NBA Trade Deadline: Grading the Serge Ibaka Trade
Ibaka is on his way to Toronto! So who are the winners and losers?
After many weeks of rumors and speculation, the first major domino of the NBA Trade Deadline finally fell on Tuesday morning as The Vertical WojBombed our Valentine’s Day with breaking news:
Sergeballu LaMu Sayonga Loom Walahas Jonas Hugo Ibaka is on the move again. After just 56 games in an Orlando Magic uniform, Ibaka is on his way to the Toronto Raptors. In return, Toronto will receive Terence Ross and what projects to be a late first round pick this year.
So with the first major 2017 trade in the books, who are the winners and the losers?
Losers: Orlando Magic
It’s hard to call the Magic anything but losers after this disastrous pair of trades over the last seven months.
Just last June, Orlando made shocking news on Draft Day with a monster trade, giving up Victor Oladipo, Ersan Ilyasova, and the #11 pick for Ibaka. To say the move was questioned at the time is a bit of an understatement. Ilyasova was no huge loss but Oladipo was arguably the best Magic player, and Ibaka had just one year remaining on his deal and had already shown decline over the last couple of years, struggling at times to even remain on the court for the Thunder in last year’s playoffs.
Fast forward half a year and that #11 pick Domantas Sabonis has started the entire season for the Thunder in Ibaka’s place, whilst Oladipo is second on the team in points per game and has given Oklahoma City one of the most dynamic backcourts in the league. As for Orlando? They got only 1700 minutes out of their investment and currently sit second to last in the East with 21 wins and 36 losses, behind even the rebuilding Philadelphia 76ers.
Ibaka will be a free agent this summer and there’s no reason to believe the Magic had any real chance of re-signing him. There’s going nowhere, and then there’s going nowhere, arriving, setting up shop, and building a settlement there.
And so the second Ibaka trade came to fruition Tuesday as Orlando moved on from Ibaka and sent him to Toronto for wing Terence Ross and a 2017 first round pick. The draft pick should be in the early-to-mid 20s and Terence Ross is older, more expensive, and undeniably worse than Victor Oladipo. Let’s add up the parts, shall we?
Orlando gives: Oladipo, Ilyasova, Sabonis Orlando receives: 56 games of Ibaka, Ross, and a late first round pick
Woof. But at least Magic fans should be used to mid-February depression by now. Just 363 days ago, Orlando made another big deadline move, trading talented combo forward Tobias Harris for the aforementioned Ilyasova and guard Brandon Jennings. Ilyasova started four games for the Magic and played 447 minutes. Jennings started six and played 452 minutes before leaving in free agency. Meanwhile Tobias Harris is leading the Pistons in points per game this year at 16.3.
Let’s do the math again.
Orlando gives: Tobias Harris, Victor Oladipo, Domantas Sabonis Orlando receives: 66 starts from Ibaka/Ilyasova/Jennings, Terence Ross, and a late 2017 first round pick
This was an unmitigated disaster for the Magic.
Winners: Toronto Raptors
Not every trade has a winner and a loser, but Orlando trades are establishing a pretty predictable pattern. Detroit slaughtered the Magic on the Tobias Harris trade. Oklahoma City crushed them in the Victor Oladpio deal. And now the Raptors won the Serge Ibaka trade too.
Read that paragraph again. Notice how the Magic are never the ones getting the guy the trade is referencing? That’s three times in one year Orlando has traded away the marquee name in a deal and three times they’ve lost big.
But this is the Toronto section, and it’s time to get excited for what Ibaka can do for the Raptors. After all, this team was just two games away from the NBA Finals last year and has been starting no-name rookie Pascal Siakim at power forward all year. If you need to imagine just how big of an upgrade Siakim to Ibaka will be, just take a look at how much better the Utah Jazz have gotten this season by replacing their pupu platter of point guards with a real starter in George Hill.
Siakim has worked hard and performed admirably for a Raptors team that didn’t have many other options, but Ibaka will be a major upgrade in almost every way imaginable. He’s not the elite rim protector he once was, but he’s still a strong defender and one that fits uniquely well next to Toronto center Jonas Valanciunas. He also spaces the floor well on offense in a way no one else on the Raptors did, adding a career-high 39% three-point shot to space the floor, something Toronto desperately needed.
With Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan soaking up most of the touches and playmaking on offense, Ibaka will be free to catch and shoot like he did so well in Oklahoma City, both from the elbow and from beyond the arc. It’s impossible to overstate how much value he will add pulling his defender away from the rim, giving two All Star guards that much more space to drive to the rim. These Raptors have always been at their best with Pat Patterson on the court, and that’s no coincidence. He’s the only Toronto big that spaces the floor at all. Ibaka is a better version of Patterson on both ends of the court.
Toronto does lose Terence Ross but they have a ready-made replacement in Norm Powell, a guy who needed more minutes anyway. Ross and Siakim had been averaging around 40 minutes combined. Give 30 of those minutes to Ibaka and add the other 10 to Powell’s workload and it’s easy to see how much of a win this is for Toronto.
Ibaka also gives Toronto a new devastating option: small ball. Picture a Raptors lineup with Lowry, DeRozan, Powell, DeMarre Carroll, and Ibaka. That’s a fun, fast lineup capable of punishing just about any NBA team and defending most pretty well too.
Toronto has struggled to put games away recently but they still have a +4.4 point differential, fifth best in the league and second in the East, less than a point behind Cleveland (who just lost Kevin Love for six weeks or longer). The biggest cost of this move is going to be signing Ibaka to a massive extension this summer. That along with a certain Lowry extension and the deal DeRozan already got will put Toronto far into the luxury tax.
The naysayers will say Toronto still doesn’t have LeBron James or Steph Curry and thus still won’t win the Finals, and they’re probably right. But probably is not definitely. If you don’t cash in some assets to take a shot with the best Raptors team ever in the name of future flexibility and potential, what exactly are you doing? This is the future. This is the potential. If you don’t go all-in with your best shot ever at reaching the Finals, when will you?
Toronto probably moved from a 20% chance of beating Cleveland in the Eastern Finals to 35% chance. Valanciunas is a good player but he’s not usable against most Cleveland lineups, and Ibaka at least gives Toronto a shot in a possible Warriors Finals where his defensive length and versatility would be sorely needed too. Let’s give them a 20% chance of beating these Warriors. Add it all up and that’s 7% chance at a ring this year (if you blindly assume Toronto makes the ECF which isn’t fair at all, but enough math is enough).
Should Toronto have gone all in on this team for a measly 5–7% chance of a title? Five to seven percent may not seem like much, but that means once every 15–20 playoffs, Toronto is an NBA champion. How many of the last 15–20 NBA playoffs has Toronto been the NBA champion? Heck, how many of the last 15–20 years has any Toronto team been? The answer is that no team in Toronto has made any of the big four sports leagues’ (sorry, Argos) finals in 50 years. This is a win not just for Raptors fans but for the city of Toronto.
Serge Ibaka looks pretty good in Toronto red.
Losers: Boston Celtics
The optimist (read: Bill Simmons) sees this trade and thinks the Celtics now own the trade market with all their assets and picks available and the top big man buyer now out of the running.
The realist sees that Danny Ainge is left sitting on his hands yet again as the war chest of Boston picks and assets continues to slowly lose value over time. Paul Millsap is probably not going anywhere, so Ibaka was the best big man on the market. On a day when Boston’s #1 Eastern competition got weaker in Cleveland, the Celtics saw their #2 competition rise up stronger than ever.
Boston not only didn’t get Ibaka, they didn’t even make a good enough offer (if they made one at all) to drive up the price and make Toronto really pay. Ross and a draft pick are a loss, of course, but a comparable offer from Boston — even if they were never going to go through with it — could’ve forced a top Eastern contender to hurt a little more in a deal.
Instead Ainge watched happily from his Scrooge McDuck pile of riches that get closer and closer every day to never turning into anything but a pile of first-round losses.
Winners: NBA fans watching the Eastern playoffs
The Eastern playoffs have been a formality for years, but they just got a lot more interesting.
A Toronto-Cleveland Finals is genuinely interesting now, especially if Kevin Love is still out or not 100%. Plus with Boston and Washington looking so good, we should get a great Eastern semifinals too.
Only a year ago, fans were hanging their hats on a pair of seven-game playoff series involving the Miami Heat that made us all wonder if a Game 7 could actually be boring after all. Now the Eastern playoffs might even be more interesting than the West.
Winner: Serge Ibaka
It didn’t feel right watching Ibaka toil away on a terrible Magic team, if in fact anyone was even watching him do it. And it was sad watching him minimized on last year’s Thunder playoff team too.
Ibaka is a perfect fit on this Raptors team, so it’s easy to see him wanting to sign an extension and stick around. Toronto is a uniquely great fit as a new city home for him as well. Ibaka has a great story, and he’s about to be filthy rich this summer so he can continue to help provide for his 18 siblings (no, seriously) and make a huge impact back home across many African nations.
Now we get to watch him play winning basketball again too.
Winner: Aaron Gordon
It’s good news for Aaron Gordon too, who now becomes the face and the future of the Orlando Magic franchise (until they trade him away for 30-cents-on-the-dollar six months from now in the name of rebuilding).
One of the many reasons the Ibaka deal never made sense was that it meant Gordon playing out of position all year as a small forward instead of using his hyper-athleticism as a four nearer the hoop. Sure enough, Gordon has struggled mightily this year at the three. His defense has been very poor, and his true shooting his dropped to an ugly 50 percent as he jacked more threes than ever at his usual sub-30% rate.
A year ago at power forward, Gordon was averaging 14 points and 10 boards per 36 minutes and was starting to come into his own with a very nice 114 offensive rating and a just-as-good 105 on defense. He’s going to have a lot less help now with Tobias Harris and Victor Oladipo off the roster, but he’s still only 21 and gets to return to the position he plays best.
That’s good for Aaron Gordon and, unfortunately, it’s probably the only good news today for Magic fans.
Winner: Drake
You gotta be happy for Drake.
Only days after a dismal showing at the Grammy’s, the Raptors trade for a player that has always been his favorite NBA player of all time. And on Valentine’s Day, no less.
Roses are red, Violets are blue. The Raps traded for Ibaka, Now Drake loves him too.
Winners: serges everywhere
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