I just my thing is like if the Raptors put Raptors and Nike put half the effort into like coming up with a rebrand for the team that they’ve put into pumping this NBA paint logo as some sort of beautiful thing again that they did not create themselves. Um and again get get that money NBA paint really happy for you. But like if the Raptors actually like put their ass into making a true earnest attempt at rebranding first of all like that’s the most lucrative money train ever put on tracks if you get it rolling. You know how much people like people want the purple. It is like a fan-based consensus at this point. Everyone I talk to from people in YouTube comments to the Discord to fans dayto-day that I that I interact with, people want purple. People want to return to purple. People want this recent era of bland chevrons and minimalism and uh just sort of the the bad era that they’re all associated with the last five years making the playoffs just once. like people want something fresh and new and it just doesn’t seem like it’s coming and it’s driving me crazy. And if the Raptors social media weren’t constantly persistently teasing it and again being like, “Hey, you guys love purple, don’t you? Wouldn’t it be cool if we had more purple? Uh that court you loved last year that that was really tight. Wouldn’t it be rad if there was more with that with absolutely no followthrough? Then I’ that’d be great. That’d be fine. Whatever.” But they keep on doing that and continue the longest like year plus long tease of all time. And it’s frustrating. And maybe this is a stupid thing to be mad about. It probably is. Doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme. The basketball team’s going to play games no matter what the jerseys are. They’re and they’ll be good or bad regardless of what the jerseys look like. But it just feels like a little fan service wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. The fan base is clamoring for this. Feels like every post that you see on social, it’s just like, “Where’s the purple at? When’s the purple coming?” And then they’ll be like, “Oo, the purple. You guys want more of that?” And then nothing comes. Maybe I’m insane. Maybe this is the lack of sleeptalking. I don’t know. but it’s driving me up the wall and I would just love to see some actual followth through on this again year plus long tease of more purple being on the way. Please do it. Welcome to my TED talk. Thank you for attending. We’re going to leave it there. Thank you so much. We’ll be back again on Wednesday with or sorry, Thursday with Michael Peina from the Ringer to talk about the Raptors and his level of optimism for them going into the season. Can they get into the top six? Maybe it’s not as farfetched as it seems in this Eastern Conference. Of course, uh we’ll take you through three days a week all through the rest of August and then halfway through September, we’ll be back right back to it with five days a week getting ready for the season to come. Not that far off now. It’s crazy. Just a couple months, we’re back doing media day and all that good stuff. So, thank you so much for rocking with the show. Please follow, subscribe, rate, review, tell a friend, join the Discord, link in the description of the podcast, and uh I don’t know, just spam the Raptors about how much you want to see a purple rebrand because everyone wants to see it. Everyone wants the damn dinosaur, man. Everyone wants that court 82 games. Like it it seems so easy. Like don’t they like money? Feel like they like money. Like don’t you want more money? This is the way to get more money. Anyway, thank you for uh rocking with the show. We’ll talk to you very soon. Thanks for hanging. Bye-bye.

Jakob Poeltl’s extension was good for the Toronto Raptors, Sandro Mamukelashvili is a fun if low-impact signing, RJ Barrett’s future is as murky as ever and the Toronto Raptors BADLY need to just do the rebrand to purple already, please. In Episode 1918, Sean Woodley continues to spew his 500 Takes of Summer after sitting out the last six weeks on daddy duty, with thoughts on why the Jakob Poeltl extension makes sense even if it locks the Raptors into an expensive roster that hasn’t yet proven much, why the Mamu signing is a nice addition to a big man rotation that while unconventional, looks as stout as the Raptors have had in years, RJ Barrett’s murky future with the team as the books look more and more clogged going forward, quick Summer League takeaways and his growing frustration with the Raptors refusal simply execute the purple rebrand the entire fan base seems to want.

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