Toronto Raptors must hit on draft picks to build around Scottie Barnes

TORONTO — The Toronto Raptors have already done their most important work of the off-season, now they have to be smart and get lucky.

There’s not much more to it than that.

To confirm ESPN’s report Monday — itself more a statement of the obvious than anything — the Raptors have reached an agreement with Scottie Barnes on a five-year contract extension valued at least 25 per cent of the 2025-26 salary cap. The minimum it will likely be worth is $225 million. If he can somehow work his way onto an all-NBA team (first, second or third), or be named as the league MVP or Defensive Player of the Year this coming season, Barnes’ deal could be worth 30 per cent of the cap, or as much as $269 million, based on current salary cap projections.

But we knew all that already. The Raptors were always going to offer Barnes the ‘max,’ and Barnes was always going to accept it. The versatile forward is expected to be in Toronto on July 8 for a media conference, making his ascension to official franchise cornerstone complete.

So now the question: Who will Barnes be playing with as he tries to elevate a team that has gone from 46 wins and a playoff spot in his rookie season to 41 wins and a play-in spot in his second season and 25 wins and competitive irrelevance in his third season back into the conversation in the Eastern Conference and the NBA as a whole?

The Raptors get their next chance to build around Barnes on Wednesday night when the NBA holds the first round of the draft, with the second round set for Thursday. Normally a 25-win team would at least have a high lottery pick to show for their woes, but as has been tattooed on the frontal lobe of every fan, Toronto’s pick was sent to San Antonio in the Jakob Poeltl trade in 2023 and would only remain in the Raptors’ control if it ended up one through six after the draft lottery last month. Since the Raptors pick dropped to eighth overall, the San Antonio Spurs will be making the selection.

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Toronto will have to do its roster building with the 19th and 31st picks which came to them as part of the return when Pascal Siakam was traded to Indiana.

In years past you could argue Toronto was right in their sweet spot, this being the team that used the No. 20 pick and No. 46 pick to acquire Delon Wright and Norman Powell in 2015, the 27th pick to choose Pascal Siakam in 2016 and the 23rd pick to select OG Anunoby in 2017, while nabbing Fred VanVleet as an undrafted free agent in 2016. That run of success was the foundation of their 2019 championship.

The Raptors’ results deeper in the draft have been mixed since — Malachi Flynn, we hardly knew ya — but they need to get back on their game quickly since they are firmly on Barnes’ timeline now.

Dan Tolzman, the Raptors’ assistant general manager, has been running the club’s draft room for nearly a decade, his hits outnumbering his misses by a good margin.

But even he allows that picking where the Raptors are and given the nature of the draft class — described as historically weak by some or just lacking in star power by others — predicting who the Raptors might take is a fool’s errand, even now after spending most of the year in preparation.

They will take the best player available, as per team policy, knowing that trying to draft for need when needs can change in the space of months, if not weeks, is a futile exercise.

But who will be available is the unknown.

“I’d say this year more than any year most of the people we are talking to are in the same boat as we are, it’s wide open,” said Tolzman. “Like, the range of players is about as wide as I can ever remember so that really makes it difficult to try and project which guys we can safely cross off the list who could get to 19 and so there’s an added level of uncertainty that I’d say isn’t common for this close to the draft.”

Having the 31st pick — or first pick of the second round, which will begin late Thursday afternoon  — is another layer of complication, though it could work in the Raptors’ favour. A new wrinkle in the league’s collective bargaining agreement allows teams to sign players taken in the second round to three or four-year contracts without having to use any of the other salary cap exceptions or salary cap room and not have the signings count against the salary cap.

It could make second-round picks a little more valuable as teams try to find ways to stay flexible in a more restrictive salary cap environment. For the Raptors, it means they could add a player who they see as a long-term fit without compromising other avenues — most likely the mid-level exception, in their case — for roster building, or could find themselves spending downtime between the first and second-round fielding calls from teams trying to do the same thing.

“It’s going to be interesting. I think everyone is learning as we go on how to approach that,” said Tolzman, in reference to the NBA having the first and second rounds occur on consecutive days for the first time. “We’re preparing for the phones being busy leading into [31st pick] because as we all know there are always players that unexpectedly fall to the second round [and] there are teams that like those guys inevitably… it could lead to maybe some more calls than what would normally be the case in a single-day draft.”

Tolzman, predictably, wouldn’t show his hand regarding who the Raptors might be targeting with either of their picks. As he said when asked about Rich Paul, agent for Bronny James, going on record and saying that the Raptors were one of the teams interested in LeBron James’ eldest son, a player whose profile far exceeds his accomplishments, he stuck to the script.

“All these players are guys that we’re looking at. I mean, he’s in the mix,” Tolzman said. “… It’d be a disservice to us if I’ve told you like anything more strongly than anyone else. I would say that every player on the board we’re looking long and hard at and I wouldn’t say that we’ve ruled anybody out any of our picks. That’s as much as I would say.”

But what goes without saying is that building around Barnes is the Raptors’ priority and their guiding light over the next few years.

Having designated him as their franchise player, and paying him as such, Toronto likely has two to three years to prove they can assemble the proper quality and depth around Barnes to compete, presuming Barnes does his part and continues to build on his all-star season last year.

The NBA landscape and the Raptors’ place in it has changed plenty as the franchise heads into its 30th season, but likely not enough to be immune to the realities they faced in the bad old days: superstars, or potential superstars, don’t want to spend the prime of their careers playing in a distant city for a team that can’t be competitive.

The draft Wednesday and the rest of the moves that might be available to them in the off-season are opportunities that can’t be missed.

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