Raptors: 3 veteran free agents who could help Toronto right now
By Mike Luciano
The Toronto Raptors could look to the free-agent market to wake this team up.
It’s still very early in the truncated 2020-21 season, but Toronto Raptors look nothing like the title-winning team of two years ago or the electric young bunch that made some noise in the Disney bubble. At 1-4, a mark of futility that only the Washington Wizards have eclipsed, Nick Nurse and Masai Ujiri have to realize they need to do something to reverse Toronto’s fortune.
If Ujiri wants to look to the free agent market to add depth in order to give Toronto a season-changing spark, these three vets look like perfect fits.
One of these three veteran free agents could join the Raptors in the coming weeks.
3. Kyle Korver
No NBA player has managed to carve out such a long career on the back of one particular skill quite like Korver, who will likely garner interest from contenders despite the fact he will turn 40 years old in March. Korver, who has led the league in three-point percentage four times, was a valued member of a Bucks team that earned the No. 1 seed, making 42 percent of his threes, a number that is almost right on target with his career 43 percent three-point success rate. The Raptors are struggling to create much on offense, even with the return of Fred VanVleet, and Korver can still put the ball in the basket.
Toronto knows that Korver isn’t going to provide much from a ball-handling or defensive point of view. However, the Nate Bjorkgren-less offense is among the league’s worst, as ranking 22nd in the league in three-point percentage is simply not a sustainable clip for the Raptors if they want to turn things around and make it to the postseason. Korver won’t totally fix Toronto’s offensive woes, but he’ll be a reliable veteran that could be counted on to nail catch-and-shoot opportunities with regularity, and that could be a big piece of the Raptors’ offensive puzzle.