Ranking Pascal Siakam Trade Destinations, From The Raptors’ Perspective

It seems like for the last two-plus years, the NBA world has waited, impatiently, with bated breath to see if the Toronto Raptors will succumb to the vultures circling around their sought-after players. In short, will they make a trade?

Well, they did! Just before the clock struck midnight on 2023 — the Raptors moved on from their 26-year old, defensive-minded two-way wing OG Anunoby, trading him, along with Precious Achiuwa and Malachi Flynn to the New York Knicks in exchange for Canada’s own RJ Barrett and Immanuel Quickley.

It’s still too early to determine who won the trade, what the eventual long-term implications will be for each franchise, and what comes of the players involved. But ultimately, it was a significant moment for one reason:

The Raptors made a trade.

It’s easy to look at that surface-level fact and think that this should signal the start of an all-out rebuild — a tearing down to the studs, but that seems to be far from the case. There’s a reason the Raptors opted to trade Anunoby now, with his impending free agency decision looming, for two players that can be thrown into their rotation immediately versus a deal that was more pick-incentivized. It’s already been reported on numerous occasions that the Raptors had their pick of the litter at last year’s deadline in terms of pick-centric packages for Anunoby — and they didn’t.

The reasoning is rather simple. For the most part, the Raptors have no incentive to pull the plug this season with their 1st round pick out the door to the San Antonio Spurs thanks to last year’s Jakob Poeltl deal. From that point of view, it’d be best served for the Raptors to let that pick convey and not have their pick cache limited in the coming years when they want to build around Quickley and their franchise cornerstone Scottie Barnes.

It’s also important to note that the Raptors opted to trade for a player in Quickley, who becomes a restricted free agent this summer, and therefore, have more control over what his next contract looks like.