MISSISSAUGA, Ont. — As with all things, evaluating the Toronto Raptors requires perspective.
There is the view from the ground, which remains uncertain albeit intriguing as general manager Masai Ujiri guides the club into the free agency period with a view towards turning a 49-win team that got swept in the first-round of the playoffs into something more substantial.
He will have some significant resources at his disposal — approximately $23 million in salary cap space, for starters — but that doesn’t mean he’ll be able to spend it.
Still, being able to offer a max contract has gotten the attention of the likes of the Portland Trail Blazers’ LaMarcus Aldridge, who will arguably be the premier free agent available (emphasis on “available”) when the clock strikes midnight on July 1, with league sources confirming reports that the Raptors will be one of the teams Aldridge meets with for the privilege of offering the four-time all-star a four-year contract worth $80 million.
Other — perhaps more realistic — names to watch include Atlanta Hawks forwards DeMarre Carroll and Paul Millsap, San Antonio Spurs guards Danny Green and Cory Joseph, and Trail Blazers forward wing Wesley Mathews, just to name a few.
The jury will remain out on Ujiri’s effort until the ball goes up in November — or at least until July 9, the first day free agents can sign new deals.
That’s the here and now.
And then there’s the view from the air where the bigger outlines of what Ujiri and the Raptors are trying to accomplish can be seen and the progress isn’t necessarily evident win-by-win or even season-by-season.
The team’s $30-million practice facility is an example. It is close to state-of-the-art, will provide the club more room to work and train than the cramped confines they have now. It will also serve as an off-season hub for Canada Basketball and ideally a place where other NBA players can come visit and scrimmage in the summers in the same way clusters of players gather in Houston, Las Vegas or Los Angeles to train.
On Monday the club unveiled another foundation piece in the quest to building a lasting, serious, first-class club as it announced its new NBA Development League team — dubbed Raptors 905 — which will play out of the Hershey Centre in Mississauga, Ont., beginning in November.
Toronto became the 19th entry in what is the closest thing the NBA has to a minor league system, just the ninth NBA team to wholly own and operate its own franchise and the first D-League team outside of the United States.
On its own a D-League team won’t necessarily push the Raptors over the top, or even into the second round of the playoffs. It’s mostly a place where journeymen can prove themselves NBA capable.
But having one signals a clear intent:
“A D-League team, a practice facility, these things are very necessary to be at the top,” said Ujiri when meeting with the media in Mississauga. He made MLSE make both investments a pre-condition of him taking the general manager’s job in the summer of 2013. “If you want to compete with the big teams this is what they have now.”
Ujiri and his staff pushed hard to get the team in place for 2015-16 in large part because they had a very specific and pressing need.
A year ago they reached on draft night to take raw Brazilian teenager Bruno Caboclo 20th overall and then were frustrated this past year in trying to find opportunities for him to play. He was too inexperienced to earn minutes on the Raptors and without a D-League affiliate they had no control over how he was used during a brief stint with the Fort Wayne Mad Ants this past season. Something had to happen.
“The D-League team was always there, it was always something we were pushing,” said Ujiri. “ But after getting Bruno and then our experience with Bruno in the D-League last year we were really pushing for this year.”
For inspiration consider the example of Clint Capela who was taken 25th overall by the Houston Rockets. Considered a raw prospect on draft night, he played 38 games for their D-League team and ended up becoming part of the Rockets’ rotation in the playoffs.
Having the option to develop your own players in your own system with your own coaches has the promise of changing how the Raptors go about their business. Suddenly there is method in the madness of taking flyers on unproven talent late in the first round or hoarding second-round picks.
Ujiri has already shown his hand as he squeezed a second-round pick (along with a future first) out of the Milwaukee Bucks in the trade for Greivis Vasquez on draft night. That pick — 46th overall — turned into Norman Powell, a guard with talent but in need of work. The Raptors will undoubtedly be selling in him on the merits of a D-League apprenticeship next season.
“In another world we might have been thinking of selling that pick at 46 but now we’ve picked someone because we have this possibility too,” Ujiri said. “Our mindset changes. We are going to look at this thing in every way to find out in what way we can use it to our advantage to develop players. And having it in our backyard is huge.”
There are complications.
The D-League doesn’t work like the minor league systems in baseball or hockey where all the players “on the farm” are property of the big club. In the D-League the Raptors only control the players under contract to them. The rest of the rosters are filled with players that are under contract to the league itself and thus can be called up to the NBA by any other team.
As well, the D-League still doesn’t pay as well as many leagues in Europe or Asia, with the top salary coming in at $25,000 last season. The lure for players is competing in the NBA’s backyard and knowing that you’re just a phone call away from a 10-day contract and perhaps more. Last season 38 percent of NBA players had D-League experience.
Another benefit is that there will certainly be opportunities for Canadian basketball as it’s expected the non-Raptors players on the roster will have a strong representation of Canadian talent wherever possible.
To be sure Ujiri’s most important work building the Raptors will take place in the coming weeks as he tries to figure out his roster with big money to spend and big holes to fill.
But however that plays out, in the bigger picture, the Raptors aren’t standing still.