Would the Toronto Raptors trade for Domantas Sabonis for free?
Why teams wouldn't want Domantas Sabonis
Domantas Sabonis is one of the most prolific players in the NBA, averaging at least 12 rebounds in five-straight seasons and growing his assists up to 8.2 this past season, which ranked sixth in the entire NBA this season. It seems impossible to think that a player putting up those kinds of numbers wouldn't be valued around the league.
It's not as if Sabonis is on a bad team, either. The Sacramento Kings made the playoffs in 2023 for the first time in two decades, making it to Game 7 against the defending champion Golden State Warriors before losing. They won 46 games this past season, a solid total, even if it meant a Play-In Tournament berth in a loaded Western Conference. Sabonis isn't putting up stats on a terrible team.
Why is it that teams wouldn't want him on their team on a max contract, then? It comes down to his impact on winning and the difficulty of his fit with many rosters. Taking the fit question first, Sabonis is not a good enough shooter to play power forward and maintain a high offensive impact; he is position-locked at center. Teams with an established star center would have no use for Sabonis, or at least he would be incredibly duplicative. That would knock everyone from the Denver Nuggets and Philadelphia 76ers to the San Antonio Spurs and Dallas Mavericks from the list.
The more glaring issue that Dunc'd On wanted to highlight was that Sabonis puts up stats, and to an extent raises a team's floor, but that he doesn't help a team win at a high level. He is a center who cannot protect the rim nor defend out in space. Rebounding is a part of ending a defensive possession, but otherwise he brings nothing to the table defensively, a glaring problem for the game's most important defensive position.
What's more, his offensive game can be somewhat easily shut down. The speed of the Kings' offensive system opens up a lot of space for Sabonis to operate as both a passer and facillitator at the elbow and as a finisher inside. The right defensive game plan can effectively take him right out of the game, as the Warriors showed in the 2023 playoffs when they put a low-end starting center in Kevon Looney on Sabonis and basically neutralized him. He shot only 49.5 percent in that series and the Kings were outscored by six points per 100 possessions when he was on the court.
Sabonis doesn't have enough offensive versatility to thrive in the playoffs, and he is a disaster actually defending on defense. That's a hard sell for teams trying to win basketball games. He is in an excellent system in Sacramento with a roster built around him, but at the end of the day he isn't helping them, or any other team, win at the highest levels. It's hard to pay someone a max contract just to be a floor-raising regular season player.
That being said, he is still a really good player; overrated doesn't mean worthless. Dunc'd On concluded a few teams would still trade for Sabonis. Would the Toronto Raptors be one of them?