The Toronto Raptors put a lot of faith in Jakob Poeltl. The veteran center has not only let them down once, but again and again as they continue to misplace their trust and he continues to make them regret it.
It should be stated that Jakob Poeltl appears to be an excellent teammate and has given the Toronto organization no behavorial issues over the years. There is a reason they desperately want him around. Yet it is also true that Poeltl is continually making the Raptors regret all of the trust they have put in him.
The Raptors traded a future Top-10 pick to acquire Poeltl, then have handed him significant financial investments multiple times over the last four years. That includes a contract extension this past summer that was wholly unnecessary, adding three additional years to a deal that still had two years remaining.
No one was beating down the door to steal Poeltl in free agency. The same offer they gave him would have been available in a year. Yet they paid through the nose to lock down the league's 23rd-best center, and now a decision that looked bad at the time appears to be even worse.
The Raptors are regretting every Jakob Poeltl decision
With the No. 8 pick in the 2024 NBA Draft, the Toronto Raptors could have drafted their own center of the future in Zach Edey. Or Kel'el Ware. Yves Missi and DaRon Holmes show some upside.
They could also have gone in a different direction, drafting a wing like Matas Buzelis or Jaylon Tyson, or a guard like Jared McCain or Devin Carter. Swapping Poeltl's deal for an inexpensive upside swing would have changed a lot for this team's future.
Any of those options would have been better than what the Raptors are dealing with now. Poeltl has been limited to just 21 games this season as he has battled multiple injuries, most recently a back injury that has sidelined him since before Christmas.
It's not like Poeltl is living up to his contract when he does play, either. he is averaging just 9.7 points per game on a meek 14.5 percent usage rate; that ranks 12th on the team. And while he may have the reputation of making more of his impact on defense, his blocks, steals and defensive rebounds are all down this year.
Poeltl played well enough last season in a lost year to reel the Raptors back in and trick them into thinking his injury issues were behind him. Now he is aging and declining, and his back injury is sapping his impact. There may not be a team in the league that would want Poeltl as a long-term starter at center, and yet the Raptors just handed him $30 million a year deep into the future.
With every game that he misses, Poeltl's trade value is tanking. With every game that he misses, it's another game where the Raptors are scrambling to cobble together a center rotation from a collection of power forwards because their investment in Poeltl squeezed out space in the cap sheet for a proper backup center.
And as the Raptors consider a big swing to take their team to the next level, Poeltl is like a lead weight pulling them back down to earth. Their success this year looks like a house of cards preparing to fall over, and Poeltl is the bitter breeze about to do the deed.
The path out of the Jakob Poeltl business involves him getting back on the court. Right now such an outcome appears far off, and certainly past next week's trade deadline. They inexplicably trusted Poeltl, and he is unsurprisingly making them regret it.
Again and again.