Blake Murphy Sports Writing

Title: All your Raptors trade ideas are bad, and here’s why
Date: March 10, 2021
Original Source: The Athletic
Synopsis: In my latest for The Athletic Toronto, I did my annual pre-trade deadline mailbag column, analyzing the trade proposals of readers/followers.

All of your trade ideas are bad.

This isn’t entirely fair. You are smart and thoughtful (not to mention good looking), and you follow the Toronto Raptors intensely, with a good understanding of their strengths and needs. Even acknowledging that, some of your trade ideas are probably shaky.

That’s OK. It’s not the point of trade season, two of the most fun weeks of the NBA calendar for fans. With the March 25 trade deadline drawing close, it’s time for dreaming up complicated trade scenarios and bookmarking your trade machine of choice to get creative. This annual mailbag column — one of my favourite pieces every year — is not meant to disparage. It is meant to help (and lightly disparage). What follows is an exploration of the trade ideas from the last week through comments, Twitter and submissions from our site.

Before continuing, I recommend reading my deadline primer. To keep this piece from being 10,000 words long — a fireable offence, I am warned! — I won’t be revisiting why things can/can’t happen in responding. The answers are contained in that primer. For the first time, I also won’t be able to get to every proposal — we have grown too large as a bad-trade community, with over 150 replies to the call for ideas. I apologize if I didn’t get to yours. Wear it as a badge of honour that yours were especially bad ideas.

Before we dive in, a few broad strategy/theory points to keep in mind.

Continue reading at The Athletic.