[negguaryParticipant]

Toronto turned down pascal for Paul and Westbrook!!! Whyyyyyyyyy???  With Paul Klaw and George your the best in the league for five to 7 years arguably regardless of fit!!! And even if you lose Klaw getting Westbrook and Paul is a heck of a consolation prize!! This is getting weird!  

[SeattleSuperChronicsParticipant]

Kawhi didn’t want to be in Toronto 

[OhCanada-Participant]

 I agree. But I think it goes a bit deeper than that. During this whole process I feared he had already agreed to go to LA in theory. He signed to New Balance in November. He made up his mind a long time ago but he gave us a champiosnhip in the process.

Board man gets played.

[ChoppyParticipant]

What about your Kawhi to Lakers guarantee…? Lol 

[Andv1 WaitingParticipant]

 Depends on what the deal involved..

Was this under the premise that Kawhi was staying or leaving already..

If he was staying I could have see a deal of Lowry(fan favourite who they would probably hate Masai if he traded),Sikam,something else to make $ work and at least 3-4 unprotected picks(similar to Clippers deal) to make it happen. Assuming leonard was kept it would have been a core of Leonard,PG and Russ..

My guess is that Masai didn’t want all those big deals on the books..Hence no deal. He sort of seems like a Danny ainge trader-Fleece you and then you are crippled sort of Dealer(See Melo trade to NYK and Spurs trade)+ I don’t think he wanted to trade Sikam as that would be kind of a bad look for him to give a MIP so quickly and if fan favourites were involved I don’t think he wanted to do back to back years of that kind of move..

IF this was if he knew Kawhi was leaving already.. 
Then he also probably saw how OKC did with them as corner stones  and wasn’t keen also.

[220Participant]

 If the Raptors brought in Westbrook and PG then they would have likely needed to deal a majority of the team just to match Russ’s contract. Then they’d either have to go far into the luxury tax to retain Kawhi. They could have managed it, but I understand not being interested.

[SwatLakeCityParticipant]

Couple reasons why Raptors said no: it wasn’t because they had to give up Siakam. It had nothing to do with that. Part of it was Russ, and his ego being on their team, did they want that kind of chemistry killer after they had just won a championship and built all towards that way? Russ and George had already lost twice in the first round when they were favored to win both times so does that really work? The kicker in this is Kawhi hadn’t yet re-signed, nor did they have any idea he was leaving them, sure they had an inkling that it could happen, but they didn’t really think there was anything they could do to avoid it. Is it really worth trading for those two when you have no idea that Kawhi is staying? What if Kawhi didn’t want to team up with Russ? Then he would probably go to the Lakers and the Raptors would be stuck building the Thunder of the East when it already didn’t work in the West!!

[SubZeroParticipant]

Yall stay pullin this “locker room cancer” stuff out of thin air

[cohenbc1Participant]

 I don’t see where anyone called anyone a locker-room cancer, but come on.

Russ shoots when he should pass — many, many times every game.

He’s never gotten out of the first round without KD.

When he loses a step, his career will be basically over.

 

[The GoatParticipant]

 Raptors didn’t want to be under that much financial strain with no draft picks. They were over the cap without Kawhi. Can you imagine taking on PG and Russ? The contracts the Raps had now will come off the books in a year. To take all three of those guys would’ve meant over 400mil in salary on just them in the three seasons after next, without luxury tax! 

[Author]

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