Do the Toronto Raptors have the pieces for a Giannis Antetokounmpo blockbuster trade?
Despite being out of the NBA picture for several weeks now, the Toronto Raptors found themselves inserted into the league-wide gossip once again this week.
With several storylines circulating the NBA postseason, perhaps none are bigger than the future of Milwaukee Bucks superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo, who found himself on the wrong end of a third successive first-round defeat, losing in five games to the Indiana Pacers.
Since winning the NBA title in 2021, the Bucks have won just one playoff series — back in 2022 — and find themselves at a serious crossroads, particularly after star point guard Damian Lillard suffered an Achilles tear that puts his NBA future very much in jeopardy.
Few, if any, would blame the two-time MVP Antetokounmpo for the Bucks’ recent missteps, but it does beg the question of whether he’ll remain in Milwaukee for the long run. With the franchise seemingly able to make the playoffs at ease but not do much damage when getting there, there are many questions about whether it’s time to blow it up and change course in Milwaukee.
The Ringer offered up seven trade destinations for the 30-year-old star in an article published this morning, and Toronto wasn’t one of them.
Even still, it’s a trade idea that fans have long wondered about, including at least a few ex-players.
“True or false: one day, Giannis will play for the Toronto Raptors?” former Raptor Serge Ibaka asked Antetokounmpo on an episode of his How Hungry Are You? cooking show that aired back in 2022.
“False,” Antetokounmpo replied.
But what if there’s a trade that could bring the star to Toronto?
Exploring Raptors trade options
We start this exercise where any good trade rumour begins: fooling around on NBA 2K. Firing up a fresh career mode with the sole purpose of finding a suitable fit between the two teams, a 20-minute endeavour to get Antetokounmpo to Toronto is a fruitless one.
Add in any combination of picks or players, and you still won’t get enough to find your way to Antetokounmpo based on the Raptors’ current roster. Using a video game as a trade simulator is far from a perfect science, but it is at least a tool meant to replicate the real-world NBA.
Four players come up most frequently in any mock trades involving Toronto, with Scottie Barnes, Immanuel Quickley, RJ Barrett and Brandon Ingram all coming into play. Cap hits of US$38.2 million (Barnes), US$38.1 million (Ingram) US$32.5 million (Quickley) and US$27.7 million would need to be combined to get into the ballpark range of US$58.4 million owed to Antetokounmpo next season and satisfy the NBA’s salary matching rules in trades.
Taking to the Fanspo trade machine, there’s a little bit more success than messing around on 2K, albeit likely an unrealistic one.
Scottie Barnes and RJ Barrett provide the “Successful trade!” prompt on Fanspo, although it’s a tough package to assume the Bucks would get all that excited over.
Fanspo.com trade machine
Barnes is a one-time All-Star but remains with serious limitations offensively, as he’s yet to top 20 points per game (he hit 19.9 a year ago) in his four-year NBA career.
Though there are comparisons to be made about his early career arc to a player like Antetokounmpo himself, it’d make one wonder if Barnes would be the best available player a team would be willing to part with.
Barrett himself has reinvented his career in the last two seasons with Toronto, but it’s tough to see Milwaukee getting all that excited about such a trade package without the Raptors adding multiple draft picks along the way, or young players like Gradey Dick and Ja’Kobe Walter.
Even then, would the Bucks be thrilled trading the best player in their franchise history for the pieces of a team that just finished 11th in the Eastern Conference? It seems unlikely.
Barnes and Ingram’s salaries combined are too much money to make a trade work, as would be the same issue if you added up the money owed to Barnes and Quickley.
Quickley and Barrett also work as a successful trade in theory, but we’ve seen exactly what their trade value is in the NBA when they came from New York in a package deal, and it’s not Antetokounmpo, but rather a good-but-not-All-Star-level talent like OG Anunoby.
For a fun one, Barrett, Jakob Poeltl (US$19.5 million), and Ochai Agbaji ($6.5 million) would also be enough to make the deal work, but it’s hard to imagine why on earth the Bucks would accept that as the best possible offer.
At this moment in time, it’s hard to imagine any scenario where Antetokounmpo’s trade destination is Toronto. Any such trade would likely also wait until well after the NBA Draft lottery on May 12, where Toronto and many other teams have a clearer glimpse of their future draft stock.
But with the Luka Doncic trade to the Los Angeles Lakers surprising us all earlier this year, perhaps the Raptors will one day end up being gifted a superstar talent of their own.