Giannis Antetokounmpo has now publicly and officially requested a trade. The Toronto Raptors will suddenly find their own bold trade deadline plans thrown into chaos, as teams focus on luring the two-time MVP and ignore the Raptors and their complicated trade offers.
The Raptors have been linked to every player to hit the trade market in the past two months, everyone from Anthony Davis to Ja Morant to Domantas Sabonis. Should they bring DeMar DeRozan home? Is LaMelo Ball on the market? Can they justify Karl-Anthony Towns?
Toronto has faced an uphill climb from the start as it goes star-hunting. They are a good team right now, but no one truly considers them a title contender despite their top-4 record in the Eastern Conference. They need another star player -- but they don't have an ideal package with which to pursue one.
All of their matching salary is either untouchable (Scottie Barnes) or underwater; few teams around the NBA want to pay Immanuel Quickley $32.5 million per season, or Brandon Ingram $40 million, or Jakob Poeltl anything -- let alone the $100 million he just added to the end of his contract paying him for another five seasons.
To make a deal, the Raptors were going to need a trade partner motivated to sell, and then convince them to take on the difficult long-term salaries attached to the likes of Poeltl, Quickley or RJ Barrett. They would be including future draft picks as both the purchase price and the cost of moving one of those onerous contracts.
Giannis Antetokounmpo has put the Raptors' plans on hold
Now all of that is put on hold. The teams with a star-type player they are willing to move on from are now considering whether that player can be a part of a Giannis trade package. Other teams are waiting for the dust to settle to determine the best available trade, putting a deal with Toronto on ice.
It's not like the Raptors are going to trade for Giannis, either. Not now that Scottie Barnes is coming into his own and, as a 24-year-old player with a minimal injury history, has value approaching Antetokounmpo's on the trade market himself. Barnes and Giannis are duplicative on offense and on defense, perhaps more so than any two other stars in the league. Having both of them would be wasting their potential.
Even if they did want to trade for Antetokounmpo, their package would lag far behind due to the cost of moving off of Poeltl and Quickley. Getting a disgruntled star? That is in reach. Getting Giannis? Out of reach. And other teams aren't going to settle for Toronto's offers until they know they won't get something better from the Antetokounmpo fallout.
The only way for Toronto to get a deal done is to pay extra to push a deal soon, a death sentence given the high costs they were already laboring under. It's a lose-lose situation for the Raptors, and it gets worse if Giannis stays in the East and lands in Miami or New York or Detroit.
Whatever the Raptors are going to do, it just got a lot more complicated thanks to Giannis Antetokounmpo.