TORONTO — At some point — sooner than later, hopefully — Jakob Poeltl will feel well enough to play high-level NBA basketball again.
It would solve so many problems, answer a lot of questions and quiet some too.
Even with the NBA trade deadline having come and gone on Thursday the Toronto Raptors remain a little lacking when it comes to quality size.
Trayce Jackson-Davis, who was the Raptors’ only trade-deadline acquisition (we’re not counting Chris Paul, who will be waived, the future Hall-of-Famer’s Raptors career likely being measured in hours), is by all accounts a serviceable rotation big. It cost them two second-round picks, Ochai Agbaji and some cash to make it happen.
The transaction also left room for the Raptors to convert one of their two-way players — Alijah Martin being the most likely candidate — to a standard NBA contract at some point in the near future. And perhaps most importantly, since Jackson-Davis has only one year and $2.4 million left on a contract that is a team option, his presence won’t impede on the Raptors’ ability to re-sign Sandro Mamukelashvili in the summer.
And as an added bonus, the Raptors have kept the pathway for rookie Colin Murray-Boyles to get as many minutes as he can handle, with the 20-year-old’s rapid development turning into one of the unabashed successes of the season.
“That’s huge,” Raptors general manager Bobby Webster said while assessing the moves and non-moves the club made at the trade deadline. “The silver lining of Jak’s injury has been Collin in so many ways, right? The question coming out of college was would [his play]translate and by all means it’s translated on the defensive end.”
Those priorities and what multiple sources described as unrealistically high acquisition costs for the likes of utility bigs Day’Ron Sharpe (Brooklyn) and Gogo Bitadze (Magic), the Raptors inquired about made going more conservatively and doing the deal for Jackson-Davis a more palatable option.
And timing matters as well. The Raptors took a look at some more ambitious deals — “we had some fun,” said Webster — but ultimately decided that this was not the time to let it rip.
“I think at this point, with this group, we didn’t want to chase,” said Webster. “We didn’t want to be in a situation where you felt like you were overpaying. We’re still on the upward climb .. we’ve had a pretty positive start; the group is coming together. There will be a time where we’re gonna push in and consolidate and add some picks, but we just felt the prices at this point were a little high for us.”
The easiest way for the Raptors to get better now is for Poeltl to shake off his lingering, as-yet-to-be-defined back problems and return to full health. He was out as the Raptors hosted the Chicago Bulls Thursday night, marking the 32nd game he’s missed this season and the 24th straight (if you overlook his six-minute cameo against Brooklyn on Dec. 21st).
Wherever the current Raptors rebuild — a branding Darko Rajakovic has been determinedly sticking with — ends up, Poeltl will play a central figure, for better or worse. The Raptors put off what seemed like an obvious opportunity to rebuild in earnest when they traded a first-round pick to acquire him at the trade deadline in 2023 (a pick the San Antonio Spurs converted into an unprotected future first and a top-two protected pick swap from Minnesota). And when the Raptors gave him his extension last summer, it was a stake in the ground moment where the organization committed to a specific direction for at least their medium-term future.
Would the Raptors trade deadline have been different, say, if Poeltl was heading into the last year of his contract? Almost certainly.
But it all turns on if Poeltl is healthy enough to play or not.
But there is good news on that front, with Raptors head coach Rajakovic saying Thursday that Poeltl is “ramping up well” and the hope is that he’ll be available for one of the Raptors two remaining games the Raptors have prior to the all-star break.
Said Webster: “We’ve always been confident that Jak is going to be available. No one here is seven feet, so it’s tough to put yourself in his shoes [regarding a back problem]… but we’re excited. Obviously things can change as he ramps up again here, but we’re confident and we think he’ll be a good addition for us.”
The Raptors survived without him quite comfortably against a makeshift Bulls lineup left over after Chicago made seven trades leading up the deadline, turning over more than half their roster. The Raptors won 123-107 and deserve some credit for not taking their foot of the gas too much while playing on the second night of a back-to-back after fumbling away a win against Minnesota in the fourth quarter on Wednesday. The win improved their record to 31-22 and kept them in the top six of the crowded Eastern Conference playoff race.
They were helped considerably by last season’s trade-deadline acquisition as Brandon Ingram led all scorers with 33 points on 12-of-20 shooting. Immanuel Quickley, acquired by trade the season before last, had 24 while the Raptors as a group shot 56.3 per cent from the floor and 14-of-34 from deep.
Presuming Poeltl has successfully figured out how to manage a condition that multiple sources with direct knowledge of the situation have told me is not a structure or nerve-related issue, things should look a lot brighter soon enough, both for this season and in the future as the Raptors build continues.
If Poeltl is playing well — and he’s just a year removed from a career-best season, arguably — then concerns about the contract extension he was rewarded with this past summer (three years and $84 million, which kicks in for the 2027-28 season) quiet down considerably.
The notion that the length of his contract was the obstacle in the Raptors making whatever trade they were rumoured to be trying to make isn’t nearly as relevant if Poeltl is performing and helping his team succeed.
It’s when he’s not playing that having to pay a 30-year-old centre through his age-34 season that his deal starts giving off a millstone vibe.
So even though reports that the Raptors were trying to trade for Sacramento Kings centre Domantas Sabonis were significantly overblown, the notion that a deal the Raptors weren’t particularly interested in was being held up by the term remaining on Poeltl’s deal and concerns about his health can become etched in stone, part of league lore.
Since Toronto can’t do anything about the term on the contract — a deal the Raptors wanted Poeltl to sign because by opting into the final year of his current deal at $19.5 for next season, it gave them some cost certainly at the position in 2026-27 when they have to pay Scottie Barnes, Quickley, Ingram and RJ Barrett $143.3 million — it matters a lot more how Poeltl performs while playing under it.
The true measure of the deal’s value will come in the years to come. But with Poeltl’s deal and the three years and $97.5 million left on Quickley’s contract — another deal that seems a bit out of fashion when all the most significant trades of the recent days involved players whose deals were expiring — still to play out, the Raptors direction at the deadline remained fixed.
It will likely remain steady this summer and into the trade deadline this time next year too.
So, for all the intrigue and excitement this time of year brings, the way the Raptors have built their team means that they trust the pieces to fit and the players to perform, because making quick corrections isn’t in the cards.
In Jak’s back they must trust.
Three-point Grange — Webster edition:
Raptors legend Chris Paul: The 20-year veteran and future Hall-of-Famer was acquired from the Los Angeles Clippers in the salary-clearing move that sent Agbaji to Brooklyn on Wednesday. But he won’t be making his Toronto debut any time soon, if ever.
“Chris Paul is probably one of my favourite players ever,” said Webster. “So, it’s a weird thing to trade for him. So I said [to his agent]whatever you want to do. At this point in his career, we want to be the most professional [we can be]so we’ll waive him at the appropriate time.”
Barrett still here: It seems like the forward has been in trade rumours almost since he was acquired by Toronto in December 2023. His name was mentioned regularly in the build-up to this trade deadline also. Webster said most of that was just chatter, but he stopped short of suggesting that Barrett was a lock for a long-term contract extension this summer: “He’s had a little bit of injury bad luck this year (but) when he’s been on the court, we win,” said Webster. “… But listen, we’re gonna have to win at the highest level. We’re gonna have to win down the stretch here and make it to the playoffs. We have to win in the playoffs. And I think that’s what we wanted to do with this group, is see what this group can do. (We’re in) the last third of the season, hopefully make some noise in the post-season, and then we can sort of collect ourselves at the end of the year.”
Traycing his background: The Raptors have been following Jackson-Davis’ progress for years. Webster said the first time he saw him was at the 2018 U18 FIBA Americas in St. Catherines, Ont., that was won by Team USA.
“We’ve always had our eye on him in the past, but timing matters too. We called on him before, but Golden State got another big (Kristaps Porzingis, from Atlanta) and I think it was sort of time for him to be free. So, when we did the Ochai deal, we had the ability. We didn’t have a lot of money to spend, but we looked at anyone under $3 million that we could bring in and he quickly rose to the top of the list.”
