Ujiri Explains Plan for Raptors With More Trades Coming

The Toronto Raptors aren’t done yet.

The past few weeks have seen monumental change for this organization. Two pillars of Toronto’s organization have been shipped out and replaced with a collection of intriguing young players and future draft capital. It’s been a lot of change in a short period of time.

And there’s more to come.

“Definitely,” Raptors president Masai Ujiri said Thursday when asked if more trades could be coming before the Feb. 8 trade deadline. “That's why we have created flexibility.”

The Jakob Poeltl trade had cost Toronto some of its future draft capital. It cost the Raptors flexibility this past offseason when it came to the organization’s ability to make trades. Now, though, the Raptors have a surplus of draft picks with two first-round picks this year and all their future first-round picks save for one.

With the addition of Detroit’s second-round pick from the Anunoby trade, it’s possible the Raptors have three first-round picks in the top 32 picks and potentially high lottery pick if they manage to keep their top-six protected first-rounder this year too.

But don’t expect Toronto to add three or four rookies this summer, Ujiri said.

“You can consolidate these picks. You don’t have to pick them,” Ujiri said. “There are many things that you can do and that’s our thinking with those picks. It’s not necessarily that we are going to go into this draft and we have a lot of picks and we are going to approach it that way.”

That’s probably the right approach considering this year’s draft class is considered to be one of the weakest in recent memory. There's no sure-fire star like this past year or the 2025 Draft is believed to have and even the depth in the draft is expected to be less-than-stellar compared to other classes.

“I’ll say this, in that every draft there are players found,” Ujiri acknowledged. “I think in one of the worst drafts in the NBA history maybe, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Rudy Gobert came out of that draft. So I believe in our team and what we do and I think we'll make the best use of it.”

What’s clear, though, is Ujiri and the Raptors are asking for patience.

The Raptors are worse today than they were last week and it’s hard to look at the team and not think they’re worse than they were before the OG Anunoby deal too. But change takes time. Whether it’s a rebuild, a retool, a retransformation, or a re-something else. It’s a new era for Toronto and it’s going to take time to build this team back up again.

But at least Toronto has picked a direction.

What’s next is still to come.