You're basically the West Raptors. Stuck in treadmill hell but too afraid to take a chance on making your team better (trading McCollum/Lowry)
I don't think you can compare trading McCollum to trading Lowry or refer to the Blazers as The Raptors West. Their situations are NOTHING alike.
The Raptors are in the midst of their most successful team ever with these last 4 playoff runs. It's a lot to ask them to break that up. Signing Derozan to that huge deal sealed the deal for that.
As much as Derozan may be their leading scorer and the guy they're going to build around in the future, Lowry has been the biggest reason for the Raptors success over the past 4 seasons. The Raptors are just now getting to the point this season where units without Lowry are successful. Even now, the most successful lineups contain Lowry. Lowry and the bench units have been one of the strongest performing units in the league in the regular season behind the Warriors Hampton 5/Death Lineup and LeBron and the bench units the last few seasons. There's a reason Lowry's pretty much led the league in minutes over this stretch.
Raptors 5 man lineups (take a look below)
Toronto Raptors
All that said, the Raptors have been lessening Lowry's load and preparing for his replacement with Wright and VanVleet. There's a reason they only gave Lowry a 3 year deal. They're simultaneously competing for the playoffs while building a team within a team for a future rebuild. They've drafted well. Guys like OG, Siakam, Poeltl, Wright, Powell, VanVleet are all solid young guys for the future......and they've built an offense that has lessened the load on both Derozan and Lowry. If things don't work out this year they can make moves.......
With the Blazers everyone with a brain knew from the start when LMA left, and they traded Batum and Lopez that Dame and CJ were a bad fit. They over performed in season 1 and their GM made a bunch of panic win now moves that has them on a treadmill........they gave huge deals to Meyes, Crabbe and Turner and now they're stuck. shyt they're lucky OKC matched Kanter's deal or they'd be stuck with his deal too. They've pretty much made so many poor moves in a conference where unlike the Raptors they don't have a chance at the conference finals that you almost have to question if they simply just got lucky with Dame and CJ because they're pretty much the only two guys on the team worth anything.
