Raptors: Keeping Goran Dragic may force Toronto to make tough cuts

While the Toronto Raptors spent most of their preseason worrying about if Isaac Bonga, Sam Dekker, or Ishmail Wainright deserved a spot on the roster, Nick Nurse likely assumed one of the few constants on this team would be veteran point guard Goran Dragic. After all, he’s been a proven bench scorer on some quality teams for years.

Unfortunately, Dragic performed so poorly to start his Raptors tenure that he found himself benched after just four games. While putting Dalano Banton in front of him in the rotation has helped Toronto pick up some extra wins, this is not what they wanted to see when it comes to getting good value for him in a trade.

The Raptors currently have 15 players on the roster and two on two-way contracts, but if they want to get out of the luxury tax, one of them will need to be offloaded. With a Dragic trade likely not happening anytime soon, Michael Grange of SportsNet thinks that the best way to save money could involve cutting one of the players at the end of the bench.

Grange postulates that if they want to get under the luxury tax, they could decide not to pick up the guarantee on either Bonga or Dekker’s contract to save some money. After all, Dekker’s cap charge is $1.67 million, and the Raptors are just $1.05 million over the tax threshold, so going down to 14 players might make sense.

Will the Toronto Raptors cut Isaac Bonga, Sam Dekker due to Goran Dragic?

There are multiple ways to look at this. If you want to be pessimistic, you can point out the notion that Dragic should’ve been moved in the offseason. Holding onto him has not only failed to produce another quality rotation player for the Raptors, but it’s saddled them with a very difficult contract to trade and a declining asset.

The more optimistic Raptors fan out there might point out the fact that Bonga and Dekker are not going to move the needle. In fact, keeping 14 players might actually be the best move for Toronto, as it gives them more flexibility when it comes to how this roster is constructed.

If they want to sign one more player or take on multiple players in their eventual Dragic deal, they can do that. Let’s say one of the two-way players in David Johnson or Justin Champagnie continues to impress. They could convert their two-way deal into a standard NBA contract, as they did with Yuta Watanabe last year.

Trading Dragic will likely happen at some point during the season, but the idea of ditching him relatively soon to save money doesn’t appear to be happening. Bonga and Dekker worked hard to make this roster, but their spot doesn’t appear to be too safe.