SPORTS
Monday, December 1, 2014 13
From Pessimism to Optimism
The Past, Present, and Future of the Toronto Raptors
on its 20th Anniversary
pa r t one: t he re volv ing door
kenneth cheak kwan lam › staff writer
A
s the Raptors enter their twentieth season,
long-time armchair GMs like myself and
faithful fans of the franchise can recall the
painful journey that the team has taken
since Toronto was awarded a National Basketball
Association (NBA) team back in 1995. Over the past
two decades, we had arguably the league’s one-time
most exciting offensive player (in shooting guard/
small forward Vince Carter), a genuine superstar
in the waiting (in shooting guard/small forward
Tracy McGrady), an all-star power forward/center
(in Antonio Davis), two loyal foot soldiers (in point
guard Alvin Williams and small forward Morris
Peterson), an undersized but solid floor general (in
Point Guard Damon Stoudamire), a future Hall-ofFame center (Hakeem Olajuwon), as well as savvy
veterans whom opponents did not want to mess
with in the low post area (in power fowards/centers
Charles Oakley and Kevin Willis). However, in spite
of all that talent on the court at one point or another,
the franchise never truly found success for the overwhelming majority of its existence. In fact, the team
only made the NBA playoffs a grand total of six times
in twenty seasons with its only sustained playoff run
coming in the 2000-2001 season during the heyday
of Vince Carter. Why?
The reasons contributing to the failures of the
Toronto Raptors are different at various stages of
the franchise. Let us look at the pre-Vince Carter
era, defined as the period from 1995-1998. Did we
have a superstar? No. Did we have good players? Yes,
but really only one: Stoudamire (known as Mighty
Mouse). He was subsequently dispatched to the
Portland Trail Blazers on 13 February 1998, along
with Walt Williams and Carlos Rogers for Kenny
Anderson, Alvin Williams, Gary Trent, two firstround draft picks, a second-round draft pick, and
cash considerations. This trade pretty much sums
up the biggest hurdle the franchise faced at the time:
the inability to retain its own talent! Why? It was
because no NBA players wanted to play for a lowly
expansion team that was made up of marginal talent
and castoffs (most of whom would have realistically
only qualified as rotation players at best on other
teams, if not relegated to playing ‘garbage minutes’),
no NBA players wanted to play for a losing team, and
no NBA players wanted to play in a foreign country
located thousands of miles away from their families (Canada). Indeed, the team really had no choice
but to trade Stoudamire (the face of the franchise
at the time) because he would have left as an unrestricted free agent after the 1997-1998 season (yes,
the length of the entry-level rookie contract was
shorter than today based on the collective bargaining agreement back then). Thus, after inaugural GM
Isaiah Thomas abruptly resigned from his position
(triggered by his failed bid to obtain majority ownership of the team), GM Glen Grunwald (who replaced
Thomas) had to pull the trigger on the deal in order
to secure assets for Stoudamire. Otherwise, Toronto
would have lost Mighty Mouse to unrestricted free
agency, leaving the Raptors with nothing to show
for. These are sad facts, but they are also painful
realities for those of us who followed the franchise
since day one.
Even before Toronto selected Stoudamire (who
won the 1995-1996 NBA Rookie of the Year Award)
in the first round of the 1995 NBA Draft with the
seventh overall pick, the Raptors experienced a
similar problem. In the 1995 NBA expansion draft,
the Raptors used
the first overall pick to take
point guard B. J.
Armstrong, who
was coming off
an all-star season
with the Chicago Bulls after assuming more oncourt responsibilities as a leader in light of Michael
Jordan’s first retirement. Armstrong was described
as the only true prize of the expansion draft because
he had been voted into the 1994 NBA All-Star Game
as a starter in addition to finishing second in the
NBA in three-point field goal percentage at .444, not
to mention that he led the Bulls to a fifty-five win
season and a second-round appearance in the NBA
playoffs. However, Armstrong refused to report to
Toronto and instead officially demanded a trade
(presumably for reasons that I discussed earlier),
eventually forcing the franchise to ship him to the
Golden State Warriors for power forwards Carlos
Rogers and Victor Alexander.
Bottom line, the biggest obstacle that the Toronto
Raptors faced in its early days was that the team was
not able to retain any of its core players, regardless
of whether they were drafted or traded for by the
franchise. As such, Toronto failed to construct a
roster with any sustainable talent or depth. During
this initial phase, the Raptors not only had to effectively build their fifteen-man roster from essentially
ground zero, but the franchise was mired by additional challenges. First, the team was unable to build
through the draft because their first round selections
would opt to leave the franchise at the earliest possible time. Second, Toronto could not trade for elite
talent because it did not have the kind of attractive
young players or
established superstars that opposing teams wanted,
especially since
power for wa rd
Ma rcu s C a mby
was frequently injured and future superstar Tracy
McGrady was only eighteen years old and coming
off the bench in games after being drafted by the
Raptors in the first round of the 1997 NBA Draft with
the ninth overall pick. Third, the franchise failed
to attract any top-tier unrestricted agents to town
because none of them would want to play for Toronto
for reasons that I outlined earlier, particularly since
they could choose their own destination.
Did the Raptors manage to stop the bleeding?
Eventually, the answer is y \