The sales pitch to Kawhi Leonard relied on a long playoff run. It was starting to look like the team might have a hell of a time getting out of the second round again
ATLANTA — For a fevered few minutes there on Thursday afternoon, it looked like the NBA trade deadline music would stop and Masai Ujiri would still be looking for a chair.
The Philadelphia 76ers had already added Tobias Harris earlier in the week, giving them a terrific starting five if not much of a bench at all. And then a little after midday the Milwaukee Bucks jumped in, pilfering sweet-shooting big man Nikola Mirotic from the New Orleans Pelicans for roster flotsam and draft picks, an addition that will make the East-leading Bucks even more of a handful than the Toronto Raptors have already found them to be.
It was flop-sweats time for Raptors fans and, even if they might not admit, for Ujiri and GM Bobby Webster and everyone else in the Toronto front office. They had built a team that at the start of this season looked very much like an Eastern Conference contender, perhaps even a title contender if things broke correctly, and now here they were stuck watching everyone else around them getting better. When so much of the sales pitch to pending free agent Kawhi Leonard relied on the Raptors having a long playoff run this spring — well, that and the extra US$50-million they can offer him — it was starting to look like the team might have a hell of a time trying to get out of the second round again.
It was starting to look like the team might have a hell of a time trying to get out of the second round again
They still might. But the Raptors’ own prospects were also significantly improved on Thursday with the trade with Memphis for centre Marc Gasol, a move that sent centre Jonas Valanciunas, guards Delon Wright and C.
