With the 2023-24 season in the books, the Toronto Raptors now get set for the offseason.
The Raptors will head into free agency with some important decisions to make.
Gary Trent Jr. is an unrestricted free agent and Bruce Brown has a $23 million team option.
Trent Jr. played in 71 games for the Raptors this season and averaged 13.7 points on 39.3 percent shooting from three. It was a down year for Trent Jr. offensively. However, he contributed in other ways which earned him praise from Darko Rajakovic.
Bruce Brown was traded to Toronto as part of the Pascal Siakam deal. Brown failed to find consistency with the Raptors as he averaged 9.6 points in 34 games with the team. Brown blamed his struggles on a frustrating knee injury that he’s been dealing with since coming to Toronto.
Raptors president of basketball operations Masai Ujiri was asked about Trent Jr. and Brown going into free agency via TSN’s Josh Lewenberg:
“I think we’re going to continue to assess that as we go. We had really good exit meetings with Bruce and Gary… I think they do have special talents that they bring. We’ll see how the market assesses that.”
Beyond those decisions, the Raptors will have to tweak the rest of their roster. Whether that be through more trades or free agent signings.
The Raptors have had a lack of success in free agency as of late and Ujiri shared his thoughts on that via Lewenberg:
“We’ve studied all of this and the last couple years we just haven’t done very well in assessing what those fits could be… on the lower level we 100% need to do a better job of finding some of those players…we take responsibility.”
The Raptors need a strong free agency if they want to speed up this rebuild.
Masai Ujiri has full faith in Scottie Barnes
Where the Raptors are ahead of schedule when it comes to their rebuild is they have Scottie Barnes as their main building block.
Ujiri talked about Barnes’ growth and how it’s hard to find guys like him.
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