Grade the Trade: Marcus Smart, Brandon Ingram on the move as Raptors join 4-team idea

Building trade ideas for the NBA is difficult.

It's a worthwhile exercise to look at a team, identify a need, and then look for ways that team could meet that need on the trade market. It's the same basic exercise NBA front offices are doing. The Toronto Raptors are certainly doing that alongside every other team in the league.

Building a trade is not simply matching salaries, however, It's also not simply finding players of roughly equal value. A deal also has to meet the needs to every team involved, or they will have no incentive to be a part of it.

What that means is that sometimes you find the perfect team to meet the need, but in return your team can't properly meet a need on that team. That's when a third or even fourth team is brought in, creating a round-robin effect of meeting needs to find a trade that works.

Jakob Poeltl is a popular player to insert into a trade because he is a proven rim protector, something a handful of teams in the NBA still desperately need, and doesn't necessarily fit into the Raptors' timeline given his age and lack of versatility.

What would it take for the Raptors to trade Jakob Poeltl?

That doesn't mean the Raptors are ready to just move on from Poeltl for any grab-bag of players that add up to $20 million. If they are going to move on from Poeltl, a player they targeted just 18 months ago and paid a premium to acquire, it will be because a massive need of their own is met.

Let's look at a recently proposed trade that pulled the Raptors in as the fourth team in a deal and see whether it is something that would meet the needs of Toronto.