Where the Toronto Raptors stand before the 2025 NBA trade deadline

Today is December 15th.

For non-NBA fans, it’s just a random Sunday, ten days before Christmas. For the diehards, it’s the unofficial start of NBA trade season.

For the uninitiated, December 15th is one of the first important dates on the 2024-2025 NBA calendar, as it is the first day that players who signed free agent contracts last offseason become trade-eligible. We’ve already reportedly seen several trades being agreed upon before the date was even reached, with Thomas Bryant being shipped to Indiana and former Raptor Dennis Schroder heading west to Golden State ESPN’s Shams Charania.

With new trading restrictions in place, it remains to be seen how active the association will be by the February 6th deadline, but it’s a pretty good start.

How active will the Toronto Raptors be? What realistic options are there? Should they be sellers, buyers, or neither? We will address all of these questions and more in this article.

First, the boring stuff, the salary cap. Yuck numbers, I know, but they’re important when assessing where the Raptors are. The Raptors’ payroll is currently just over $167 million, which is above the salary cap but about $10.5 million below the first tax threshold. That’s a lot of wiggle room, but Toronto could add even more flexibility if it wanted to by waiving Bruno Fernando’s $2,087,519 salary, whose contract doesn’t expire until Jan. 10, a little less than a month before the deadline , is fully guaranteed.

That being said, the team could get back a maximum of about $12.5 million in each trade while staying under the tax (which they certainly want to do) if they choose to waive Fernando. But what kind of trades would Masai Ujiri, Bobby Webster and Co. make? interested in it?

The least likely outcome would be the Raptors going shopping and acquiring impactful players. While Toronto certainly has strengths and talent to put together competitive packages, the Raptors are battling injuries and have a 7-19 record, fourth-worst in the NBA. While players like Brandon Ingram, Zach LaVine and Kyle Kuzma were all likely made available, the organization’s preseason message was about patience and internal growth.

So if they don’t buy, they have to sell, right? Well, yes and no. While the team certainly won’t sell parts as aggressively as last year, i.e. Pascal Siakam, OG Anunoby and Schroder, there could definitely still be some movement. While it’s hard to imagine the Raptors parting ways with much of the roster given how young and inexperienced they are, the five oldest players on the roster, Garrett Temple, Kelly Olynyk, Chris Boucher, Bruce Brown Jr . and Jakob Poeltl will all be available given the direction the Raptors are clearly headed.

Right off the bat, the 38-year-old Temple has more value to Toronto than anyone else in the organization. Temple is a true vet and seemingly everyone in the organization has spoken highly of him, and the Raps would probably want to keep him anyway.

Poeltl is also someone you can hardly move, but not for lack of interest. In a career year, the 29-year-old’s value around the league has certainly increased to some extent, and Toronto should be able to get more, or at least recoup what they paid to the San Antonio Spurs two years ago ( Khem Birch, first-round pick, two second-round picks). While Poeltl doesn’t necessarily fit into the Raptors’ schedule, his skillset is in demand as there wouldn’t be another true, play-ready big on the roster, especially if Fernando is gone.

Canadians Boucher and Olynyk fit the same mold as experienced bench tweener bigs. The 31-year-old Boucher would obviously draw more interest than Olynyk since he has been healthy most of the year, is younger and has been making less money for fewer years. It takes two to tango, and even if the Raptors were motivated to trade one or both, there might not be a market.

Brown appears to be the most likely candidate to be moved from the Dinos’ veteran group. The 28-year-old has been the subject of trade rumors since being acquired in the Siakam trade and played an important role on a championship team. The problem is that Brown hasn’t played this season after undergoing arthroscopic surgery on his right knee in late September, and didn’t do particularly well when he competed last year because of that knee. The 2023 NBA champion also has a massive $23 million contract, and it will be interesting to see what his market looks like, if there is one.

The third approach would be to stay on the sidelines and/or improve. Toronto did a lot of the work last season, so a deadline where the Canadian team essentially rents out its cap space to take back some bigger contracts in exchange for some picks could be the right move.

Overall, a realistic outcome might be to do just that: take on some cap space to get more picks while trading Brown and potentially one of the bench bigs.

There are a number of ways the Raptors’ deadline could play out, and whatever happens will ultimately impact how Toronto finishes the year. The team is sitting in the league’s cellar, dealing with a slew of injuries and seemingly despising the prospect of getting a high draft pick in a crowded 2025 class. However, whatever path they choose will signal the organization’s true intentions moving forward.