News - Toronto Raptors - Dylan
Trade Deadline & Rookie spotlight
Toronto after stating multiple times that we were happy with how the season was shaping (more fun when healthy but no matter) and weren't looking for a deal, have made a deal. Due to last minute availability, we saw an opportunity to get a little bigger and a little more defensive for the playoff push. Moving on from a player we had grown to... enjoy Dillon Brooks. Dillon was fantastic for us, he gave us 16ppg on 42/48/89 splits while also playing elite level perimeter defense and taking the oppositions best scorer every night and generally getting the better of this matchup. You're probably asking yourself, so why move him?
Enter rookie Amen Thompson, I had drafted Amen with the intention of him being my PG of the future but unfortunately that may never happen again for us after this season as despite running PG in NBA Houston lineups he is being listed as a 3-position player which is still incredibly valuable just not where I wanted his immense skillset. Amen can run the SG/SF/PF spot next season as of right now. While Dillon currently beats Amen in the defense department due to 2k vetting holding gold badges and higher ratings when presented with an opportunity to add a player like Aaron Gordon this reasoning goes out the window. Amen is currently still a great defender in 2k however in the NBA he already has the makings of a future All NBA Defender. In his rookie year he's currently the 4th best defensive guard in the entire NBA and measures in the top percentile of all defensive categories.
Defensive +/- 8th in the NBA (1 ahead of his twin just had to squeeze that in here)
Position versatility - 95th
Rebounding - 99th
STL/75 - 98th
Deflections/75 - 92nd
BLK/75 - 95th
BLK% on contests - 91% 100th
Defensive BPM - 98th
All this data to say Amen is an impressive player and with his height, speed, athleticism will be an elite level 2k player very quickly. This made Brooks expendable.
Moving on to Aaron Gordon's acquisition.
AG was brought in for a rather hefty price, I paid 2 2nds more than I'd like but that's the business. Also departing with our own 1st rounder in the deal which we aren't worried about after a look at this year's class we couldn't get excited enough about anyone in our estimated drafting position for me to be caught up about holding onto this pick in talks. Aaron has had a somewhat off year, being played out of position at SF but still doing it rather well. Gordon will fill the void as our starting PF hopefully helping us finish our defensive possessions and stop giving up so many offensive boards until Randle gets healthy and in our anticipated playoff lineup can play anywhere from backup PF, backup SF or starting SF giving us a lot of mismatch opportunities against our opponents.
Playoff aspirations
We're very excited about the inclusion of Gordon to our current group and about a playoff push, with a healthy Randle we are 9 and 3 with an average win margin of 20 points and 2 of those losses came to a fully healthy OKC who were on a 20+ win streak and a healthy Embiid lead Utah, with the other loss to Phoenix which was avenged with a 31 point win the next time we met. During Randles time with us we were also the first team to give the Milwaukee Bucks an L this season while they had a fully healthy squad and to the tune of 18 points. We are confident with health we can push the top teams in a 7-game series and come away with an upset or 2.
Fully healthy Raptors squad will look like, with the lineup to be cut to 9 potentially 8 for playoffs.
Amen/Vassell/Giddey/Randle/Chet
Tyus/Svi/Gordon/Clarke/Kornet
2 strong units of complimenting skill sets.
Just a heads up we will be a little quieter on discord from this point onwards.
Go Raps!
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