VanVleet's decision to leave Raptors looking like genius call these days

Before the 2023-24 Toronto Raptors had a season from hell, they had one mired in mediocrity.

The 2022-23 Raptors will go down in franchise history as about as mediocre a basketball team as you’ll find at the NBA level. They finished the year with a 41-41 record before crashing out of the postseason with a loss in the 9/10 Eastern Conference play-in game on their home floor to the Chicago Bulls.

With Toronto sitting with a 23-50 record and now officially eliminated from playoff contention, one player in particular is probably counting his blessing that he made the choice to leave Toronto: Fred VanVleet.

It didn’t seem like the goodbye to Toronto was all that easy, with VanVleet admitting he had a hard time telling Masai Ujiri he’d be joining another franchise after spending seven seasons in Toronto.

Sure, a three-year $130 million contract offer from the Houston Rockets last summer was a deal that was hard to turn down for anyone.

And sure, his best years of his career might end up being in Toronto, having won the 2019 NBA championship while making an All-Star game appearance in 2023.

But in his first year with the Rockets, he’s playing competitive basketball down the stretch run of the season, while his former Raptors squad has yet to win a game since March 3.

Riding hot on a ten-game win streak, the Rockets are now just one game back of the Golden State Warriors for the final play-in spot in the Western Conference. And if you could hazard a guess which situation any player with a true love for the game would rather be in, they’ll tell you they’d want to see their season go on as long as possible.

VanVleet has averaged 16.8 points, 8.1 assists and 3.7 rebounds in 65 games this season while shooting 38.4% from three-point range, a slightly different role from when he averaged 19.3 points, 7.2 assists and 4.1 rebounds in 69 games while shooting 34.2% from distance in 2022-23 with Toronto.

His minutes per game have been relatively consistent — 36.7 a year ago compared to 36.6 this year, but he’s averaging 2.6 fewer field goal attempts — 13.5 compared to 16.1 — than he did each night in Toronto.

But perhaps most importantly, he’s often used the third option in Houston, able to defer to the team’s two young scoring leaders, a pair of 21-year-olds in Jalen Green and Alperen Sengun (who’s currently sidelined with an ankle injury). VanVleet’s usage rate of 19.2% is down considerably from his final three seasons in Toronto, each of which was between 23.2% and 23.7%.

“They wanted a leader, they needed kind of what I bring to the table, what I provide, so it’s been a perfect fit,” VanVleet said earlier this season while visiting Toronto with the Rockets.

As for all the trades that ended up happening after he left? Well, VanVleet wasn’t exactly surprised once the team decided to rebuild.

“That’s really the only way it was ever gonna go… it was just a matter of when. You set off on that timeline and on that trajectory, this is what it looks like,” VanVleet said of the high level of turnover in the team. “It’s hard for people that are fans of the team… people on the team that were heavily invested in that group, but I think it was time to turn over a new leaf and they’re making all the right moves.”

For a player who’s always bet on himself, VanVleet seems to have made the right call this go around.