TORONTO — The business of professional basketball is a weird one at the best of times, but it reaches its nadir of weirdness around this time of the season.
By Thursday at 3 p.m. ET, everyone will know who they’re playing with and for what team. Until then, it feels like anything is possible, even if it’s really not, given the strictures of the NBA salary cap, among other considerations.
But trades are rumoured, possibilities pondered, and sometimes they even happen.
As the Toronto Raptors showed up for their game Wednesday night against the visiting Minnesota Timberwolves, their friend and former teammate Ochai Agbaji was missing. He was well-liked, hard-working and at times looked like he might be a promising piece in the Raptors’ efforts to become a competitive basketball team again.
But he was traded as most of the Raptors were waking up from their pre-game naps.
By the time most of them may have tucked in for the night, the Raptors had done another deal, this time acquiring Trayce Jackson-Davis from the Golden State Warriors for a 2026 second-round pick. The third-year centre gives the Raptors some low-cost depth with ongoing uncertainty around Jakob Poeltl’s back injury. Jackson-Davis is in the third year of a four-year contract worth $7.6 million, with the final year a team option.
It would be a stretch to connect Agbaji’s trade with any of the elements that led to Toronto giving up a 10-point fourth-quarter lead and being steamrolled down the stretch by Timberwolves superstar Anthony Edwards, who had 13 of his 30 points, five of his eight rebounds and all three of his steals in an electric seven-minute burst that led to Minnesota’s 128-126 win.
And it’s unlikely that the addition of Jackson-Davis will move the needle significantly in the future, but he would have given Toronto one more option against the likes of Minnesota’s Rudy Gobert Wednesday night, or towering Jazz centre Jusef Nurkic on Sunday.
Size or lack of it wasn’t the issue against Minnesota. The Raptors were excellent through the first three quarters and terrible in the fourth. Agbaji has been on the fringes of the rotation all season, so hard to say he would have been a difference maker.
You could lament that had he developed as the Raptors were hoping, as an athletic, six-foot-five wing, they would have had a proper-sized stopper to throw in Edwards’s path when he got rolling. Maybe that would have mattered. Maybe not. Edwards in full fight is just that good.
“He’s an amazing player,” said Raptors forward Brandon Ingram, who scored 25 points on 12-of-22 shooting, with four assists. “How we guarded him in the whole game was something that we kind of needed in that fourth … he made the game a little bit harder for us.”
A little bit.
The Raptors made it a little harder on themselves, too. The T-Wolves’ comeback started when Raptors head coach Darko Rajakovic uncharacteristically had Scottie Barnes and Brandon Ingram — the Raptors’ two offensive hubs — off the floor at the same time for just over two minutes early in the fourth, a stretch Minnesota won by just three points, but which seemed to give them some momentum.
Rajakovic’s explanation was that he was trying to preserve Barnes’ minutes because he had played a longer stint in the first quarter when rookie Collin Murray-Boyles (13 points, four rebounds, three assists and two steals) picked up two quick fouls. Barnes played 37 minutes for the game; Ingram played 35. Toronto hosts Chicago on the second night of a back-to-back on Thursday, so perhaps that was in Rajakovic’s mind also. T-Wolves head coach Chris Finch had Edwards on the floor for 38 minutes and Jaden McDaniels for 40.
But the Raptors’ biggest problem was that they turned the ball over five times in the fourth and shot just 8-of-20 from the floor and 2-of-8 from three. It was in sharp contrast to the first 36 minutes when the Raptors scored 104 points and shot 56.6 per cent from the floor and 13-of-25 from deep and turned it over just four times.
It’s the third time in four games — their win over lowly Utah on Sunday the exception — that the Raptors have blown a decent lead with a messy quarter of basketball in the second half.
“We had a tough time in the fourth, we got a little sloppy with the ball,” said Sandro Mamukelashvili, who finished with 14 points on 10 shots in 31 minutes off the bench. “That’s the main thing. When you have a lead, you control the game. We like to play fast, but same time (we can) slow it down and understand when to go and what not.”
The loss dropped the Raptors’ record to 30-22 and dropped them to sixth place in the tightly packed Eastern Conference playoff standings. The T-Wolves improved to 32-20 and fifth in the West.
For the Raptors, it’s unlikely any significant help will be available by the time the deadline passes on Thursday.
There was hope that Agbaji was just that when he was acquired for the price — effectively — of the 29th pick in the 2024 draft in a trade with Utah, which also netted them Kelly Olynyk.
As a Raptor, Agbaji excelled in transition, was a passable defender willing to take on tough defensive assignments and shot 39.9 per cent from three last season, which seemed to bode well for a (then) 24-year-old with his athletic profile.
But that was last year. This year, Agbaji was a fourth-year player in need of a contract extension in a tough battle for minutes among a crowded Raptors wing rotation on the second unit. And while none of Ja’Kobe Walter, Gradey Dick or Jamison Battle has exactly stolen the role, Agbaji shooting just 18 per cent from deep and not having any contractual commitments beyond this season always made him the most likely player to get traded.
In the end, he was dealt to the Brooklyn Nets along with the Raptors’ 2032 second-round pick and an undisclosed amount of cash. It was a three-team deal in which the Raptors got Chris Paul and the Clippers got the rights to Nets prospect Vanja Marinkovic.
The deal helps the Raptors get under the luxury tax, the Clippers open up a roster spot and save some tax money, and the Nets get paid for taking Agbaji into their cap space.
And while Toronto getting 20-year veteran and Hall-of-Fame-bound Paul seems cool, the reality is the legendary point guard, who had split with the Clippers early this season, will possibly be traded or, more likely, waived so he can sign with another team as a free agent and have a chance to finish what will be his last season with some dignity. Or not.
From the Raptors’ point of view, the elaborate bit of salary-cap management meant that Agbaji was no longer part of their team, his locker already cleared out by the time they got to Scotiabank Arena for work.
Otherwise, business as usual, if you’re in the basketball business.
“It was definitely tough,” said Gradey Dick (six points and four rebounds in 13 minutes), who followed Agbaji to the University of Kansas (literally: Dick inherited Agbaji’s dorm room) and trained with him steadily at their shared alma mater the past two summers. “He’s like a brother to me; our families love each other. It’s just crazy how quick it can go: one day here, gone the next. But it just shows you the reality of the league.”
Three-point Grange:
Raptors done? Early this week, a Raptors insider predicted that the deadline would come and go with one deal done: a move to get under the luxury tax. With that complete, it’s fair to wonder if they can get another deal executed – some size and shooting would be nice, or at least one of the two. The problem is that Agbaji’s $6.4 million expiring deal was one of the few trade chips the Raptors had to put into a trade without carving out players from a rotation that doesn’t run all that deep as it is. The deal for Jackson-Davis is probably the end of the Raptors moves, other than waiving Paul. The soon-to-be 25-year-old out of Indiana has averaged 15.7 points, 11 rebounds, 3.1 assists and 1.9 blocks per 36 minutes for his career, but saw his minutes shrink this season with the Warriors’ acquisition of Al Horford. He’s not a floor spacer – 98 per cent of his shots have come inside 10 feet – but his experience in the Warriors system could make him a decent table setter and screener for Raptors ballhandlers. The move keeps the Raptors under the luxury tax threshold, as well.
Giannis to Minnesota? Speaking with those close to the situation with the Timberwolves, one of the teams reportedly pushing hard to acquire Antetokounmpo, the Milwaukee Bucks superstar, there seemed to be some skepticism about whether the Bucks are even going to trade their franchise icon mid-season or simply wait for summer. It’s a potentially unsettling situation for Minnesota, given crucial pieces of their long-established core — Jaden McDaniels, Naz Ried, or Julius Randle among them — would likely have to be included in an Antetokounmpo trade to make the finances work. It’s not an easy thing to have hanging over your head. “It’s hard,” said Timberwolves head coach Chris Finch. “The scale of some deals, you just can’t get away from, so (as a coach) you just have to have a lot of empathy for the players.”
Maybe don’t shoot so well? The loss to the Timberwolves was the Raptors’ 10th game this season in which they made at least 15 threes, and their record in those games is now 4-6. The Raptors are 6-4 in the 10 games where they’ve made eight threes or fewer. For the season, the Raptors average 11.5 made threes per game (24th in the NBA) and shoot 34.3 per cent from deep (25th).
