If you are a fan of the Toronto Raptors this season is shaping up to be potentially their best yet.
The Raptors made a significant alteration to their roster last week when the club traded Jakob Poeltl, Demar DeRozan, and a top 20 protected pick to the San Antonio Spurs for Danny Green and Kawhi Leonard.
And while it is tough to say goodbye to someone who has put so much time, effort, and love into his Raptors career, like DeRozan has, it is equally as exciting to be getting a player who is, when healthy, one of the top three players in the NBA.
If you look at the trade, there were five pieces involved, the Raptors get the first and third best pieces. That’s a win.
And the best part is other than Poeltl they kept all of their young players.
But how does this bring them closer to a championship?
With LeBron now LA-Bron and playing for the Lakers, the Eastern Conference is a little easier.
Add in the fact that the Raptors just upgraded from an All-Star to a legitimate MVP candidate, while giving up virtually nothing else, in a league where one player can carry a team and the trade looks even better for the Raptors.
Now, there is the whole Kawhi does not want to be a Raptor thing.
Sure that could be the case, and certainly seems to be but I see it as low risk.
Kawhi will play for the Raptors, this season anyway.
Unless he gets hurt it just makes no sense for him to sit out, after already sitting out last season.
Will he stay?
Honestly it does not really matter if he stays or not anyway.
If Kawhi leaves the rebuild Masai Ujiri wanted to start when he took over as president of the Raptors begins next season.
The truth is that rebuild was likely going to start either next season or the one after anyway.
The Raptors have remained largely the same team for many years, and for each of the last three it was the same result, an embarrassing loss to LeBron in the playoffs.
You cannot keep trying to jam a square peg into a round hole, it just does not work.
So Ujiri went out and tried to find a round peg.
Whether it works will be interesting to find out.
