Toronto Raptors: 30 greatest players of all-time

17. Patrick Patterson

Four seasons were well spent for Patrick Patterson in Toronto, despite his ugly departure from the team in 2017. Patterson refused to attend his exit interview after a humiliating loss at the hands of LeBron and the Cavs. Yes, it was the sweep. No, it was the other one.

Patterson was traded to the Raptors in December 2013, he was part of the package that sent Rudy Gay to the Sacramento Kings, alongside John Salmons, Chuck Hayes and Greivis Vasquez and made his mark as the most important player of the trade for Toronto. Patterson offered a blend of strong defending and a necessary amount of outside shooting — he was a 37-percent shooter from deep during his time in Toronto.

Patterson was often the player to stabilize the bench unit and his minutes could stagger into the starting line-up – the Raptors had a hole at power forward that Patterson could fill when needed, he offered a lot of versatility to the Raptors, the rotations he would feature in would usually prosper, but as time went on his impact started to waiver.

Patterson looked fairly out of touch during his last season, passing up on open 3-pointers to instead take fairly open looks from inside the paint.

The 2017 Playoffs were maybe the turning point for Pat Pat, who shot an effective field-goal percentage of 38 percent during 10 games, averaging just over three points per contest. The original LeBron defender for Toronto, Patterson didn’t match-up well with James at all and was limited to just 16 minutes a night. His time in Toronto looked to be coming to an end.

Then the exit interview happened, or didn’t happen, and we all knew that Patterson would be moving on. Shame.