Raptors Insider: Nurse on the hot seat; Chatter about Toronto driving NBA trade deadline was just noise

Bits and pieces a week removed from the NBA trade deadline as the league takes its annual all-star breather before sprinting to the finish line:

Simple is better

It’s known as Occam’s Razor and it should be required learning for Raptors fans — and the NBA as a whole — in the days and weeks leading up to the annual trade deadline.

It says, in layman’s terms, that the simplest explanation for anything is always better and more preferable to something more complex and it’s precisely how Masai Ujiri and Bobby Webster comport themselves.

Private chats with team officials, conversations with agents and execs around the league made it clear:

The Raptors were never going to do anything too major because they didn’t want to. They didn’t feel they needed to and they didn’t want to move away from their long held idea that heavy lifting is to be done in the summer, not in February.

Ujiri even joked about it that day and I’m pretty sure he said the same thing about the deadline in years past:

“In terms of the trade market, nobody’s talking serious till 3 o’clock, ‘til five minutes to three, and then we all have these baby toy guns (trained to our heads),” was how he put it this year.

Yes, there were offers — well, “offers” might be too strong a word — so Ujiri and Webster did not sit quietly in their offices all last Thursday.

But draft picks were never going to satisfy them — three picks for, say, O.G. Anunoby would have to stretch out over six years and that wasn’t palatable — so all of those were quickly dismissed.

According to ESPN’s Zach Lowe, both the Memphis Grizzlies and Indiana Pacers offered three first-round picks for Anunoby.

If you deal a good player to an OK team, that OK team should get better and diminish the draft pick value, right? That thought process is certainly in the head of astute executives like Ujiri and Webster, as several NBA sources said this week.

The one interesting chat I heard was that there was intrigue in trying to couple Pascal Siakam with Kevin Durant. But once Phoenix made its crazy good offer for the disgruntled Net, that plan was dashed.

So according to everyone we’ve chatted over the week, all the palaver about the Raptors driving the deadline and the league waiting for them to decide was just that: Noise.

And put a reminder in your phones to read Occam’s Razor about a year from now.

Raptors fill big need

One way to get a rise out of anyone in the Raptors front office is to accuse them of “doing nothing big” at the deadline.

The way they see it — and it makes perfect sense — they had three needs: Size, depth and shooting.

They filled two and that’s kind of big.

Jakob Poeltl addresses both the size and helps with the depth. He’ll start and that will move Precious Achiuwa to the bench; Anunoby will eventually start and that will likely move Gary Trent Jr. to the bench so a backup group of Achiuwa, Chris Boucher, Trent and either or both of Thad Young and a resurgent Malachi Flynn doesn’t look horrible.

Now, that’s contingent on good health and that’s hardly a sure thing but they will tell you the Poeltl move was big because it may have eased two of three trouble spots.

Ducking the luxury tax

The hierarchy is sure that, if necessary, they can massage next season’s salary structure to take care of free agents VanVleet, Poeltl and Trent.

If they want to. And that’s not a sure thing.

No decisions have been made, of course. What happens will depend largely on what other offers emerge but there is a path to paying all three and staying below the tax line.

They see a way to move the salary of Otto Porter Jr. and Young’s contract isn’t fully guaranteed; Flynn’s not a sure thing and all the chatter about Anunoby being moved is absolutely going to be resurrected in June and July.

But getting all three unrestricted guys back? Certainly doable, the bean counters will tell you.

Funny thing, though, was the reaction from one decision-maker when it was suggested the Raptors might be able to move off Boucher’s $11 million deal.

“Sure. We could. But why? We like him a lot.”

Knives out for Nick Nurse

No matter how this season ultimately ends, the knives are going to be out for Nick Nurse.

Respected commentator David Thorpe already started it last weekend by suggesting Nurse’s tenure should be done while floating Earl Watson’s name.

Nothing is going to happen with the coaching staff between now and June, take that to the bank. But, as we’ve said since October , if the season ends with a quick playoff exit, everything’s on the table.

And that includes the coaching staff. As it should.

Nurse isn’t blameless for how this season has gone and the decision-makers have noticed.

But, like the free agent money issue, that’s a post-season discussion because firing a coach at this point is ridiculous.

The last thing Ujiri and Webster are is ridiculous.

Cards and letters, please

As we wing our way westward and the annual all-star weekend shenanigans, there’s always going to be time for Ye Olde Mailbag.

It’ll get posted sometime Sunday morning — we’re on Mountain Time so it might not be early — but if you send queries to [email protected] they’ll magically get answered.

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