Title: The 100 free agent signings in Raptors history, kind-of ranked
Date: June 17, 2020
Original Source: The Athletic
Synopsis: In my latest for The Athletic Toronto, I ranked every free agent signing in Raptors history and looked for trends across executives and signing types.
Can anybody top Hedo Turkoglu as the worst signing in Raptors history?
That, I would imagine, is a challenge. Turkoglu was technically sign-and-traded to Toronto, which will count for this exercise. And so he is the benchmark against which we’ll measure every other signing — none will be as infamous, but some might look worse with the benefit of hindsight. And at the other end, can anyone beat the value returned on a few minimum-salaried undrafted free agents?
If you read my ranking of all 81 trades in franchise history — which came during the season — and didn’t think I was going to use the hiatus to do the same for free agency signings, well, welcome, you’re clearly new here. Of course, I did. We’re going to approach it a little differently than the trade rankings and focus a bit more on the takeaways at the executive level. We’re still ranking, of course, but the questions we want to answer are how well each front office utilized the free-agent market and if there are any trends to be wary of heading into 2020 and 2021, the latter of which might be the first time Masai Ujiri has had cap space to utilize since 2015.
What follows is a tiered look at all 100 qualified signings in Raptors history. Signings are grouped into a category and ranked within each category, with the “best and worst contracts” to follow at the end.
Blake Murphy Sports Writing 