Title: Raptors Mailbag: Free agents, 2021 scenarios, Toronto as a destination and more
Date: April 27, 2020
Original Source: The Athletic
Synopsis: In my latest for The Athletic Toronto, I opened up the mailbag to answer questions about how the hiatus could impact free agent decisions, weighing 2020 against 2021, who the next man up developmentally could be for the Raptors, and more.
I last conducted a mailbag on March 17, six days after the NBA shut down following Rudy Gobert’s positive COVID-19 test. That somehow feels like a decade ago and like it just happened, which has the dual effect of making it seem like there’s nothing new to talk about and like we need to visit (or revisit) a lot of important questions that lacked clarity in the immediate aftermath of the league’s suspension.
We’re … going to do our best.
The truth is that there’s still a lot of uncertainty in terms of specifics — how the league is going to handle salary-cap changes, whether it will get to finish the 2019-20 season, whether scaling back salaries by 25 percent beginning May 15 or cap smoothing mitigate the 2020-21 cap effects some, and so on. The break has afforded a lot of opportunities to look backward, for fun and to learn from recent history, and it’s afforded plenty of time to think philosophically about potential futures. Those futures just require a lot of contingency planning, to the extent that a lot of our mailbag answers today will need to make some sizable assumptions.
As a reminder before we get going: We have a Raptors fan survey up that is still open for a few more days, if you’re inclined to share your thoughts and feelings on the franchise.
Let’s get to it.
Blake Murphy Sports Writing 